Beginner's Guide to Doctor Who on Big Finish - Part 2: BBC Sounds

Now that we’ve sampled what’s available on services you’re already using, it’s time for a bit of exploring. This section will cover more free audios, although I’m not expecting most of you reading to already be familiar with the website where they can be found: BBC Sounds. These were all uploaded to the site as part of the show’s 60^th anniversary back in 2023, and quite a few of them are tailored towards fans of the revived era. At time of writing, they’re apparently going to do some reorganising soon for those accessing the site outside of the UK, but I’ll do my best to keep this up-to-date when that comes around. Same deal as with Part 1: I’ll give some general thoughts on each story, and provide links, although thankfully, there’s not as much need for digging around with this one.

 

Main Range #108 - 1963: The Assassination Games – Another part of the 1963 Main Range trilogy, and while I'd personally consider it to be the weakest of that trilogy, that’s not me saying it’s in any way bad. It’s another solid Seventh political thriller where he and Ace team up with the Counter-Measures team (whose first story was set in 1963, hence their inclusion here) to take on the Illuminati. Yes, that Illuminati.

 

The Ninth Doctor Adventures: Ravagers – Ooh boy, this one hurts to think about. After so many years of having a combative relationship with the show (and he is well within his right; if you know you know), the news that Christopher Eccleston would be returning as the Ninth Doctor was huge. He’s one of my favourites in the role, and with the backing of Big Finish, I was quite interested in how it would turn out. But this first boxset really isn’t it. Eccleston himself is still fantastic and he slips back into the TARDIS like he never left, but the story around him dealing with time distortions and an evil intergalactic gaming company doesn’t give him a whole lot to work with. Apparently, this went through some behind-the-scenes production issues, resulting in Nicholas Briggs shouldering all three parts by himself as writer, and that strain unfortunately comes through in the final product. From what I’ve heard, the range gets much better from here on, but this is a tough opening sprint. If you’re already a fan of Ninth and just want more of him, I’d still say check this out strictly for that, but otherwise, you can safely skip this and not miss much.

 

Classic Doctors, New Monsters Volume One – A high-concept novelty, where the classic and revived eras come together, and for the most part, it manages to justify the gimmick. Fallen Angels with the Fifth Doctor is an interesting romp with Michelangelo and the Weeping Angels, and Harvest Of The Sycorax has a nice twist on the alien race’s established ‘blood control’ technology, with the Machiavellian Seventh Doctor being an ideal fit for the story.

But personally, my favourites are Judoon In Chains and The Sontaran Ordeal. Judoon In Chains is basically The Elephant Man, but with John Merrick replaced by a rhino-headed space cop. It hits similar themes about finding humanity in the abnormal, and it’s a good deconstruction of how alien races in sci-fi tend to be very specialised (obsessed with war, science, gardening, that kind of thing). Colin Baker does great here as well, serving as the Judoon’s defence lawyer in a Victorian courtroom. As for The Sontaran Ordeal, it’s an Eighth Doctor story set during the Time War, where he encounters a lone Sontaran soldier going through a redemption ritual. Like with Dalek from the revived series, it isolates a single member of an alien species to highlight what makes that species what they are, in this case an entire species engineered for war. It gets into some Klingon-isms in the characterisation (which totally works in this case), with go-to Sontaran actor Dan Starkey at his absolute best in the role, and it offers a tantalising look into just how chaotic this event was for the entire DW universe. Definitely worth checking out.

 

Mind Of The Hodiac – Here’s an interesting one: A Lost Stories instalment that adapts the first-ever Doctor Who script from current showrunner Russell T Davies. Even through the adaptation work from Scott Handcock (who is both a Big Finish regular and worked as script editor on RTD's return to the show), RTD’s fascination with the ways that media can manipulate people is quite evident in the machinations of the Hodiac and their ambitions on the stock market. Hearing Colin Baker’s Sixth speaking RTD dialogue is quite surreal, as he was the incumbent Doctor when the original script was drafted, but he does well with it. This is another story that I’d classify as a curio, as aside from being a realisation of an interesting part of the show’s production history, I wouldn’t say it’s particularly memorable or even up there with the best that RTD is capable of.

 

Out Of Time – Two of the show’s most prolific Doctors team up to fight the Daleks. This is the first part of a three-part boxset where the Tenth Doctor teamed up with various classic Doctors. And honestly, while I prefer his interactions with Fifth or the novel take on the Weeping Angels with his Sixth team-up, the banter between Tom Baker and David Tennant easily makes this worth the time. Writer Matt Fitton does a great job of highlighting and distinguishing their respective personalities, with Baker’s laidback bohemian playing well against Tennant’s high-strung and guilt-ridden runner. Fans of the show will obviously get the most out of this, but as a look at two of the most popular actors to take the role, it’s a good tastemaker.

 

The Early Adventures 2.4: The Isos Network – Part of the range dedicated to First and Second Doctor adventures, this serves as a sequel to the classic serial The Invasion, where the Cybermen tried to conquer Earth (not for the first or last time). Big Finish productions often blur the lines between audio books and full-blown audio dramas, and this is one of the blurrier ones, as it’s mainly narrated by companion actors Frazer Hines and Wendy Padbury, but there are other actors in the mix as well. For the novelty of one of the TARDIS dream teams (Second, Scottish highlander Jamie, and future maths whiz Zoe) fighting Cybermen with the help of space slugs, it’s pretty fun, and I like the inclusion of Kieran Hodgson as Hilsee, an alien whose Cyber conversion went wrong and maintained his individuality. I’ve given Nicholas Briggs some flak as a writer already in this guide, but the man knows his classic staples and his take on the Cybermen works really well, especially with how it fits next to The Invasion as a story.

 

Companion Chronicles 5.8: The Beginning – Another 50^th anniversary story, and it’s quite the milestone: A look at the Doctor’s first adventure in the TARDIS. Written by Marc Platt, who has arguably done the most extensive work of fleshing out the Doctor’s pre-show backstory of any writer the franchise has drawn to it (not necessary for this Guide, but for the adventurous ones out there, there is a lot to it), it shows his first encounter with the planet Earth… and a race of aliens that were here long before us. The relationship between the First and his granddaughter Susan is nice, and Davros actor Terry Molloy adds some nice adversarial energy to the dynamic as the reluctant stowaway Quadrigger Stoyn, but don’t go into this expecting any major retroactive foundation-building for all the stories that would follow. It’s just an interesting addition to the canon (if there even is such a thing).

 

TheTenth Doctor Adventures: Volume One – And finally, we have another major Big Finish win: Reuniting David Tennant and Catherine Tate as Tenth and Donna for new adventures. This is one of the best duos of the revived era, and arguably of the entire show’s lifespan, but this boxset goes beyond just them still being great after all these years: This has some of their best stories ever. The first story, Technophobia, is mostly alright as a look at technology run amok, but the other two are brilliant. Time Reaver has one of my favourite Tenth moments when he comes face-to-face with a genuinely unnerving piece of time weaponry, and Death And The Queen is an absolute riot, with Donna becoming queen of an 18^th-century castle and needing to fend off Death. Like, ‘Grim Reaper’ Death. Proper quality, and all three are worth checking out because Tennant and Tate’s chemistry together is legendary.

The link for the 10DAs also includes audios that have recently aired on BBC Radio 4 Xtra. Unlike everything else on this list, these are only available for a limited time, about a month after they first air on the station. At time of writing, they’re beginning the War Doctor boxsets, starring John Hurt as the Doctor who fought in the Last Great Time War. I’d definitely recommend checking them out, as Hurt gives an amazing performance and the scripts do well in establishing what makes this particular incarnation so different from the others, yet still unquestionably the Doctor.

 

And that’s it for BBC Sounds. Not as big a selection as elsewhere, but there’s still quite a bit to get into, even with the presence of Ravagers. Next time, we’ll stop faffing around with other websites and get into the free stories you can get directly from Big Finish.