Doctor Who audio productions
Officially licensed audio dramas from the Doctor Who franchise.
Doctor Who audio productions are officially licensed audio dramas based on the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who. They began with scattered releases in the 1960s and a major LP in 1976, but gained prominence through fan-made groups in the 1980s that later evolved into Big Finish Productions. These productions have been credited with influencing the tone of the show's 2005 revival.
Quick Facts
- First major audio production
- Doctor Who and the Pescatons (1976)
- Notable adaptation
- Jubilee (2003) adapted into TV episode 'Dalek' (2005)
- First bbc online drama
- Death Comes to Time (2001)
- First torchwood radio episode
- Lost Souls (2008)
Facts from the source article.
Early productions and radio stories
One of the earliest audio releases was an abridged soundtrack of the 1966 film Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D., aired on radio that same year. A planned original radio series starring Peter Cushing reportedly recorded a pilot, but it was never broadcast and is believed lost. An abridged episode of the 1966 serial The Chase was released by Century 21 Records in 1966. No further audio releases appeared for nearly a decade. In 1974, a planned audio production titled Glorious Goodwood, starring Jon Pertwee as the Third Doctor, was scrapped. The first major Doctor Who audio production was Doctor Who and the Pescatons, released on LP in 1976, featuring Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen reprising their roles as the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith. It aimed to enter the vinyl market during a period of high show popularity but was not very popular. In 1976, Baker and Sladen also appeared in 'The Time Machine', an episode of the BBC Schools series Exploration Earth, which is credited with laying groundwork for later radio plays. The next radio production was 1985's Slipback, starring Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant as the Sixth Doctor and Peri Brown, with Valentine Dyall as antagonist Captain Slarn. Written by script editor Eric Saward, it aired during an 18-month hiatus and was highly anticipated, receiving positive fan responses though some found it too comedic and conflicting with on-screen canon. Slipback was later novelised by Saward and released in the US, and also appeared on a record album alongside the soundtrack of the 1975 serial Genesis of the Daleks. After the series' cancellation in 1989, no radio productions were made until 1993.
1990s productions
During the 1980s, a group of fans including Nicholas Briggs produced unlicensed audio dramas called the Audio Visuals, releasing four seasons between 1985 and 1991 starring Briggs as the Doctor. Fueled by the 1985 hiatus and later dissatisfaction with on-screen adventures, the Audio Visuals became highly popular and circulated among fan clubs. In the 1990s, Briggs and Gary Russell obtained a license from the BBC to produce official Doctor Who audio dramas. Briggs wrote the first official release, The Sirens of Time, in 1999. They recruited writers from other Doctor Who spin-off material, and the group evolved into Big Finish Productions. Monthly productions followed starring Peter Davison, Colin Baker, and Sylvester McCoy as the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Doctors. In 2001, Paul McGann reprised his role as the Eighth Doctor for the first time since the 1996 TV movie. Stories alternated between the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Doctors and new Eighth Doctor adventures. Higher-ups at the BBC allegedly had no knowledge of Big Finish's existence. After the show's 2005 revival, Big Finish adapted a story style similar to the revival, and Briggs was cast as the voice of multiple antagonists in the revival. Elements of Big Finish audios were adapted into the revival, notably the 2003 audio drama Jubilee becoming the 2005 episode 'Dalek'. In 2007, Big Finish partnered with BBC 7 for new radio plays and re-releases of older ones.
Other productions
Death Comes to Time, a 2001 audio drama produced by the BBC and released on BBC Online as a webcast, attempted to create a final adventure for the Seventh Doctor and his companion Ace. It deviated greatly from established canon, depicting the Doctor as an omnipotent ruler of the Time Lords, who could alter space and time at will. One enemy, the Minister of Chance portrayed by Stephen Fry, later received his own line of audio dramas. Death Comes to Time was BBC Online's first drama production and the first officially published Doctor Who material by the BBC since the TV movie. It killed off the Seventh Doctor, contradicting the television movie's depiction of his demise. In 2009, Tom Baker reprised his role as the Fourth Doctor for a series of audio plays released directly to CD by the BBC titled Hornets' Nest, written by Paul Magrs. Two further series, Demon Quest and Serpent Crest, followed. This was Baker's first audio reprisal, excluding audiobooks, since leaving the show. The Winged Coven, a sequel to the prior three installments, was released in 2019. Torchwood audio productions were also released on radio. The first, Lost Souls, aired in 2008 for BBC Radio 4's 'Big Bang Day', commemorating the switch-on of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. CERN was involved from inception, with representatives checking the script for scientific accuracy and approving the plot. According to John Barrowman, Lost Souls was the most downloaded radio or television that day on BBC iPlayer. Three further radio episodes—Asylum, Golden Age, and The Dead Line—were released in 2009 and later on CD.
Reception and legacy
During the 1985 hiatus, Slipback received an unusually positive reception from fans due to the lack of series content, according to critic John Kenneth Muir. 1990s productions similarly garnered high ratings because of the absence of official Doctor Who content. Death Comes to Time was produced by the BBC partly due to the knowledge of a large ready fanbase. The lack of content and discontent with aired material after Slipback led to many fan-made audio productions, some becoming long-running and highly popular; Doctor Who Audio Dramas claimed nearly 70,000 downloads a month. The Audio Visuals, founded in response to Slipback, produced up to 600 tapes per adventure, high for a non-profit fan project. Big Finish Productions' audios were well received by fans; Bleeding Cool author Adi Tantimedh noted their high quality and ability to draw from diverse source material made them popular. Big Finish's stories were described in Adaptation in Contemporary Culture: Textual Infidelities as influencing the tone of the 2005 revival, particularly through the adaptation of Jubilee into the episode 'Dalek'.
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