Every Doctor Who fan has their favourite Doctor. For the
majority, this will be one of the first people they saw in the role,
particularly if they started watching as children. Personally, I am rather fond
of Sylvester McCoy, my first Doctor, who I first saw at age 6. When this Doctor
departs, or when you have seen all of the episodes they recorded it can be
rather heart-wrenching, and can leave one thirsting for more of the same. Many
of the Doctors, particularly towards the end of the classic series, got short
shrift and appeared in few episodes, which makes their departure even harder to
take. As viewers thrilling to the adventures of an immortal time traveller, we know we cannot ever possibly be privy
to everything the Doctor does, even if we spent every minute of our
comparatively brief lives glued to the TV. But there is often a creeping doubt, especially when the Doctor refers to
some adventure that happened off screen, that we might be missing something
extra special.
The good news is, there’s a wealth of extra adventures
available featuring several of the classic Doctors, and I’m not just talking
about novels and short stories and comic books. These may feature the
characters, but it’s not quite the same, is it? Without the actor playing the
part, speaking those words in their inimitable style, it doesn’t quite feel as
if this is really, the Doctor.
Big Finish Productions have been producing full cast audio
dramas for many years now, featuring the voice talents of many of the original
actors from the TV series, including Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker,
Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann. These are usually told in the same format of
the TV series (either multipart stories, told across several episodes of
roughly 25 minutes each, or a single 50 minute episode). They also very much
remain true to the style and spirit of the TV series, and many who have
listened to them claim that some of the Big Finish Dramas rank among Doctor
Who’s greatest ever adventures.
The bad news is that the audio format can seem rather
daunting, even impenetrable, to many people. Without an image to constantly
provide information on what exactly is happening, you are forced to pay very
close attention to everything that is said. If you miss the wrong line of
exposition, you can find yourself lost and bewildered, wondering where the
characters are and what they are doing. The lack of narration on these types of
drama has several consequences. Firstly, it makes the dramas seem closer to the
actual TV show, only without the pictures, rather than an audio book. Secondly, it means you have to
imagine what the aliens and spacecraft and planets look like. If you have a
good imagination, this can be a blessing. If your imagination is a little
rusty, then it’s a mixed blessing. There are no wobbly sets or bubble-wrap
monsters to ruin the atmosphere, but there are no spectacular CGI landscapes or
Dalek battles to feast your eyes on either.
It may sound as though I am trying to discourage people from
trying the audio dramas, but I’m not. It’s surprising how quickly you get used
to not having anything to look at or having any information fed to you
visually. I have so far listened to four audio dramas (Shada, Storm Warning, Thin Ice and Crime of the Century) and am currently on my fifth (Animal). I would recommend all of these,
although I take it from reviews I have read that Big Finish have produced much
better dramas than these. Once you take that plunge and acclimatise yourself to
a new medium, the audio dramas seem a very short step apart from the TV shows,
indeed even like a natural extension of them. Voila, the amount of episodes
starring your favourite Doctor just multiplied.
The other major barrier to entering the Doctor Who expanded
universe, is that Big Finish produce their dramas in more-or-less random order.
If you want an experience as close as possible to enjoying extra episodes of
Doctor Who, in a linear fashion, then you will need to track down a listening
order that you are comfortable with. There are many of them floating around the
internet, usually with advice on how the novels and comic books fit into the
sequence as well. There are some discrepancies between these, but most are
valid, and if you are pursuing audios only, there are few differences between
them. I would recommend: The Complete
Adventures Index at http://www.eyespider.freeserve.co.uk/drwho/compleat.html
This seems to be the most diligently updated of all the
Doctor Who chronology websites, and it’s sequence makes a lot of sense. Audio
dramas in the lists are highlighted in yellow, so it’s easy to pick them out.
So, there are two major challenges before you can enjoy
these additional, and very high quality, episodes. However, I hope I have
demonstrate that these are both quite easily overcome, and that it is well
worth the effort. What could be better than dozens of extra Doctor Who
episodes?
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