Okay, we’ve looked at streaming platforms, we’ve looked at what’s available through BBC Sounds; now it’s time to officially check in with the Big Finish website. I waited for a bit before we got here because, where streaming was included to make use of accounts users are already using, and BBC Sounds doesn’t need one, Big Finish requires making an account to access its content. It’s free to sign up, but the actual access is a little counter-intuitive. Once the account is set up, getting to the freebies involves ‘unlocking’ them, and if you’re one of those weirdos who still use PCs and laptops to browse the Internet (which includes me, so no actual judgement there), you’ll be able to download ZIPs containing the audios. If you want a streaming option, you can download the Big Finish app, although be aware that the interface is a little antiquated. It also doesn’t allow for purchases through the app itself (similar to Amazon’s Comixology), so the best way to go is to use a web browser to unlock (and, later on, purchase) content, and then access it through the app.
Most of what’s available for free on the website are Part 1s and excerpts of larger stories and boxsets, similar to the official Soundcloud, which we won’t be covering here. Feel free to peruse them to maybe find something you’d like to check out in full later on, but for right now, this Guide is just going to focus on self-contained, complete stories. And there’s quite a few of them here.
The Eleven (from Eighth Doctor Adventures: Doom Coalition 1) – While this serves as an introduction not just for its accompanying boxset, but also part of a much larger story arc across all of the 8DAs, it’s surprisingly viable as its own story solely for what it introduces: The Eleven. The Eleven is a Time Lord who suffers from regenerative dissonance, a form of dissociative identity disorder where every one of his past regenerations persist as voices in his head. He is one of my favourite rival Time Lords from across the franchise, and Mark Bonnar does a terrific job of portraying both Eleven and all the other voices. Again, this story only begins his larger scheme that carries across the other Doom Coalition stories, but for a Big Finish-exclusive antagonist, he might be the studio’s finest creation, and he works really damn well opposite Paul McGann’s Eighth.
The Word Lord (from Main Range #115: Forty-Five) – Another introduction for a Big Finish-exclusive villain, and this one is a doozy. The Word Lord, Nobody No-One, is from a parallel universe and has a rather terrifying control of language, to the point where he can alter reality on a whim. All it takes is for one person to say something off-hand like "Nobody rules the world", and now he does. While this serves as a finale for the Main Range release, which plays more of a long game in showing how powerful the Word Lord is, this story on its own does a solid job of providing all the relevant information, and Paul Reynolds as the Word Lord himself is both quite fun and genuinely unnerving. He makes a great foil for the Seventh Doctor, and his appearance here also marks the prelude to the crown jewel of the major Main Range story arcs: The Doctor is going to war with the Elder Gods.
Ghost Station (from Main Range #266: Time Apart) – Near the end of the Main Range, Big Finish were getting restless with singular story releases and began leaning more into anthologies and two-parters, with Time Apart being a Fifth Doctor anthology made of four separate stories. The first part, Ghost Station, is honestly the strongest of the set, with Fifth ending up in an underground train station in Berlin Wall-era Germany. It’s a character piece similar to most Short Trips, focusing on border patroller Peter, and it’s an effective metaphor for the sense of displacement and search for identity indicative of living in a literally-divided country.
Aimed At The Body (from Main Range #269: Shadow Of The Daleks 1) – Another introduction to a Main Range anthology, and this might be the weakest story that will be mentioned in this instalment. Shadow Of The Daleks, taking place over two Main Range releases, is a story arc that primarily works when taken all together, with eight seemingly-standalone adventures leading into a reveal that they are indeed all connected. There are some good entries in this arc, like Interlude and Echo Chamber, but they aren’t the ones that are available for free. Instead, it’s the opening where Fifth encounters a famous English cricketer in 1930s Australia and stumbles onto a much larger scheme by the Daleks. If you’re crazy into cricket or just really dig that aspect of the Fifth Doctor’s personality, this might be worth checking out, but I personally just found it to be tepid preamble for the bigger story being told.
Beneath The Viscoid (from The War Master: Only The Good) – Stepping away from the Doctor for a bit, here’s the first audio starring Derek Jacobi as the War Master, briefly seen in the NuWho episode Utopia. While this also serves as the introduction to a much longer story arc, showing the Master’s efforts during the Last Great Time War, it’s one hell of a reintroduction to what makes Jacobi’s take on the character worth coming back to; namely, because he’s terrifying in a way the Master rarely is. This isn’t the Master who’s clearly up to no good and has just hypnotised anyone who noticed otherwise; this is the Master who approaches with kind words and convinces you that he’s on your side… until he decides otherwise. It’s a good showing of how his character functions in the chaos of the Time War, and the plot itself is nice and twisty.
Vanguard (from UNIT: The New Series – Extinction) – A series focusing on the modern UNIT team, particularly Kate Stewart and Osgood, this carries on with the clandestine drama of the original audio series while doing its own thing. This first story focuses on UNIT taking an interest in a tech tycoon and their latest innovation. Without getting into spoilers, it finds an interesting and fresh way of utilising one of the franchise’s classic monsters, and Jemma Redgrave really gets to take the spotlight as the murky but noble head of UNIT. This was my first time listening to the New Series of UNIT, and it has me quite interested to check out the rest, so hopefully that effect will take hold for others.
The Ratings War – Long before appearing in the main show with The Star Beast, Beep The Meep showed up in this little oddity of a story. It’s a pretty funny satire of children’s television, with Beep planning to hypnotise and control the viewers of the new TV show Beep And Friends, and it’s a nice little showing of Sixth’s more pragmatic worldview compared to his past and future incarnations. Honestly, I’d recommend it just for how catchy those bloody show jingles are, as I’ve caught myself humming “You are Meep’s friend, smash them all!” more than once.
Last Of The Titans – Seventh encounters a cloned caveman on a spaceship. It’s a decent flip of the classic Frankenstein story, with a real examination of the scientific ethics of both the cloning procedure and what the caveman, Vilgreth, would end up doing with his new lease on life. Another example of Seventh being at his best in stories where the morality of the characters isn’t clear-cut, himself included.
No Place Like Home – A Fifth Doctor story where he shows Erimem around the TARDIS for the first time… and the TARDIS itself doesn’t seem too happy with this. Solid bottle show set inside the TARDIS, like a thematic continuation of The Edge Of Destruction, and while it builds on lore introduced in the Doctor Who Magazine comics, it works well enough on its own as a look at just how alien this ship is.
Living Legend – Eighth and Charley land in Italy in 1982, right after their victory against West Germany in the FIFA World Cup, and as part of a plan to stop an alien invasion, Charley has to play the part of a Time Lord. With how dramatic and sad (and cruel, especially during the Divergent Universe saga) the Main Range stories for these two can get, it’s nice to hear them in something more light-hearted, and they both do well with the material. India Fisher in particular really nails the conceited air that the Time Lords carried themselves with in the classic show. It helps that it's just really fun listening to aliens run around in a blind panic about catching World Cup fever. It also comes packaged with a 30-minute making-of documentary for Zagreus, but don’t go into it expecting clarification on the story itself.
The Four Doctors – Originally released as a bonus Subscriber-only story (we’ll get to what exactly that means in a later instalment), this was made available for free in October of 2024. It’s a solid multi-Doctor story that touches on areas of cyberpunk and historical perspectives on technology to give Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth ample room to stand out on their own and come together in a much bigger plot to once again save space-time for the Daleks.
The Five Companions – Another story that started out as a bonus exclusive and became available for free less than a year ago. It's a midquel to the classic series story The Five Doctors, following five of the companions who were also kidnapped from the timeline as part of the Game Of Rassilon… but didn’t end up getting involved directly. This is definitely one for the older fans, as it’s nice to hear these First and Second Doctor-era companions interact and bicker and bond with each other. Writer Eddie Robson does well in breaking down what each individual brought to their respective TARDIS teams, and the performances from the original actors are really fun to just hear bounce off each other.
A Postcard From Mr Colchester, Another Postcard From Mr Colchester, A Christmas Card From Mr Colchester – The Torchwood audio dramas are the only spin-off Big Finish media that could arguably compete with the Doctor’s own adventures for the title of Fan Favourite, with a plentiful library of stories that both incorporate themselves into the show’s timeline and continue after it. In this case, we have a series of short stories narrated by Paul Clayton as the sardonic operative Mr. Colchester. James Goss (who is the most prolific Whoniverse writer to date) has done a lot of work on the Torchwood audios, and these serve as a great entry point for the spin-off’s colder and more detached attitude to the prospect of protecting humanity from alien threat.
These are bite-sized horror stories framed as audio postcards, and they’re generally pretty good at delivering some creeping dread about what kind of threat Colchester is dealing with in each one. Another Postcard in particular is very effective, and without getting into spoilers, its way of bringing the listener into the story actually caught me off-guard in a “I forgot I was listening to fiction for a second” kind of way. This was my first experience with the Torchwood audios, and you better believe I’m checking out the rest just based on these.
Now for what I would consider the main event when it comes to Big Finish freebies: The Paul Spragg Memorial Short Trip Opportunity. These are Short Trips that were made as part of the annual contest of the same name, in memory of Big Finish staffer Paul Spragg, where writers outside of the company are given a chance to pitch their own stories and get them made as official audios. I love this because not only does it open the writing pool for the company, where the vast majority of material tends to be written by the same handful of writers, but these stories, almost to a one, are brilliant. They’re all very high-concept stories that often find creative ways to poke and prod at elements of the series lore, as well as generally being really solid character pieces in their own right. Along with the stories themselves, they also come with the original story submission (comprised of a 500-word synopsis and a 500-word writing sample), the final studio script, and with the more recent winners, interviews with the writer and production crew.
Forever Fallen (2016) – The Doctor often gives his foes a chance to stop their evil plans and maybe even reform. But what happens when one of them takes him up on that offer? The framing is similar to the story of Hob Gadling in The Sandman, with Seventh periodically revisiting a mad scientist to see how he is taking to his new life, and it’s a good example of the long game approach that Seventh regularly takes with his plans. It asks some good questions about redemption and the logistics behind it, with a nice and hopeful conclusion.
Landbound (2017) – The Third Doctor meets a former ship captain and sparks up a friendship with him. This is one of the quieter stories to win the competition, as the main draw is the two characters pondering over their respective exiles (this is set during the time when the Doctor was stuck on Earth) and the wanderlust that accompanies it. While Third is mostly associated with his action spy yarns and environmental activism, it’s the stories that show more of his compassionate side that really get to the core of who this incarnation truly is, and this is a good example of that.
The Last Day At Work (2018) – Another bit of lore examination, looking at one of the core pieces of iconography in the show (The Doctor’s TARDIS being ‘disguised’ as an old police box) and digging into how far that illusion goes. Without getting into direct spoilers, this might be my favourite character piece amongst the Paul Spragg winners, as the story of police constable Bernard gets very existential and asks some interesting questions about the nature of life and memory.
The Best-Laid Plans (2019) – Where do ideas come from? Well, on the planet Dowdonia, they usually come from Dracksil Forg, who sells unique ideas to whoever has the money to buy them, from general life inspiration to plans for conquering a galaxy. It’s a fascinating spin on the ‘consulting genius’ archetype of Holmes and Moriarty that makes up a decent chunk of the show’s cultural aesthetic, along with examining the ethics of what other people do with your own ideas… if they can even be considered your own in the first place. It also stars the Twelfth Doctor, voiced by impersonator Jacob Dudman, and he's… generally pretty good with his take on Peter Capaldi’s accent, even if he doesn’t manage to sound quite old enough to completely pull it off. Still, it’s a fun and mentally stimulating look at the Doctor in one of his more meddlesome moments.
Free Speech (2020) – Okay, the idea for this one is a bit cheesy, but bear with me on this one: A man is being interrogated by the police, on a planet where every spoken word costs money. Writer Eugenie Pusenjak does well in finding novel ways to illustrate the politics of a society like this, from class divides to the logistics of a poker game, and the decision to have the starring Doctor be the Tenth, easily the gabbiest of the lot, was a stroke of genius. It slyly comments on how his particular ego manifests purely through his conversations, while also showing that there is a caring pair of hearts underneath all the bluster. The ending does feel a bit clumsy, but it mostly does justice to its high-concept foundation.
The Lichyrwick Abomination (2021) – The Ninth Doctor lands in a sleepy Scottish fishing town, where everyone lives in fear of a creature that stalks the streets at night. There’s a nice claustrophobic atmosphere to this one as the Doctor tries to figure out what is happening in this town, accompanied by local resident Malcolm, and while the narrative style and developments are reminiscent of those found in Ninth’s own TV series (not that I’m complaining, since it’s specifically reminiscent of that season’s best story), its horror tinges and allusion to Greek mythology make for a solid outing.
The World Tree (2022) – Nora, a retired and forgetful gardener, meets the Eleventh Doctor… but not for the first time. As read by Lisa Bowerman, the voice of Bernice Summerfield, the Eleventh Doctor’s distracted mannerisms and Merlinesque demeanour come across well, and the story around him makes proper use of the fairy tale aesthetic of the Moffat era (a big contributor to why Eleventh is my Doctor). It even features an (implied) appearance from Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor, and this is before he made his TV premiere.
The Hoxteth Time Capsule (2023) – This marks the first time a Doctor actor performed a Paul Spragg winner, with Colin Baker narrating this story of ol’ Sixie attending a presentation by photographer George and finding something… odd about the pictures he took. Like with The World Tree (and War Stories afterwards), this deals primarily in the nature of memory and the importance we tend to place on it, with George as a weathered explorer reflecting on the life he’s lived. It earns extra resonance for its place in Sixth’s timeline, taking place during a rough patch in his relationship with Evelyn, leading up to a quite touching conclusion both for that storyline and for George himself.
War Stories (2024) – The Twelfth Doctor and Bill land on the planet Fringe, home of the Intergalactic Fringe Festival, where all manner of theatrical and creative delights await their prospective audiences, including a play about the end of the Last Great Time War… which is odd, since no one should even know about that story. Writer Patrick Ross takes from his personal experience at the Edinburgh Fringe to detail all the different acts on display, along with the dramatisation of ‘Gallifrey Falls No More’, and the imagery is quite vivid, especially as narrated by Alan Cox. I particularly like the line about being able to trust drag queens with your life. Aside from taking an interesting approach to the initial brief (the theme for that year’s entries was ‘Time War’, and this found a unique way to weave it into the narrative), it’s also a fascinating look at the nature of the Doctor Who canon as a whole, full of contradictions and overlapping stories if you take all of it as coexistent. It’s both generally agreed upon that there is no singular canon to this franchise across all media, and something of a sport to attempt to reconcile it all despite that, so it’s very indicative of how superfans tend to regard the show.
And that’s it for the freebies on the Big Finish website. A lot of really compelling stuff, both as introductions to larger stories and as their own contained entities, and even if the first few don’t spark much interest, I would emphatically have to recommend all of the Paul Spragg winners, both for their own sake and as a testament to just how deep fan affection for this series runs. But before we get into further exploring Big Finish themselves, the next instalment will be a sidestep to one more website where you can get snag some free Big Finish audios... although fair warning, it may involve having to go outside.
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