Simply, one the of the best Doctor Who audio adventures. This story rivals the Tom Baker classic, Genesis of the Daleks but features Peter Davidson as the Doctor. He is accompanied by Sarah Sutton as Nyssa. The story begins with the Tardis landing on what the Doctor believes is 1950s London. However, London it is not. This adventure details the creation of the Cybermen and the roll the Doctor had in it. This story introduces some new and memorable characters, including Doctorman Allen, the creator of the Cybermen. ( )

The Doctor and Nyssa land on a dying planet in interstellar space, where the dwindling remnant of the population is living in an old underground city. The people are generally sickly and miserable, and many have cybernetic replacements for diseased organs. Soon, they discover the name of the planet: Mondas.

This account of the birth of the Cyberman is a horror story and a tragedy, made all the more sad and terrible by the fact that there is no equivalent of Davros: these people are not xenophobic fascists like the Kaleds, but desperate humans, with English names like Yvonne and Thomas and Frank and Eric, who are just trying to find a way not to die. One of the best and saddest Doctor Who stories I have ever seen, heard or read, and also a credited inspiration for the Season 2 two-parter Rise of the Cyberman/The Age of Steel.

A plus also for bringing back the "original" Cyberman design from The Tenth Planet: the cloth face (although you don't see it on the audio, of course) and the eerie sing-song voice make these Cybermen seem like the desperate last-resort survival measure that they really are. ( )

Perhaps my favourite of the fifty or so Big Finish stories I have listened to so far. The title of course comes from this chilling exchange from Episode Two of The Tenth Planet (1966), between the newly introduced Cybermen and one of the scientists in the base they have just invaded, in literally the first scene in Doctor Who in which the Cybermen speak. The scene is set on Mondas, with the dying population, willingly or not, handing over their destinies to the process of becoming Cybermen, under the control of the sinister Committee. Lots of fantastic performances and atmospheric scene-setting, with Sally Knyvette (Jenna in Blake's 7) particularly memorable as a despairing doctor. One of the other characters is called Yvonne Hartley, presumably reflected in Yvonne Hartman of Torchwood in Army of Ghosts and Doomsday. (The writer of Spare Parts, Marc Platt, got a credit for inspiring The Age of Steel and Rise of the Cybermen, though the stories end up in rather different places.) This is a terribly sad and bleak story, but I have to say that if I was trying to convert someone to the Big Finish series this is where I would start. ( )

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