Doctor Who Audio #1: It's like hearing what's going on inside the Doctor's head
 

Sorry, no banner. This is an audio thread ;)

For the years between the end of the old series in 1987 and the start of the new one in 2005, Doctor Who lived on in various forms. One of those forms is audio.

What's special about the Doctor Who audio adventures is that they involve many actors from the original TV series, including Doctors Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann, and many of the companions and other characters featured on the show. They have also featured a number of famous fans of the show including, before he became the Doctor on the new series, David Tennant.

Most of these audio adventures are produced by Big Finish Productions which has the license from the BBC to produce classic era Doctor Who stories. Though they don't have permission to produce stories for the new series at this time, there is a lot of cross over between the audio plays and the new TV series with several writers and actors having worked on both. Most notably, Nicholas Briggs, the voice of the Daleks and Cybermen for the new series, is also executive producer (as well as a writer and voice actor) for the Big Finish Doctor Who line.

A list of Big Finish Doctor who audios (well over 100) is available here. A list of other BBC Doctor Who audio release is available here. There are even Doctor-less spinoff audio series, such as the Dalek Empire, Gallifrey, Cybermen, Sarah Jane Smith, etc.

Wow, I didn't know anything about this. Interesting.

I found out about this after I started getting into the classic series, and I've since collected most of the Big Finish Doctor Who line, some of the spinoffs, and a lot of the non-Big Finish plays. I've had a subscription to the monthly Doctor Who releases for the last 1 1/2 years.

This is a really stupid question, but are they good? I mean, of course they would be or else why would you collect them? But I mean, do they give more insight and such?

Yes. I mean, there are a lot of them, so they're not all brilliant, but there are some excellent stories. One of them, Spare Parts, was credited as inspiration for Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel (because both are Cybermen origin stories), but I think Spare Parts is actually the better story.

They also don't have to worry about big budget effects, just the imaginations of their listeners, so they can try some crazy things that wouldn't be easy for the TV series. They are also really meant for people who are already fans of the series, they don't have to appeal to the mainstream, so they can dig into some of the Doctor Who mythology that would be too complicated for the TV series. And the biggest thing they have going is that they can keep writing stories for these Doctors and companions who clearly don't look the same as they did on TV 20 years ago, fill in some of the gaps in the TV series.

One example of the last bit is a story last year with the 5th Doctor and Tegan. On the TV series, Tegan left very suddenly. In the audio reunion, they had a chance to say goodbye properly. They even got into whether Tegan was in love with the Doctor or not, something you never would have seen when the 5th Doctor was on TV!

The title of this thread actually comes from a comment by Sylvester McCoy about the audio plays ... his opinion is that, in some ways, Doctor Who works better on audio, because it's like you're able to see inside the Doctor's head in a way that you can't with the TV series.

Ugh, too bad they're so expensive!

Very interesting. I think if I can get into more of the classic Who, I'll give this a try.

I'm very interested in this. Once I've seen more Classic Who and am a bit more familiar with it, I am definitely going to give this a try as well. I love listening to audio books in bed before I go to sleep, when it's dark around me I can see everything that is happening in them right before my eyes, so I think I would really enjoy listening to the DW audio plays.

That's the only one I've heard, I thought it was great, I loved listening to it.

I want to listen to more, I'll have to research some.

I've been listening to radio plays and audio books for a long time. One of my first SF obsessions was the HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and I had all the radio plays and the books on tape (since replaced by mp3s).

Have you listened to any of the Doctor Who audiobooks based on the new series novels? I have the ones read by David Tennant, more for his voice than the stories. I really wish RTD had let David play the Doctor with his real accent. Unfortunately, Big Finish did the same thing - in only one of they plays he was in did they let him use his Scottish accent, and that was because the story took place in Scotland.

yeah, I listened to all the DW audio books David did (and several other audio books he has done) :nod:

I completely agree about the accent. I like the accent he uses for the Doctor, but nothing beats his Scottish accent, I think.

For anyone with an interest in Doctor Who audios, BBC7 will start airing a set of 8th Doctor Paul McGann plays on Monday, Sept. 10. Even if you're not in the UK, you can listen over the internet, either live or within a week of the broadcast.

Outpost Gallifrey: Doctor Who News Page

The first play on Monday will be Shada. For those of you unfamiliar with the story, Shada is a 6 part serial written by Douglas Adams (of Hitchhiker's Guide fame) back in the days when he was DW TV series script editor and Tom Baker was the Doctor. This serial was never finished due to labour trouble at the time, and so they've remade it as an audio version with the 8th Doctor instead of the 4th, plus Romana II (Lalla Ward) and K-9 (John Leeson).

After Shada they'll be airing other Big Finish 8th Doctor plays.

Misc DW audio news:

- Big Finish is celebrating it's 100th monthly Doctor Who audio this month, 100 with Colin Baker has just been released (I expect my copy in the mail this week)

- Big Finish's new Dalek Empire IV series, The Fearless, is delayed until October. Series features Noel Clarke, aka Mickey Smith, although he'll be playing a different character for this series. Noel follows in the footsteps of David Tennant, who starred in Dalek Empire III before becoming the Tenth Doctor.

- There will be two Sarah Jane Adventures audio books released in November, both read by Elisabeth Sladen.

This weekend I finally finished listening to the Big Finish Doctor Who spinoff series, Gallifrey, and there are a few things about it I need to get off my chest.

First, some context: This series was spun off from the monthly Doctor Who audio series after Zagreus, and is based on the politics of Gallifrey while Romana II (Lalla Ward) is the president of the Time Lords. Also involved are K-9s Mark I and II (John Leeson), Leela (Louise Jameson), Romana I (Mary Tamm) and the Inquisitor from Trial of a Time Lord (Linda Bellingham). The three Gallifrey series are more serial than other Big Finish DW plays, and together they tell one extended story of political turmoil on Gallifrey.

Things start out business as usual, but eventually turn out very badly for the Time Lords. At the end of Zagreus (the beginning of Gallifrey), the 8th Doctor leaves this universe, in theory never to return, which explains his absence throughout. By the end of Gallifrey though, the Time Lords desperately needed the Doctor.


My review: The series is okay, though it took me a while to get into it. Leela was never one of my favourite characters, and Romana II is more annoying on her own than she was with the Doctor. And of course, the Doctor is not involved, which is never a good thing. By the end though, I was getting into it.

However, the series has one of the most abrupt and annoying endings - so abrupt, I thought I might be missing the last CD, until I confirmed that that was actually the end. It was about as annoying as the ending to the series Angel, where I was left yelling, "That's it?!" at my TV.

The one very interesting thing about the ending though is that Gallifrey S3 was made during New Who S2, and there are very strong implications that the end of Gallifrey leads directly into the Time War (although they can't say that explicitly on Big Finish, their license doesn't allow them to reference the new series). I can just imagine a sequel to Gallifrey S3 where the 8th Doctor returns and the Daleks aren't far behind.

Another thing I liked about the series, which I like about BF in general, is that they're good at taking what little Time Lord canon there is from the TV series, mix it up with expanded universe canon (in this case books like Lungbarrow), and add a few ideas of their own and somehow making it all work.

One last observation: the danger of doing a series like Gallifrey is that getting very specific about the Time Lords ends up making them look much less impressive than, say, New Who where they're a mysterious, almost infallible, god-like race that you only ever learn about second hand. So I'm perfectly happy that they don't do a story like this as part of the TV series, but it's nice to have these audios to indulge in stories about the Time Lords.

I've been hoping for this news for a while: Big Finish announces the launch of a new online MP3 download service starting February 1st. This will include the Doctor Who line, and is especially good news for those of us outside the UK because we can skip the shipping fees and get a better exchange rate. I gather this will also lower the base price of audio play purchases, and you'll be able to sample episodes of plays for some small price (99p) so you can evaluate the play before buying.