This is a list of audio productions based on the classic era of the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who produced by Big Finish Productions.
Contents
Cast
The dramas feature both former actors who portrayed the Doctor and his companions, and new continuing characters as well as elements from other spin-off media. The canonicity of the audio dramas, as with other Doctor Who spin-off media, is unclear. To date, productions have featured the Fourth (Tom Baker), Fifth (Peter Davison), Sixth (Colin Baker), Seventh (Sylvester McCoy) and Eighth (Paul McGann) Doctors portrayed by their original actors.
Big Finish's current licence from the BBC allows it to produce audio dramas featuring the first thirteen incarnations of the Doctor and associated characters introduced into the series between 1963 and 2022.
Nearly all of the companions from the original series have appeared, voiced by their original actors. They include Susan (Carole Ann Ford), Ian Chesterton (William Russell), Vicki (Maureen O'Brien), Steven Taylor (Peter Purves), Sara Kingdom (Jean Marsh), Polly (Anneke Wills), Jamie McCrimmon (Frazer Hines), Victoria Waterfield (Deborah Watling), Zoe Heriot (Wendy Padbury), Jo Grant (Katy Manning), Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney), Sergeant Benton (John Levene), Mike Yates (Richard Franklin), Leela (Louise Jameson), K9 (John Leeson), Romana I (Mary Tamm), Romana II (Lalla Ward), Adric (Matthew Waterhouse), Nyssa (Sarah Sutton), Tegan Jovanka (Janet Fielding), Vislor Turlough (Mark Strickson), Peri Brown (Nicola Bryant), Melanie Bush (Bonnie Langford) and Ace (Sophie Aldred).
Several actors who played the Doctor and companions of previous Doctors have appeared in other roles, including Russell, O'Brien, Marsh, Wills, Watling, Padbury, Caroline John, Manning, Elisabeth Sladen, Leeson, Daphne Ashbrook, Tennant and Bernard Cribbins. Sladen also reprised Sarah Jane Smith in a spin-off series simply entitled Sarah Jane Smith. Sladen never appeared as Sarah alongside any incarnation of the Doctor for Big Finish; a series with Tom Baker was planned, but was never recorded due to Sladen's untimely death in April 2011.
Initially Matthew Waterhouse declined to reprise the role of Adric so the character was recast and played by Andrew Sachs as an older version of the character. Waterhouse later returned to the role on an ongoing basis.
Big Finish also started The Companion Chronicles series of plays, featuring a companion or friend of the Doctor and a supporting cast member. Ford, Russell, O'Brien, Purves, Marsh, Wills, Hines, Watling, Padbury, Manning, Jameson, Tamm, Ward, Sutton, Strickson and Aldred have all reprised their roles in this series along with John (Liz).
Broadcast
In 2005, six of the audio dramas featuring Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor were broadcast on the digital radio station BBC 7: Storm Warning, Sword of Orion, The Stones of Venice, Invaders from Mars, Shada (originally created for webcast on the BBC's online service), and The Chimes of Midnight. These plays were rebroadcast on BBC7 beginning in July 2006. The Chimes of Midnight was repeated again as part of "The New Eighth Doctor Adventures" Series 1 & 2 in 2009.
In January 2007, a new series of Eighth Doctor audio adventures was broadcast on BBC7. These starred McGann alongside Sheridan Smith as the aforementioned new companion Lucie Miller. There were eight 50-minute episodes in total; the first and last stories were two-parters, and the rest were single episodes. These adventures have since been released on CD. In 2008, BBC7 broadcast the second series of The New Eighth Doctor Adventures (which Big Finish had already released on CD) bar the final two-part story. All fourteen episodes were then repeated in 2009, and the final two-part story later that year. Big Finish has gone on to produce two further series of these Adventures, and four selected stories from the third series were aired in 2010, with BBC Radio 4 Extra (as Radio 7 became) skipping ahead to the fourth series in early 2013.
In May/June 2011, BBC Radio 4 Extra broadcast the Fifth Doctor stories Cobwebs, The Whispering Forest, and Cradle of the Snake. In May/June 2012, these were followed by the Seventh Doctor stories A Thousand Tiny Wings, Survival of the Fittest, Klein's Story and The Architects of History. For the fiftieth anniversary of the show, BBC Radio 4 Extra repeated several stories and broadcast two new stories; Protect and Survive starring Sylvester McCoy and 1963: Fanfare for the Common Men starring Peter Davison. In May 2015, BBC Radio 4 Extra broadcast the first series of Fourth Doctor Adventures starring Tom Baker and Louise Jameson. In 2016, the station broadcast a run of Sixth Doctor adventures: The Crimes of Thomas Brewster (28 May – 4 June), Industrial Evolution (11–18 June) and The Curse of Davros (25 June – 2 July).
Ranges
The First Doctor Adventures (2017–present)
On the 23 May 2024, Big Finish announced their slate of boxsets for 2025. Nicholas Briggs said: "All our writers, directors, script editors and producers continue to work tirelessly to create exciting new adventures for all our Doctors. The First Doctor continues his strange encounters with past companions, with an absolute corker by Jacqueline Rayner, already recorded and in post-production." The release is set for January 2025.
The Fourth Doctor Adventures (2012–present)
In 2012, Big Finish began a range of ongoing dramas featuring the Fourth Doctor, as portrayed by Tom Baker. Baker had previously declined to feature in Big Finish releases, but after recording The Fourth Doctor Box Set had been encouraged to participate.
The Fifth Doctor Adventures (2003–present)
A second boxset is scheduled for release in September 2024. Big Finish's Creative Director Nicholas Briggs described them as "...really imaginative, celebratory adventures that feel like Classic Doctor Who turned right up to eleven, in the very best of ways".
On 23 May 2024, Big Finish announced their slate of boxsets for 2025. Senior Producer John Ainsworth said "...in 2025, Peter Davison stars in a 12-part Fifth Doctor story for the first time ever. It's an epic featuring new worlds, new creatures and a searing light that could burn everything to dust." The two boxsets are scheduled for release in April and May 2025, respectively.
The Sixth Doctor Adventures (2002–present)
The Sixth Doctor: The Last Adventure is a British audio drama based on the series. Within the narrative of the series, the Doctor, its principal character, is a time-travelling alien known as a Time Lord, whose biological characteristics allow him to regenerate into a new form to circumvent an otherwise deadly experience; the device has been used to allow for a change in lead actor every few years in the production of the televised series. The sixth such instance was depicted in 1987 at the very beginning of Time and the Rani, but due to the firing between seasons of Sixth Doctor actor Colin Baker, the episode gave the event very little screen time and didn't explain what had caused it.
Big Finish Productions producer David Richardson approached Baker in 2014, after seeing "The Time of the Doctor", which had depicted (on television) the regeneration of the Eleventh Doctor into the Twelfth: "I felt very strongly that regeneration stories, and each Doctor’s final end, are very important to Doctor Who fans – these are stories that allow us to see the Doctor at his most courageous, making a sacrifice that only makes us love him more." Baker, who had been working with Big Finish since 1999, agreed to participate, saying that his depiction of the Doctor "did not benefit from" the difficult circumstances the show faced in the 1980s, and that the quality of Big Finish's work was "the only reason [he had] agreed to bring [his] Doctor to an end."
The audio drama consists of four one-hour episodes, each by a different author and each pairing the Doctor with a different companion and taking place at a different point in his life, but all unified by the presence of the villainous Valeyard, a potential future version of the Doctor introduced in Baker's last television serial, The Trial of a Time Lord. Besides Baker, Michael Jayston and Bonnie Langford reprised their roles from The Trial of a Time Lord, respectively as the Valeyard and as the Doctor's companion Mel.
The final part (The Brink of Death) explains that the Sixth Doctor dies due to the radiation of the planet Lakertya as part of his sacrifice in order to stop the Valeyard from taking over existence.
The Eighth Doctor Adventures (2003–present)
In 2006 Big Finish began a standalone range of audio plays featuring the Eighth Doctor. These stories were set after his travels with Charley Pollard and C'rizz in the main range, which were subsequently ended.
Following on directly from the Eighth Doctor Adventures, Dark Eyes consists of four box sets, each made up of four hour-long episodes, the first released in November 2012 and the last in March 2015.
A special run of prequels to Doctor Who: The War Doctor.
Featuring the first appearance of Tania Bell (Rebecca Root), the first transgender companion in any Doctor Who media.
Announced in August 2018, this series is set between the first and second series of audio adventures.
Announced in August 2018, this series is set between the first and second series of audio adventures.
A Special 25th Anniversary special of Big Finish Doctor Who audio dramas. Released alongside a full-cast live recording event at Cadogan Hall in London on Saturday 14 September 2024.
The Audio Novellas (2026–present)
It is a spin-off series of The Audio Novels with shorter-length audiobooks.
The Companion Chronicles (2007–present)
The character in brackets in the "Featuring" column is who the story is told by.
The Monthly Adventures (1999–2021)
Doctor Who: The Monthly Adventures (previously known as the "Main Range") is a series of full-cast audiobook adventures based on the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who, produced by Nicholas Briggs and Big Finish Productions and starring one of the original actors to play The Doctor on television in the classic era of the programme. By 2018 the range featured the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Doctors, with a pattern of thirteen releases per year, one every month with two in September or December. In May 2020, Big Finish announced that the Monthly Range would conclude with its 275th issue in March 2021, to be replaced with regular releases of each Doctor in their own boxsets throughout the year from January 2022.
Big Finish Productions began producing audio dramas featuring the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Doctors, starting with The Sirens of Time in July 1999. This continued through to 2000, and from 2001 to 2007, the main range also included releases featuring the Eighth Doctor with his companions Charley Pollard and C'rizz, but these were ended due to the simultaneously running Eighth Doctor Adventures, which ran from 2006 to 2011 and featured companion Lucie Miller. From 2008 to late 2011, only one Eighth Doctor release was produced for the main range: The Company of Friends, featuring companions from other media to the audio plays, and the historical figure Mary Shelley. The Eighth Doctor returned to the main range in a trilogy of adventures with Mary Shelley in October 2011.
The Novel Adaptations (2012–present)
In 2012 Big Finish began producing adaptations of select novels from the Virgin New Adventures and Virgin Missing Adventures novel ranges.
Short Trips (2009–present)
The person in brackets in the "Featuring" column is who the story is read by.
The releases listed below were single releases made available by Big Finish as subscriber and magazine exclusives and podcasts. Starting from September 2016, Big Finish is releasing these exclusives to general customers under the banner, Short Trips Rarities. There will be at least a two-year delay between a story's subscriber exclusive release and its wider general release, in order to still keep these an incentive to subscribers of the main range.
The annual Paul Spragg Memorial Short Trip will continue to be released individually.
In November 2020, it was announced that the Short Trips range would return to the audio anthology format. It consists of 6 episodes.
Special releases
Excelis (2002)
A fourth audio play in the Excelis saga, The Plague Herds of Excelis, was released in July 2002 to conclude the saga. This audio play features former companion of the Doctor Bernice Summerfield, alongside the returning Iris Wildthyme from Excelis Dawns.