Doctor Who is my favourite show. Hell, that’s probably not selling it enough: It is my favourite media franchise, across all forms it has taken over the past 60+ years.
At time of writing, the show has aired 884 individual episodes, encompassing 312 complete stories. But that represents just a fraction of what is available out there. There’s the numerous comic strips and series, there’s novelisations of the televised episodes that often went into much more detail and even redeemed some of the weaker stories, there’s original novelised adventures that kept the franchise alive during the wilderness years of the ‘90s… and then there’s the audio dramas, in particular the ones made by Big Finish Productions. Doctor Who on TV has just under 900 episodes. Doctor Who on Big Finish is at over two thousand and counting.
I have spent the better part of a year binging as much Big Finish content as I can get my hands on, and I have barely scratched the surface. While the main show will always be the main show, these audio dramas represent some of the best that not only the larger franchise, but speculative fiction in general, is capable of. They combine the vivid ‘budget be damned’ creativity of the novels and comics (adapting them directly in some cases) with the polished production values of the main show, albeit presented just through audio. This branch of the franchise not only helped keep it going when the show itself was “on hiatus”, but has well and truly thrived to the present day, even when running alongside the revived series. Across the hundreds of stories I’ve consumed, I’ve been introduced to new favourite writers, reassessed a large chunk of the classic show’s characters, and gotten a deeper appreciation for what makes this show so unique.
As a geek armed with a hyperfixation and a word processor, I really want to share these stories with more people and get them to check some out… but there’s a lot to go through. The audios cover not just the expanded adventures of the Doctor and their companions, but also feature spin-offs that range from experiments into alternate realities, to spotlighting popular one-off characters from the TV show, to entirely original creations. Even as a hardcore fan, I was quite intimidated by the wide selection available at first. It doesn’t help that, unlike the main show, there’s no immediately obvious chronological order to the stories, especially from the Main Range. Doctors will cycle in and out for singular adventures, which fit into odd places both within the show’s continuity and even with each other, while some come together to form strong and cohesive storylines; if you choose to start from #1 and go in order, expect a lot of jumping around and “wait, did I miss something?” reactions.
Much like my love for film, this obsession has reached the point where I want it to be something a bit less selfish so that others can join in on the fun. But given that could become a pricey and time-consuming prospect, I wanted to put together this little Beginner’s Guide to try and ease newcomers into this universe, whether they’re fans of the show and want more stories, or are just on the hunt for good audio in general. I’ll be looking at these audios in terms of how much they cost to access (because, as we’ll get into, there are multiple ways to do so legally), and how much value they provide for that price point… even if they are available for free. Because when discussing what to do with your free time, both are just as important to consider. I’ll do my best to highlight the ones most worth checking out (and the few to outright avoid), but if I made this absolutely comprehensive, this would become a book and this introduction is turning out long enough as is. As such, this will be more of a broad overview of what’s available, what makes it stand out, and how consistent it is for however much it ends up costing.
Not that direct cost will be much of a parameter for now, as we’re starting with what’s available on music streaming services that a large number of you reading this are likely already using: Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and TIDAL. Individual links will be provided as we go; some of them are listed in odd places on each service, but I’ve done my best to keep them as direct as possible. Click and you should find the thing.
So let’s start at the beginning with the first 50 entries in the Main Range.
The Main Range is where a lot of the love for this sector of the franchise stems from, especially during its early days. Starting out in 1999 and releasing monthly all the way up to 2021, each entry followed either the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, or Eighth Doctors along with their companions on one of their adventures. The early years of the company were marked by a willingness to experiment with the audio format, presenting stories that could only really work within this space, and often went into thematic and dramatic territory that would’ve exploded the Ofcom call centres if they made it to broadcast. While I’d argue that Big Finish have continued to make quality material right up to the present day, many fans see this as the peak of the company’s output, and possibly even that of the entire franchise.
Starting off, I’d recommend checking out the very first release: The Sirens Of Time [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL]. It isn’t the best of the range by any stretch, and it’s clear that it’s a starting sprint for what’s to come, but as a way of acclimatising to the pacing and production style of what comes after, I still think it’s a good place to start. It’s a four-part story where the first three each focus on a single Doctor, before they all meet and team up in the finale: Seventh on a swamp planet, Fifth on a German U-Boat, and Sixth on a starship with a bunch of intergalactic cultural delegates. Written and directed by Big Finish head honcho Nicholas Briggs (who fans of the show definitely know of because he provides the voices for the vast majority of alien races in the revived series), it lays some decent groundwork for the company’s creative approach going forward, but it’s still humble beginnings.
From there, I’d also recommend #3: Whispers Of Terror [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL]. A Sixth Doctor story set in a museum containing every sound in the known universe, this is where the company’s reputation for experimentation really starts to grow. Only in this format could a monster made of living sound make any form of sense, and it’s quite effective in creating a tense and intriguing atmosphere through a single sense. It also starts what would become a transformative run for Colin Baker as the Doctor, but we’ll get to that in a bit.
Now that we’ve gotten our feet a bit wet, where to go from here? Well, for fans coming in from the revived series, the Eighth Doctor releases might be the best pick for you. Unlike the ones starring Fifth-Seventh, Eighth’s adventures are structured closer to how the revived series would do things, with rough ‘season’ blocks of releases with major story arcs and character development throughout. The first block of stories (#16: Storm Warning [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL], #17: Sword Of Orion [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL], #18: The Stones Of Venice [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL], #19: Minuet In Hell [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL]) are a bit meh overall, and the one I like the most (Minuet In Hell) is regularly brought up as one of the worst of the whole Main Range so take that with a grain of salt, but as an introduction to companion Charley, the Edwardian adventuress, and as a reintroduction to the Eighth after the TV movie, they serve their purpose.
The second block, though (#28: Invaders From Mars [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL], #29: The Chimes Of Midnight [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL], #30: Seasons Of Fear [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL], #31: Embrace The Darkness [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL], #32: The Time Of The Daleks [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL], #33: Neverland [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL]), is where things get really good. Starting out teaming up with Orson Welles to fight off an alien invasion in Invaders From Mars (written by later show writer Mark Gatiss, and he’s at his best with this one), the story arc starts to zero in on the anomaly that is Charley and how her continued existence threatens Time itself. Again, very NuWho. It also includes one of the perennial favourites The Chimes Of Midnight, a timey-wimey take on a classic murder mystery that eventually turns into a total emotional rollercoaster. Written by Robert Shearman (who also wrote the revived series episode Dalek), it’s a good starting point for his equally absurdist and maniacally dark sensibilities as a storyteller, and we will be mentioning him a few more times in this Guide. Seasons Of Fear is also a bit meh, but Embrace The Darkness is a solid sonic horror story (another from Nick Briggs), The Time Of The Daleks is a time travel caper with Daleks being superfans of William Shakespeare, and Neverland shows the darker side of the Time Lords in excellent fashion. With how watered-down they became in the show proper, right to the present day, stories like this help reiterate that there’s a reason why the Doctor was terrified of them in their youth.
For the classic series fans, I would kindly turn their attention towards the Sixth Doctor releases, specifically the ones featuring new companion Evelyn Smithe (#6: The Marian Conspiracy [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL], #9: The Spectre Of Lanyon Moor [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL], #11: The Apocalypse Element [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL], #22: Bloodtide [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL], #23: Project: Twilight [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL], #37: The Sandman [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL], #40: Jubilee [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL], #43: Doctor Who And The Pirates [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL], #45: Project: Lazarus [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL]). If you've ever heard fans point out Sixth as their favourite Doctor, it’s likely because of these stories. Over the course of his growing friendship with an elderly history professor, Sixth smooths out from the harsh and often-callous figure that he was on TV into a much kinder, compassionate, and even heroic figure. Evelyn basically served as his Donna Noble, and their chemistry in every single one of these stories arguably upstages Donna and Tenth even at their height. While there would be quite a bit of jumping-around with later releases, these ones all follow after each other and gradually build a lovely story between these two.
They’re all worth checking out, but if you twisted my arm to get my favourites (how very rude!), I’d go with Project: Twilight and Project: Lazarus, where the Doctor and Evelyn go up against the shadowy organisation The Forge and its vampire leader Nimrod, Jubilee, written by Robert Shearman and the inspiration for Dalek but with a lot more to it (basically, it’s a massive breakdown of British fascination with the Daleks as fictional characters and what that says about the nation’s history with nationalism and its proximity to fascism… and also little people shoved into empty Dalek casings for the amusement of a king), and Doctor Who And The Pirates, a fun riff on The Pirates Of Penzance, complete with musical numbers... yes, really. This franchise has been flirting with the musical format long before The Devil’s Chord aired. The Apocalypse Element, which is basically a Dalek action movie on tape, is worth checking out too.
Then there’s the Fifth Doctor’s adventures with Erimem, another companion introduced in this range. She is an uncrowned Egyptian pharaoh, and just for the novelty of being a historic companion rather than yet another human from present-day London, her stories tend to be quite interesting. While there’s only three within this bracket (#24: The Eye Of The Scorpion [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL], #38: The Church And The Crown [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL], #41: Nekromanteia [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL]), they are… mostly good. The Eye Of The Scorpion is a solid introduction, and The Church And The Crown has the TARDIS crew encountering French musketeers, with Erimem and Peri regularly clashing in their respective cultural takes on what’s happening around them (a recurring trend of Erimem’s time in the TARDIS and one of her biggest draws).
Nekromanteia is… difficult to talk about. While I couldn’t find any concrete evidence to confirm it, there’s a persistent rumour in the fandom that the script for this was so bad, it almost made Peter Davison quit. Between the gross sound design, needlessly cruel plot developments (tw: SA and casual disregard of SA), and the fact that writer Austen Atkinson never wrote for Big Finish again after this, it’s one of those rumours that is entirely plausible because this is that bad. It is one of only two in this entire bracket that I’d recommend outright skipping, as even for free, it's still not worth it.
The only other one that I’m not a fan of is #46: Flip-Flop [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL], but even that one, I could see working for some. It’s a Seventh Doctor story told in two halves, designed to be listened to in any order (this was originally released as 2 CDs), which both involve changing history, the society that results from that change, and ends up becoming a cycle that is meant to make the audience question which is the ‘final’ story. It’s honestly one of the weaker experiments from the early Main Range, as not only does the closed loop structure leave it without an actual conclusion, but the Slithergee, the aliens working behind the scenes… I dunno, it’s feels like a racist caricature but you can’t tell what specific race is being targeted, so it just becomes uncomfortable for everyone? Does that make sense? There are elements from Groundhog Day and Back To The Future Part 2 in its construction, and for that, there’s still something compelling to it, but it’s just not for me.
Most of the Main Range is made up of singular stories that take place in various places in the Doctor’s twisty timeline, and the companions end up being the only reliable progress markers for that timeline… and even then, it gets complicated very often. I’ll just rattle off a few of my favourites:
#5: The Fearmonger [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL] – The Seventh Doctor’s first dedicated release in the Main Range, and it’s an intense political thriller. Don’t let that word put you off, though, as it doesn’t take sides and actively holds everyone to account, all under the main theme of how far regular people can be pushed when they’re given something to hate. It’s the kind of work that could have been released today and it’d be just as effective and eerily accurate.
#10: Winter For The Adept [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL] – Andrew Cartmel, a key figure in the classic show’s final years, writes for the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa. For older fans, that alone should be enough to sell this, but it’s a horror story about psychic ghosts set in an all-girls school; like a more emphatically genre spin on something Sofia Coppola would make. Also marks the DW debut of India Fisher, who would go on to star as Charley.
#14: The Holy Terror [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL] – This might be my favourite story in the entire Doctor Who franchise, and it’s what cemented Robert Shearman as one of my favourite writers regardless of medium. The Doctor teams up with an old friend from the Doctor Who Magazine comic strips: A shapeshifting penguin detective named Frobisher. They then land in a mysterious castle, where everyone decides to worship Frobisher as their new god. What follows is simply masterful, starting with the castle's strange religious practices, then expanding into the nature of everyday rituals, how fiction affects reality, parental relationships; there’s so much going on in this, and it all fits together perfectly. This really is up there with the likes of The Mind Robber in showing the euphoric heights that Doctor Who can reach when given the space to.
#25: Colditz [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL] – The Seventh Doctor and Ace end up in Germany in the final months of World War II, and have to stop the Nazis from getting their hands on time travel and CD player technology. Seventh is in his element when the stories are dark and morally complicated, and this is absolutely that. Along with introducing future companion Elizabeth Klein, it also marks the DW debut of David Tennant, nearly four years before he landed the big role.
#27: The One Doctor [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL] – Big Finish tries its hand at a Christmas pantomime, with a story where the Sixth Doctor and Mel encounter someone claiming to be the Doctor, and having to complete a series of games and challenges… including The Weakest Link. A lot of fun, and quite heartfelt by the end, and it shows the days when Gareth Roberts was still a good writer and still (to our knowledge) not a bellend.
#34: Spare Parts [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL] – “Fucking terrifying!” is really the best way to describe this one. Like Jubilee, this also inspired a revived series story with the Cybermen two-parter Rise Of The Cybermen/Age Of Steel, and as much as I like those episodes, this really brings out the tragedy of a human-like race slowly becoming soulless machines just so they can survive. Writer Marc Platt’s worldbuilding is immaculate here, carefully sketching out a planet on the brink of existential disaster, and a Doctor wrestling with his own conscience on whether he should try and stop it and, even worse, whether he can stop it. When it gets to the first-ever Cyber conversion… actual chills down my spine, and that sound design is insane. A regular inclusion in Best Of recommendations, and it’s easy to hear why.
#35: …ish [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL] – Turns out words can hurt you. Especially when they are sentient suffixes to the universe’s longest word, and can literally infect people through their language, one word at a time. Another experimental winner, and another example of Sixth being at his most Sixth when dealing with stories that openly poke at the nature of being a fictional story told through audio.
#36: The Rapture [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL] – Seventh and Ace end up in a nightclub run by angels who are using drugs to bring people to divine enlightenment. Really kooky take on the ‘90s rave club scene, and even with the Christian iconography, it’s closer to Lovecraft in how it presents drug use as something that can break a person’s grip on reality. And yet it never goes into full-on PSA territory, instead examining how this environment was often used as a recruitment ground for many dubious causes. It puts the blame on the people exploiting this space, not the people actually engaging with it. That dance remix of the DW theme is nice too.
#39: Bang-Bang-a-Boom! [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL] – Seventh and Mel solve a murder mystery during Space Eurovision. It is just as ridiculous as it sounds, and it is brilliant. Really fun in a campy way, taking shots at both Eurovision and ‘60s Star Trek, and it’s another unorthodox musical that just works. When it revealed the Earth National Anthem, I could not stop laughing; apparently, The Martian takes place in the DW universe. If you know, you know.
Now for the final four in this selection, which form a thematic quartet focusing on series villains. The first three, #47: Omega [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL], #48: Davros [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL], and #49: Master [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL], each shed new light on their titular antagonists, and each do so in their own ways. Omega goes into a psychological direction, digging into what happens to a person’s mind when they’re stuck in an antimatter universe, in a way that builds on what The Three Doctors and Arc Of Infinity set up with the solipsistic Omega. Davros is more of an Operation Paperclip situation, where it takes the creator of an entire species of fascist pepperpots with laser turrets… and questions if he can do something positive after all that. But Master is easily the most impactful, to the point where it fundamentally changes every interaction that the Doctor and his greatest rival have ever had across all media. To get any more specific would only serve to spoil the magic, but suffice to say, this is a story that could’ve gone wrong so easily, and yet it turned out to be one of the Range’s crowning achievements.
Then there’s #50: Zagreus [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL]. I feel weird including this one at all because, more so than any other audio that Big Finish has released before or since, it is the single most beginner-unfriendly release they ever made. It not only caps off the story arc of the preceding Eighth Doctor stories, and sets up the next one, it’s also an anniversary release featuring all of the Doctor and companion actors that had worked with Big Finish up to that point. And I specify “actors” because they’re not playing their usual roles, save for Eighth and Charley.
It’s a three-hour behemoth of a story involving vampires, Alice In Wonderland, a civil war between two tribes of knockoff Disneyland animatronics, and the Doctor possessed by anti-matter and becoming the villainous Zagreus. It is all over the goddamn place, and I’m likely making it sound way more coherent than it actually is, but I kind of like it for how ambitious and unwieldy it is. I totally get if someone gave it a listen and immediately thought that they had wasted their time, but I still give it a soft recommendation after you’ve listened to all of the Main Range that you care to check out. Even outside of the Eighth Doctor’s stories, the more you’re familiar with, the better chance you have of getting through it unscathed.
So… that’s the Main Range, but we’re not even close to done. Along with the Main Range, there is also have an assortment of spin-offs and side adventures to look through.
To start with, there’s the first season of the Eighth Doctor Adventures [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL], a spin-off that took Eighth out of the Main Range (save for a few more appearances) and into his own range with a new companion and an even further adherence to NuWho-style story arcs and structure, with two-parters and everything. For the full effect, I recommend checking them all out, as new companion Lucie (bleedin’!) Miller is really fun and her chemistry with Eighth is always good, but the individual stories are proper quality more often than not.
The opener, Blood Of The Daleks Parts 1 [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL] and 2 [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL], is a thrilling run-in with the pepperpots, Horror Of Glam Rock [Spotify, {not on Apple for some reason, sorry}, Amazon, TIDAL] is worth it just for the glam-punk cover of the DW theme, Immortal Beloved [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL] features a planet modelled after Greek gods that gets into some interesting discussions about the nature of faith and even reincarnation (if you’re a fan of the Eternals comics, this one is for you), and the finale Human Resources Parts 1 [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL] and 2 [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL] is just really solid British office humour with a sci-fi tinge.
Eighth isn’t alone in having his own range. Over time, all of the Doctors got their own boxsets, and the Fourth Doctor was one of the earlier successes. Series 1 is up in its entirety [Spotify, Apple {#6}, Amazon {#6}, TIDAL {#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6}], and honestly, hearing one of the show's most iconic duos reunited in Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor and Louise Jameson's Leela got me through the entire series without issue. The highlights for me were The Renaissance Man [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL], focusing on a man trying to learn everything and the consequences of such a task, and The Wrath Of The Iceni [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL], where Leela swordfights Boudica.
Then there’s the second series of Companion Chronicles (1: Mother Russia [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL], 2: Helicon Prime [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL], #3: Old Soldiers [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL], #4: The Catalyst [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL]), which tells stories from the perspective of… well, the companions, with a companion actor narrating and voicing all the characters, bar one played by another actor. Personally, I think that this range didn’t hit its stride until a series or two later, but as a taster for the first four Doctors on audio, they’re still pretty good. I really like Old Soldiers, with the Brigadier and the Third Doctor, which gives a great depiction of their conflicting approaches to alien threat. The Catalyst is good too, with its examination of Leela as a character as she encounters someone who claims to have travelled with the Doctor.
Along similar lines to the CCs, there’s also the Short Trips range [Spotify {Volume 1, Volume 2}, Apple {Volume 1, Volume 2}, {not on Amazon for some reason, sorry}, TIDAL {Volume 1, Volume 2}]. Compared to the feature-length Main Range, these are quick 10-20 minute stories covering the first eight Doctors in each Volume. I personally prefer the longer ones, but there’s some really good ones in these two.
In Volume 1, there’s A Stain Of Red In The Sand, an unconventional and abstract story featuring the Second Doctor that feels like a commentary on the show and its fandom, A True Gentleman, which is just a delightful feel-good yarn with the Third Doctor, and The Wings Of A Butterfly, a Sixth Doctor story written by Sixie himself Colin Baker. That last one is probably the most ‘required’ of all the Short Trips, as it’s an interesting look into how Colin sees and understands the character he plays, and given how much creative control he would have with his Doctor at Big Finish, it shows that he has a real grip on how to do him justice.
In Volume 2, there’s Sock Pig with the Fifth Doctor where animal toys mysteriously come to life (and it gets quite emotional at the end), and The Doctor’s Coat with Sixth that gets more into how much his iconic nightmare rainbow of a costume is intrinsically part of his character. Another example that helps explain how much of a paradigm shift his time at Big Finish has been, where even the minor aspects of his tenure are re-examined and even redeemed to an extent.
Okay, this is a bit of an odd inclusion: The Stageplays [Spotify, Apple {The Ultimate Adventure, Seven Keys To Doomsday, The Curse Of The Daleks}, Amazon, TIDAL {The Ultimate Adventure, Seven Keys To Doomsday, The Curse Of The Daleks]. These are audio reproductions of theatre shows from the classic era, and having heard them, they feel like they exist solely to preserve those plays for posterity rather than as their own productions. Nothing wrong with that, as this is a fandom with an intense interest in preserving the past (that’ll happen when decent chunks of the TV show’s early years literally went up in flames), but on their own, they’re not particularly enthralling. The Ultimate Adventure is another oddball musical that is just too repetitive to work as well as most of the other examples, Seven Keys To Doomsday is interesting as a look at an out-of-continuity Doctor (played by Trevor Martin) but that’s about it, and The Curse Of The Daleks… again, they’re trying to preserve these plays as they actually were, but the casual of-its-time sexism and general attitudes in the original script make it an odd listen. Taken together, they’re more curios than anything else; not all that essential.
Speaking of preserving the past, the first series of The Lost Stories [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL {#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8] is on here too. It’s a range that takes unproduced TV scripts from the classic era and turns them into audio dramas, with the first series dedicated solely to unmade Sixth Doctor serials. Overall, I tend to take them much like The Stageplays, in that it’s good that these have been preserved, but they’re not the first stories I’d go to for a bit of Sixth. That said, I quite like #1: The Nightmare Fair featuring the Celestial Toymaker [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL), and #7: The Song Of Megaptera [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL], which features a group of castaways who live inside a star whale. The latter was written by Pat Mills, who also created Beep The Meep from The Star Beast, and he brings that same weirdo energy.
And then there’s Destiny Of The Doctor [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL], an 11-part anthology made to commemorate the show’s 50th anniversary. Each story follows a different Doctor, with an overarching story tied together by cameos from the Eleventh Doctor in each entry, culminating in the finale focusing on him (said finale, The Time Machine [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL] is really good and does a great job of tying it all together). Much like the Companion Chronicles being included, this feels like a tastemaker decision, as each installment shows the Platonic form of what each Doctor’s specialist story looks like (First’s educational historical, Second’s base under siege, Third’s action spy caper, etc.). They also function like the CCs in that they’re told from the companion’s perspective.
I particularly like the Fourth Doctor’s Babblesphere [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL] for its weirdly authentic ‘70s perspective on modern social media, Sixth’s Trouble In Paradise [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL] for its multi-layered look at colonialism (along with openly pointing out something typically left unsaid with the show’s ‘celebrity historicals’), and Ninth’s Night Of The Whisper [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL] for being a superhero-adjacent story that isn’t just a basic Superman flip (I love Moffat, but Return Of Doctor Mysterio was lame). This is before Eccleston signed on with Big Finish, so it’s Nick Briggs doing his impression of him, but it’s a great impression that makes the whole thing work.
There’s also UNIT: Dominion [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL]… which confuses me as to why it’s included in here. Not because it’s bad, it’s actually quite good, but none of the stories leading up to this are alongside it on streaming, and those stories are kind of necessary in order to make sense of this. It features the Seventh Doctor, Ace, Klein from Colditz (after her character arc wrapped up, and it is thorny) and Raine Creevy, a companion originally meant to make it onto TV before the ‘hiatus’ but appeared thanks to the Lost Stories focusing on the unmade ‘Season 27’. And considering this follows up on story arcs from both Klein and Raine, it can get pretty confusing. It’s also four hours long, which it admittedly makes full use of… but again, this is supposed to be the Beginner’s Guide, and this is not all that friendly to beginners, especially when it's lacking a lot of the preamble. I’d say give it a try and maybe it’ll pique interest in those other stories, and Alex Macqueen from The Thick Of It does alright as a mysterious future incarnation of the Doctor (not my thing, but a lot of people seem to really dig his campy take on the character), but it can feel like stepping into a story halfway done as presented.
Okay, that’s all of the spin-offs involving the Doctors. Now for the rest, because this is a universe that stretches far beyond the TARDIS. This is already getting way longer than I anticipated, so I’m just going to rattle off the rest as concisely as possible, because I can’t give pretence about precious free time while simultaneously wasting it.
I, Davros [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL] – A four-part origin story for Davros from childhood to the creation of the very first Dalek. Take the political machinations and historical perspective of I, Claudius and mix in heavy amounts of creeping body horror, and you get one of the best things Big Finish ever made.
Cyberman Series 1 & 2 [Spotify, Apple {Series 1, Series 2}, Amazon, TIDAL] – Following up on ideas introduced in Sword Of Orion, this looks at the brewing Orion War between humans and androids, and how the Cybermen made things worse for both. It starts out similar to the revival of Battlestar Galactica with its look at the political implications of such a war, along with the manipulations of the Cybermen. Nick Briggs wrote all of Series 1, and to his credit, his decision to record them as single takes (playing sound effects and the like in real time) lends itself well to the tense atmosphere. But honestly, around the point of Series 1 Part 3: Conversion and its forceful kissing scene, I kind of tuned out. They’re not bad, same with Series 2; I just don’t like it when I can pinpoint the moment a certain story loses me and unfortunately doesn’t manage to win me back.
Dalek Empire Series 1 & 2 [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL] – Another follow-up to a story set up in the Main Range across #7: The Genocide Machine [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL), #11: The Apocalypse Element [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL], #15: The Mutant Phase [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL], and #32: The Time Of The Daleks [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL]. They aren’t essential to get into this, though, as it’s a nice encapsulated story about mankind warring against the timeline-spanning Dalek Empire… and what happens when alternate universes get involved.
UNIT Series 1 [Spotify, Apple, Amazon {#1, #2, #3, #4}, TIDAL {#1, #2, #3, #4}] – It’s the paramilitary organisation from the classic show, but taking place in the then-near-future. The two leads have a very X-Files dynamic to them (one of them is sceptical about aliens, while the other is all-in), with some 24-esque building of tension in the later stories when things go more terrorist-y. It also features David Tennant in another role.
Counter-Measures Series 1 & 2 [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL] – Spy capering, ‘60s style. This focuses on the team established in the classic serial Remembrance Of The Daleks, working as a precursor/contemporary with UNIT. The sound design does a good job of establishing the period detail of both the storylines and the production as a whole, and the stories themselves are solid too. Artificial Intelligence from Series 1 is a nice take on the psychedelia of the era and its connections to cyberpunk aesthetics, The Fifth Citadel from Series 2 gets quite heartbreaking in its look at the fallout of World War II, and Peshka also from Series 2 offers some terrific Cold War-era thrills; never before did I think a chess match could be this gripping.
Charlotte Pollard Series 1 [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL] – This is another UNIT: Dominion situation, where this being up on streaming is an odd choice since there’s a lot of contextual stories missing alongside it. It takes place after Charley leaves the TARDIS… for the second time (which takes place long after the events of Zagreus), with her working with the Viyrans to find and stop intergalactic viruses (get it? She left the Doctor and is now a doctor). While the full impact relies on being familiar with the painful circumstances that lead to her stepping out on her own, the stories themselves are interesting as a look at a companion post-Doctor, building to a solid finale that looks at the implications of setting out to cure the universe.
Graceless Series 1-3 [Spotify, Apple, Amazon {Series 1, Series 2, Series 3}, TIDAL {Series 1, Series 2, Series 3}] – Uuuuuuuuuugh!
Okay, I’m trying to be even-handed with all of this, because this is just one guy’s opinion, but Graceless really didn’t do much for me. It spins off from a trilogy of stories from the later Main Range involving two Seekers, sentient beings with seemingly-unlimited cosmic power who exist to find the Key To Time. They weren’t terribly interesting there, and as the distaff Tenth Doctor ‘we must keep running from our own mistakes’ twins here, they are even less so. It feels similar to early Torchwood in how sexually fixated it gets, finding any excuse to mention sex like it’s a new invention but just coming across as immature. Then again, I’m not that big on Tenth Doctor’s character as it is, so maybe you’d like this better than I did, but of all the spin-offs I’ve heard so far, this is easily the weakest to me.
Iris Wildthyme Series 2-4, Reloaded [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL] – Now we’re back to quality! What started as a pisstake of Doctor Who, with Iris as a more working-class pub patron take on the traveller in time and space, has since been introduced to the main continuity, and her stories are some of the crackiest to be found in that continuum. A lot of her stories are direct parodies of TV Doctor Who, from the characterisation to the approach to time travel mechanics, but the charm that Katy Manning (better known as the performer for Third Doctor companion Jo Grant) brings to the role makes this required listening beyond any familiarity with the main series. From a darts tournament for the fate of the universe, to an alien plot to literally fuck a planet to death, to squaring up with Santa Claus, it is all bonkers and it is all glorious.
Jago & Litefoot Series 1-5 [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL {Series 1, Series 2, Series 3, Series 4, Series 5}] – One of the best spin-offs in the Doctor Who range, and one of the longest-running at fourteen series. It features the titular duo from the classic TV serial The Talons Of Weng-Chiang (simultaneously one of the best and one of the most problematic of the entire show), with Henry Gordon Jago the theatre impresario and medical professor George Litefoot investigating the supernatural in Victorian London. Without the Doctor to provide clear-cut answers for what is going on, these stories lean more into the mystery side of things, and they feature some great takes on classic monsters like zombies and ghosts. They are all really damn good (save for The Case Of The Gluttonous Guru from Series 5, which is a bit shit), and the bigger stories from series to series are just as good, from teaming up with Leela and the Sixth Doctor, to being stranded in the 1960s. If you pick just one spin-off to take a chance on, make it this one.
Bernice Summerfield: Epoch, Road Trip, Legion, New Frontiers, Missing Persons [Spotify, Apple, Amazon, TIDAL] – The final spin-off we’ll be looking at it is, ironically, where Big Finish started. Before they got the Doctor Who license, they started out adapting written stories about Bernice Summerfield, archaeologist from the future and former companion of the Seventh Doctor. Think River Song without the temporal baggage or the wink-wink-nudge-nudge sexuality and you’re pretty close. These boxsets (which was the format Big Finish gradually shifted towards over individual releases) come on the heels of eleven seasons of audio adventures. That makes some of the story here a bit confusing for newcomers, like the lengthy friction between Benny and Irving Braxiatel (who is the Doctor’s brother and that’s not even the confusing part), but credit to these boxsets for not only telling their own stories box by box, but also coming together to tell one massive story by the end. A lot of the stories deal in the conflict between history and legend (what actually happened vs. how it is remembered and retold), and they’re incredibly consistent all the way through. From adventures in Atlantis to navigating the seedy underbelly of Legion City, these are absolutely worth checking out.
That’s everything uploaded straight to streaming by Big Finish, but we’re not quite finished yet. In 2024, to commemorate Big Finish’s 25th anniversary with Doctor Who, they started a podcast called Into The TARDIS, hosted by Colin Baker (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast). He provides introduction, the occasional anecdote, and segues in some behind-the-scenes interviews (BTS material regularly shows up as extras on Big Finish releases) but it’s primarily a rerelease of BF audio dramas, released in weekly parts. Unlike everything else on this list, this is still being updated with new episodes, so this is (hopefully) the only part that will be dated. Aside from a few entries that we’ve already talked about, there’s free audios here that don’t seem to be available elsewhere at this price point.
Main Range #178: 1963: Fanfare For The Common Men [Part 1 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast), Part 2 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast), Part 3 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast), Part 4 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast)] – This is the first part of a loose thematic trilogy of standalone stories where the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Doctors each have their own dedicated adventure in the titular year. It was made as part of the 50th anniversary of the show, and each story builds on some aspect of the show’s origins, whether it’s fictional characters from within the show or even real-world events outside of it. In this case, the Doctor goes back in time to introduce Nyssa to the Beatles… and instead finds another band, John Smith and the Common Men (mentioned in the very first episode of the show), in their place. It’s a fun bit of alternate-history farce that both creates an origin story for the latter band, and examines the surrounding world-building that would have resulted in the Beatles not reaching their historic status in pop culture. It’s really well thought-out, and might even be a better tribute to the Fab 4 than the main show itself did with The Devil’s Chord (as much as I’ll certainly go to bat for that episode overall).
Eighth Doctor Adventures: The Further Adventures Of Lucie Miller: The Revolution Game [Part 1 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast), Part 2 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast)], The House On The Edge Of Chaos [Part 1 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast), Part 2 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast)] – Set after the first season of the EDAs, these stories show Eighth and Lucie going on more adventures. While these aren’t as substantive as the main run (part of the issue with interstitial stories like these; can’t do anything that could interfere with the pre-established narrative), they’re still pretty fun in their own right. The Revolution Game has Lucie participating in an intergalactic roller derby, and The House On The Edge Of Chaos has an interesting locale with the titular house being the only sign of life on an entire planet, surrounded on all sides by nothing but static.
Third Doctor Adventures Volume 5: Primord [Part 1 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast), Part 2 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast), Part 3 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast), Part 4 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast)], The Scream Of Ghosts [Part 1 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast), Part 2 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast), Part 3 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast), Part 4 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast)] – These are a bit of a mixed bag, although I will grant them that Tim Treloar does a great impression of Jon Pertwee as the Third Doctor; he does justice to my favourite classic Doctor. Primord shows the return of the titular monsters from what is considered Third’s best on-screen adventure in Inferno… except they are usually pointed out as that story’s sole weak point, as the show has a habit of including high-concept monsters in stories that don’t really need them (a problem that persists even in the modern era). Between that and some of the characterisation beats, with two of Third’s companions finally meeting in a story, it’s a bit of a misstep. The Scream Of Ghosts, however, is closer to the experimentation of the early Main Range, with Third getting involved in a breakthrough for portable communication technology (this is set in the ‘70s… or possibly the ‘80s due to an infamous bit of Fridge Lore that the show is still trying to figure out) and finding something sinister in the waveforms they’ve tapped into. Another story that is tailor-made for audio, and a pretty damn creepy one at that.
First Doctor Adventures Volume 1: The Destination Wars [Part 1 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast), Part 2 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast), Part 3 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast), Part 4 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast)], The Great White Hurricane [Part 1 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast), Part 2 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast), Part 3 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast), Part 4 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast)] – This range has a novel idea behind it, taking the cast of the 50th anniversary biopic An Adventure In Time And Space (which looked at the origins of the show from a production standpoint) and putting them into their own original stories featuring the first TARDIS team, with David Bradley as the First Doctor. The Destination Wars shows an early encounter between the Doctor and one of his greatest foes, asking some interesting questions about the circumstances that led human teachers Ian and Barbara to join the Doctor, while The Great White Hurricane is a pure historical (no sci-fi elements save for the presence of the TARDIS and the Doctor) set in New York during the Great Blizzard of 1888. They’re reasonably faithful to the production values of the show in the ’60s, and the vocal impressions of the cast are alright, but the stories themselves didn’t leave much of an impression on me. Even as a superfan, I’ll admit that this isn’t the most interesting era of the show for me, but it’s still a good introduction to how the show did things in the way back when.
Early Adventures Series 4.1: The Night Witches [Part 1 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast), Part 2 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast), Part 3 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast), Part 4 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast)] – This is an odd one because this might be more appealing to newcomers than to superfans of the show. I say that because, if you’re already familiar with the Second Doctor on-screen (in particular the story The Enemy Of The World), quite a few of the same plot beats show up here with a new character who just happens to look exactly like one of the TARDIS crew and the hijinks that ensue from that. But beyond that, it’s set in World War II-era Russia, with the Doctor encountering the titular all-female squad of pilots that fought against the invasion of German forces. It’s another pure historical, and it shows the more interesting aspect of that trend within the show, showcasing real-world history and making it fun to learn about. It has plenty of battlefront anxiety to spare, and even for its length, it carries itself at a healthy clip… but again, parts of this feel a bit too familiar to not be distracting from what the script actually gets right with the setting and the characters.
Fourth Doctor Adventures Series 5.1: Wave Of Destruction [Part 1 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast), Part 2 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast)] – Time for another audio horror story, with the Fourth Doctor encountering a pirate radio station that could be the precursor to an alien invasion. It fits into the same niche as The Scream Of Ghosts, but with the inclusion of companions Romana II and the robot dog K9, there’s enough variation to make it work, even if you get into this right after that Third Doctor story. This trio is another one of the lauded TARDIS dream teams, and that chemistry is on full display here, to the point where even the déjà vu is bearable just to hear these three bicker with each other.
Classic Doctors, New Monsters Volume 2.3: The Carrionite Curse [Part 1 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast), Part 2 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast)] – This might be my favourite pairing in the CDNM range. Taking the Carrionites, essentially an alien race of witches whose form of science is based on the use of words rather than numbers, and putting them against the Sixth Doctor, who is basically the main representative of BF’s experimental and metafictional lane of storytelling, is the kind of fanfic creativity that this branch of the franchise excels at. Starting with Sixth encountering a witch trial in 1980s Midlands England, writer Simon Guerrier has a lot of fun with references to witchcraft and language as a tool to alter reality, and Colin Baker is in top form. Highly recommended.
Tenth Doctor Adventures Volume Two: Infamy Of The Zaross [Part 1 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast), Part 2 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast)], The Sword Of The Chevalier [Part 1 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast), Part 2 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast)] – Reuniting the iconic duo of the Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler (arguably one of the messiest eras of the revived series), these stories do a lot to both integrate themselves into RTD’s production aesthetics as a showrunner, and give both characters space to establish why this team-up was worth returning to. Infamy Of The Zaross is brilliant, with Earth being the stage for an alien reality TV show, examining how far some will go in order to achieve fame. It regularly nudges the fourth wall, but the extent of how deep it digs into that need for exterior validation brings out dimensions of a lot of the characters, even the ‘stars’ of the reality show. As for The Sword Of The Chevalier, it’s a celebrity historical featuring the Chevalier d’Èon, an 18th-century French noble who was something of a transgender pioneer, fighting with the French courts to be recognised as a woman (and to this day, there’s still debate amongst historians over their ‘biological gender’). Basically, if you’re the kind of person who gets fidgety whenever people start talking about pronouns, this might not be for you. But as an extrapolation of the predominantly Queer stance the show exhibited once RTD took over, it’s an interesting yarn with the Chevalier teaming up with Tenth and Rose to fight off space slavers.
Novel Adaptations: Nightshade [Part 1 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast), Part 2 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast), Part 3 (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Acast)] – At time of writing, Into The TARDIS is in the middle of releasing episodes for this story, so I’ll do my best to update when appropriate. This is an audio adaptation of a New Adventures novel, a book line from Virgin Publishing that was a major factor in keeping the Doctor Who fandom active during the Wilderness Years of the ‘90s. It’s where a lot of writers who would go on to write for the revived show, along with many BF audios, got their start in the franchise, and depending on who you ask, these represent some of the franchise’s brightest moments. In this case, we have the first licensed Doctor Who story from writer Mark Gatiss, starring the Seventh Doctor and Ace as they investigate a series of mysterious deaths in a quiet Yorkshire village. There’s a lot of discussion about the hold that nostalgia can have on people, and how harmful it can become, which marks the beginning of Gatiss’ fascination with the subject that would become a common fixture in his TV work (and not just Doctor Who, it showed up in The League Of Gentlemen as well). The VNAs tend to be much darker and more intense than what would be allowed on TV at the time, and while some of the murkier aspects are excised here, it still holds true to that aesthetic with Kyle C. Szikora’s adaptation sticking to the compelling guts of the story and doing right by them.
Okay, that’s everything I could find that’s available on the big music streaming platforms. As a little side quest for this first part, I also want to get into some of the freebies that are up on Big Finish’s Soundcloud account. Most of the content on there are trailers for upcoming boxsets, and Part 1s of longer titles (which I’m not going to include in here because I want to focus on more complete stories to jump into), but there’s some individual stories available as well.
Cuddlesome – Fifth Doctor gets involved in a war between two factions of sentient, kill-crazy Furbys. It is both just as weird and not quite as interesting as it sounds.
UNIT: The Coup – A prelude for the aforementioned series, and it honestly holds up to the others even at its reduced runtime. It deals in the political murkiness surrounding attempts at a peace treaty between humanity and an alien species, and works as an interesting transition between how the classic and revived eras would handle the presence of this clandestine peacekeeping organisation.
Bernice Summerfield: Silver Lining – Bernice wants a holiday, and ends up encountering the Cybermen. Lisa Bowerman, voice of Benny, makes almost everything she touches worth engaging with just for her, and this is no exception, but the plot is nothing to write home about.
The Veiled Leopard – A riff on The Pink Panther, with two teams of companions (Peri and Erimem, Ace and Hex) separately trying to pull a heist to steal the titular diamond. Their respective Doctors aren’t around, but they do more than fine without them. It’s a nice showcase for two of the more interesting companion pairings from the Main Range, with Peri and Erimem’s time-displaced cattiness and Ace and Hex’s blend of found family and romantic tension, and its sense of humour is carried well by them too.
Urgent Calls/Mission Of The Viyrans – Both of these are one-part stories that were released in the Main Range alongside three-parters, but they are both mostly standalone. I say “mostly” because they actually form parts of a larger story arc involving a mysterious virus strain that, eventually, leads up to the story in the Charlotte Pollard series. It’s one of the more background attempts at an arc that Big Finish attempted, and because of that, these two are best enjoyed as their own entities. Urgent Calls in particular is pretty good as a character piece with the Sixth Doctor making friends with someone after they supposedly called a wrong number, and even takes his moniker in a more literal direction than usual.
Okay… I think that’s all of them? I’ve done my best to scour for everything that’s available, but even if I somehow missed something, there is a lot that’s available to get started with without burning a hole in your pocket. But we still got a long way to go from here. As this Guide continues, we’ll be looking at a few other websites that offer Doctor Who audios, as well as Big Finish themselves, and there’s quite a few smart-shopping options for both that I want to get into. But for right now, with everything listed above (and even the parts I skimmed over), we’re already dealing with days, potential weeks, worth of content to dig into. Have fun exploring.
Amazing work here, thanks!
ReplyDelete