Whovember 19: 1999 to 2001

 Oooh, I’ve been looking forward to this one, as I now get to talk about Big Finish, yay!  Now they actually got started a few years earlier with their Bernice Summerfield ones, and they did their first fully licenced Who ones in 1999, here we’ll be looking at their first two full years of the main monthly range of audios.

Year 37: 1999 to 2000 - The Holy Terror

In many ways I had to pick a Sixth Doctor one from this year, as by far the biggest success of early Big Finish was in giving Colin Baker both the scripts he always deserved and the chance to play the role he always wanted to.  It wasn’t uncommon for fans about this time to say something like “The Sixth Doctor has gone from one of my least favourite Doctors to one of my favourites!”, and I was one of them.  I could be mean and say “Not having to see the coat helps”, but it’s more substantial than that.  So which one to choose?  Well, we have the early adventures with Evelyn Smythe played by Maggie Stables, one of my favourite companions to pick from, however for this one we, and indeed the audio range, are taking a sidestep into the continuity of the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip, with an adventure with Frobisher.  And yes, that is why there is a penguin on that cover above; the character is an alien shapeshifter who uses a penguin as a base form, as it’s a relatively simple shape with few colours to deal with.  The DWM comic got very weird around this time.

This is also the first major Who story written by Rob Shearman (well sort of, he had previously done work under a pseudonym for BBV; no no, I am not going to spend any time explaining BBV.), someone who has done a tonne of great work outside Who with many short story collections and plays under his belt.  He’s probably best known in Who fandom for writing the first Dalek episode of New Who, and that’s a good ‘un, but this story is one that’s far more “him”.   The Holy Terror has a few hallmarks of little themes I have noticed in some of his other audios, including nods to other great TV drama (in here, there’s a tonne of I Claudius), and a theme of “Hell is repetition”.  This one starts of really funny, showing off well the sheet absurdity of this society with so many ludicrous rituals, including the way the ruler must take on the mantle of Godhood too.  However, taking a cue from stories like The Myth Makers, as the story goes on the comedy slowly starts disappearing, things get A LOT darker, and by the end we’re in full on horror territory.  It’s a very dark tale by that point, but unlike the Colin Baker on TV, in here the Doctor feels appropriate, he actually contributes to the story, and tries to save who he can from the situation.  The ending of this still knocks me down to this day.  You can get it for three quid these days as a download and I highly recommend giving it a go if you haven’t already, if only to understand more why so many of us want RTD to use that Disney Plus money to put Frobisher on screen!

Year 38: 2000 to 2001 - Storm Warning

So when Big Finish got started, it was with Peter Davison, Colin Baker, and Sylvester McCoy, and it was fun hearing from all of them again.  However, when it was announced that McGann was doing these, it was incredibly exciting; it was three and a half years after the TV movie, so having him doing new stories, even if not on TV was a huge thrill.  It was the story moving forward, start of a new age!  In fact, if you’re intimidated by the sheer amount of Big Finish out there and have no idea where to start, a solid path you could take would be just following McGann’s audios, as they have by far the strongest story arcs across the different formats his stories have taken.  In fact, it seems certain that the second season of McGann audios was a big influence on New Who, not least for having three writers from that set doing episodes on the first TV series.

But I get ahead of myself, the Eighth Doctor’s audio adventures begin here, and it’s a good one to start with, with a strong story set on the R101, and doesn’t romanticise the past at all; in fact British Colonialism at the time is a major threat.  It’s not just a reintroduction to the Eighth Doctor though; it’s the debut of new companion Charlotte “Charley” Pollard, played by India Fisher.  Big Finish so lucked out with her, as not only is her Edwardian Adventuress character great, but India and Paul have great chemistry from the word go, she really is a top tier companion.  Later on, when they had her leave the Eighth Doctor, they found a great way to keep her doing audios, which I won’t spoil here, but it is a stroke of genius, and uses the format of the audio releases well.  Recently we’ve had more audios with her and Paul again, and just hearing those two together gave me such a nostalgia rush; I was so happy that in The Night of the Doctor she gets mentioned, making these stories “Canon”.  So yeah, if you haven’t heard this before, definitely have a listen, and start on the long, incredible journey of the Eighth Doctor.

Next time, we have another Big Finish classic, and the perfect gift for an anniversary; a future…