Tardisode 6 serves as a prologue to this episode. It depicts the issuing of an order to John Lumic's Cybermen to commence worldwide cyber-conversion. The story was inspired by Marc Platt's 2002 audio play Spare Parts. Head writer Russell T Davies decided he wanted the two-parter Rise of the Cybermen and The Age of Steel to be loosely adapted from the Big Finish play, albeit with a similar "feel", just like how series 1's Dalek was adapted from Jubilee. Platt was paid a fee for Tom MacRae reusing the basic concepts of Parts and was given a credit for both Rise and Steel. Initial drafts of the parallel Earth story were very close to Mondas' depiction in Spare Parts as a "dying world". (DWMSE 14)