Originally published by L.S. Media. September 4th 2011.
For Doctor Who fans the last six years have been a cornucopia of story-telling, three Doctors, enemies by the bundle, including the welcome return of the Master, The Cybermen and of course the Doctor’s greatest enemy and the universes greatest threat The Daleks. These 21st Century episodes have become some of the most highly rated stories created for the long running B.B.C. T.V. series and it seems the programme has never been more popular.
What happened though in the dark days when the Doctor was pulled of the screens by the market forces and the bullish Michael Grade? Yes, the story lines had become stale and the show had more than started to show signs of turning into a caricature of its self, worse, a joke that American television science fiction writers were willing to exploit with a brand new version of Star Trek and that British television could not compete with! Was this a reason to take the long running programme off the air completely though? Contentiously I would have to say yes, only though on the basis it gave the company Big Finish the chance to carry the flame forward and deliver a whole catalogue of scripts that became some of the best loved stories for the Doctor.
What Big Finish and in particular Executive Producer Nicholas Briggs did was to re-invent the old Doctors, in particular Doctors five to eight, and give them brand new stories that slotted in with their time within the Tardis on television without destroying the canon and continuality for the dedicated Whovarians.
Big Finish opened up the doors on their time as custodians of the Doctor mythology in 1999 with the audio play The Sirens of Time which starred Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor, Maggie Stables (who would go on to become the long running and much loved companion Evelyn Smythe in later plays) and a young aspiring actor by the name of Mark Gatiss. The story was ambitious and heart-warming as fans of the series got to hear an official Doctor Who story that combined the talents of more than one Doctor since the 1996 Movie.
As time went on Paul McGann’s Doctor joined the team at Big Finish and started to show what could have been achieved on television had the B.B.C. kept faith with the possible ideas after the movie and not condemned television viewers to nearly a decade of purgatory without their favourite Time Lord. Paul McGann’s frock coated Doctor made his first audio appearance in the 16th story of the series Storm Warning and the story behind the crash over Northern France of the Airship 101 in 1930. This story showed the best of The Doctor and his influence on Earth history, playing fast and loose with the fragile web of time and solving the puzzle that is presented to him. It was also the fans’ first glimpse at one of the finest audio companions to have appeared in the 12 years of recordings, the spirited Edwardian adventuress Charlotte Pollard played by the excellent India Fisher.
A veritable gathering and variety of actors have come into the Doctor Who universe since those humble beginnings, some old favourites such as the indestructible Terry Malloy as Dalek creator Davros, Nicola Bryant as the fifth and sixth doctors companion Peri Brown, the wonderful Janet Fielding as the feisty Australian airhostess Tegan Jovanka and the exceptional and sadly missed Nicholas Courtney as the much loved Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. It was through Big Finish that Nicholas Courtney was able to finally work with the sixth Doctor Colin Baker in the story The Spectre of Lanyon Moor and with Paul McGann in Minuet in Hell, thereby continuing a relationship with the Doctor that stretched all the way back to the Patrick Troughton Doctor.
It wasn’t just much loved actors and people who had strong connections with the older series that has made the series a success, during the tenure of Nicholas Briggs the show has nurtured talent such as Laura Doddington, Conrad Westmass and a little known actor called David Tennant in a couple of plays playing diverse characters with great effect.
What makes the Doctor Who audios so admired, well apart from their longevity and overall charm, it must be said that the attention to detail with the scripts is as intense as their sister flagship programme on the television, the humour that is synonymous with the programme carries over and as ever the scare factor is always there hiding round every corner, the fact that the listener has to use their imagination to visualise the terror is a huge plus to the recordings. There is nothing more frightening than what you see in your own mind!
Before the company reached the milestone of 150 audio releases, they announced that the 4th Doctor, the much loved Tom Baker, was finally going to join the team and record new stories which are due to be released at the start of 2012. These certainly seem exciting days for Big Finish and all associated with the guardianship of The Doctor.
Ian D. Hall