Monday, January 20, 2020

Doctor Who: The Eighth Doctor Adventures from Big Finish Productions

The first day of the new year saw the return of Doctor Who to TV screens, after an entire year away. However, as regular readers of this blog and followers of my Instagram account (@RumpleDumple) will know, my year was still filled with Doctor Who stories from Big Finish Productions: full-cast audio dramas featuring previous Doctors and companions from the TV series, played (when possible) by the original actors. In recent weeks, I’ve been trying to get caught up on their eighth Doctor stories, starring Paul McGann, and I’ve been especially enjoying those stories.


While I love all the Doctors, the Paul McGann version will always hold a special place in my heart. Because the TV movie (for decades his one on-screen appearance) premiered in the US a few days before it did in the UK, it was the first time I was able to see a new Doctor on his very first appearance. The show aired in May of 1996, right around my birthday. And it took place in San Francisco, across the bay from where I grew up. So, in so many ways, he was “my” Doctor.

When Big Finish—who had been producing Doctor Who audio dramas since 1999—finally released their first Paul McGann story in 2001, it felt like something special again. While BBC Books had been producing novels featuring his Doctor, which I had been reading and enjoying, this was the first time hearing him play the Doctor since the TV movie. Clearly, Big Finish knew they had something of an event on their hands; instead of sprinkling eighth Doctor stories in amongst the other monthly Doctor Who releases featuring the fifth, sixth, and seventh Doctors throughout the year, they released that year’s McGann stories over four consecutive months.

In later years, the eighth Doctor stories would be removed from the monthly rotation altogether. Instead, Big Finish first started a separate line of single-disk releases starring McGann and new companion Lucie Miller, played by rising star Sheridan Smith. When Lucie’s time as a companion came to an end, so did that format, and Big Finish began telling this Doctor’s adventures in a series of four-disk box sets, released every six months or so. So far, they have released three series of four box sets each, with an overarching story across all four sets.

I had fallen behind sometime during the first series, Dark Eyes. It wasn’t though lack of interest so much as the amount of product Big Finish releases, and the way I was listening to them. I tend to listen to an episode of a Big Finish series when I exercise, so that’s one episode a day for five days a week. Some of those exercise days are an hour long, but some are only half an hour, so I have to pick my episodes based on the length of my morning walk.

However, Big Finish’s recent announcement of the next story arc, Stranded, inspired me to get caught up. It finally occurred to me that I didn’t just have to listen to my Big Finish audios while walking on the treadmill. So, through I combination of listening before bed instead of reading, and listening to episodes on the weekends and on our Christmas vacation to Pacific Grove, I began working through the next series, Doom Coalition. As I write this, I just finished the final box set yesterday. Then I have the four sets of the Ravenous story to get through before Stranded starts up in June or July. At the rate I’m going, I think I’m going to make it.

While Big Finish started by telling stories of the fifth, sixth, and seventh Doctors, the eighth Doctor stories have always felt like something different from those stories. Certainly pre-2003, when the show’s return to television was announced, they felt like the legitimate continuation of the series, with ongoing adventures instead of stories of past Doctors and companions set in between televised episodes. 

Even when Big Finish introduces new companions to travel with classic Doctors, while those characters can develop in ways not determined by previously broadcast stories, their time automatically seems limited by the fact that we know that they will leave the Doctor sooner rather than later. For example, as much as I enjoy audio-only sixth Doctor companions Constance and Flip, I know that at some point, they have to leave and be replaced by Mel, because she’s with the Doctor when he regenerates and they are not.

Paul McGann’s Doctor, on the other hand, didn’t have a future established by the TV series, and that made his Big Finish adventures feel a little more uncertain. There wasn’t a status quo to which they had to return. I mean, I knew that they weren’t going to stray too far from the Doctor Who format, and that his companions would probably eventually leave to be replaced by new characters, but that was still different from the “missing adventures” feel of Big Finish’s classic Doctors adventures, as much as I enjoyed those. For example, when the Doctor and companion Charlie found themselves trapped in a divergent universe, it wasn’t clear how long that story arc would continue, and that gave an extra sense of uncertainty and suspense to the series. Even though I knew that the characters would eventually return to their “normal” universe, because that’s how licensed franchises tend to work, there wasn’t the same feeling of, “Well, they must get back, because we’ve seen the adventures that happen later.”

Similarly, because the eighth Doctor appeared in just one 90 minute TV movie, there isn’t the same impetus to create adventures formatted just like the series was on television. While the earlier eighth Doctor audio stories were broken up into four 25-minute episodes, just like the classic TV series, later stories evolved to be told in hour-long episodes, similar to the new series. And, as I’ve said, they are now produced in sets of four hour-long stories, and those sets are organized into four-set story arcs. Even though there’s room for smaller, more self-contained stories within those arcs, it still gives the McGann stories an epic sweep and scope that the other Big Finish Doctor Who ranges don’t quite match.

The icing on the eight Doctor cake—for me, anyway—is that his companion for the last few years has been Liv Chenka, played by Nicola Walker. I’ve been a fan of hers since seeing her in MI-5, and she’s great here. In a lot of ways, she reminds me of some of my other favorite companions, like Donna Noble and Sarah Jane Smith. She’s smart, funny, and is completely able to hold her own against the Doctor. Hattie Morahan as Helen Sinclair, the Doctor’s other companion, is great, too, but I’ve been a fan of Nicola Walker for too long to not play favorites. And I’m not alone in my appreciation for Liv; she’s popular enough to have earned her own spin-off series, The Robots, featuring her return to her home planet of Kaldor, setting of the classic Doctor Who serial The Robots of Death.

As I said, I just finished Doom Coalition yesterday. Once I’ve gone through the four sets of Ravenous, I’ll have to follow the adventures of the Doctor, Liv, and Helen at their own pace. I’m pretty excited to do that, to be forced to wait months between installments. I’m not a huge fan of the binge model; I like the idea that once I’ve finished an episode or a book or a box set, then I’m done until the next one comes out. The next set of adventures, Stranded, featuring the Doctor, Liv, and Helen (joined by some new characters, including Andy Davidson from Torchwood) stuck in 2020 London without a TARDIS, sounds particularly compelling. So, paradoxically, I can’t wait to get caught up so I can hear those stories, but also I am excited about having to wait. 


That’s about it for this week. Check back in 2 weeks, where I will be talking about the latest Trekker graphic novel, and how my feelings about which comics I’ve been enjoying have been changing lately. See you then!

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