Big Finish Productions
- You may be looking for the DWU company.
Big Finish Productions is a British audio production company founded in 1996[1]. Since 1999, it has produced numerous licensed Doctor Who audio dramas, audiobooks and prose stories, as well as a number of series set within the DWU. Big Finish's current licence to produce Doctor Who on audio extends to 31 March 2030.[2]
History
Big Finish began in late 1998 with audio adaptations of novels featuring Bernice Summerfield, a former companion of the Seventh Doctor. It subsequently was licensed to produce authorised Doctor Who audio plays. Later, the company branched out into prose publishing, producing a long-running series of novels and short story anthologies featuring Summerfield, followed by its temporary acquisition of the Short Trips line of Who-related short stories, previously published by BBC Books.
In 2002 they released a straight-to-DVD Doctor Who documentary interview with Paul McGann about his role of the Eighth Doctor called Big Finish Talks Back: Paul McGann.
The name of the company originates from an episode called The Big Finish? of children's TV programme Press Gang, written by Steven Moffat, who in 2010 became the showrunner of the Doctor Who TV series.
According to James Goss, by December 2017, Big Finish has become the second largest producer of original audio dramas in the UK after Radio Four.[3]
Product lines
Classic era Doctor Who
The licensing contract Big Finish originally held with BBC Worldwide allowed the company to produce material from the "classic" era, giving them use of the first seven incarnations of the Doctor and all of their companions, as well as the character of the Eighth Doctor from the 1996 telemovie.
Big Finish began their Doctor Who range with a series of monthly full-cast dramas in four twenty five-minute episode format, mirroring the format commonly used by the original TV series. Releases featured the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and, from 2001 on, Eighth Doctors, all portrayed by their original actors. Over the years this range included many classic companions portrayed by their original actors, such as Nyssa, Tegan, Turlough, Peri, Mel and Ace, and also introduced new ones such as Evelyn, Charley, C'rizz, Hex, Brewster, Klein, Flip, Constance and Marc. In addition to the monthly releases, the classic Doctors appeared in occasional Special Releases, such as the Excelis Saga, Bonus Releases for subscribers and specials for Doctor Who Magazine.
In 2007, a separate monthly series of one-hour The Eighth Doctor Adventures was created that ran for four series. Initially the range was also broadcast on BBC 7 and featured Sheridan Smith as Lucie Miller. Following the conclusion of the fourth series, the range was reformatted into boxset releases, beginning a run of four 16-episode sagas; Dark Eyes, Doom Coalition, Ravenous and Stranded. The Eighth Doctor would continue to appear very occasionally in the monthly range, including the anthology release The Company of Friends which featured companions from the Eighth Doctor's series in DWM's comic and BBC Books. Occasional standalone boxsets were also released set during his travels with Charley and Lucie, The Further Adventures of Lucie Miller and Charlotte Pollard: The Further Adventuress. In 2022 The Eighth Doctor Adventures moved away from the sagas to standalone boxsets, beginning with What Lies Inside?.
In 2009 Big Finish launched a new range adapting scripts that had been abandoned for TV, entitled The Lost Stories. The range began with the stories originally intended for Season 23 prior to the hiatus and eventually encompassed stories from every classic Doctor. The range came to an end in 2013 but was later revived in 2019.
In 2010, Big Finish revived their Short Trips series, which had ended in prose after their licence to publish prose Doctor Who was not renewed, in an audiobook format. Initially the series was released in volumes, with each volume including stories for each classic Doctor, until 2015 when it was reformatted into monthly releases. In 2016 Big Finish began an annual competition for fans to submit a Short Trip, in memory of producer Paul Spragg, with the winning entry being produced and released for free. In 2020 the monthly range was ended and the series returned to volumes, with the first of the new volumes being released in 2022.
In 2012, Big Finish released a full cast adaptation of the Virgin New Adventure Seventh Doctor novel Love and War as part of their celebrations of Bernice Summerfield's twentieth anniversary. This release led to a series of Novel Adaptations, including the Fourth Doctor in addition to the Seventh. The range ended in 2016 with the release of an adaptation of Cold Fusion, featuring the Fifth and Seventh Doctors together. Big Finish later produced a boxset of original stories with characters from the Virgin novels, entitled The Seventh Doctor: The New Adventures.
In the 2010s, the classic Doctors began to appear in boxsets outside of the monthly range including a Seventh Doctor crossover with UNIT entitled Dominion, a box set featuring the Season 19 crew to mark Matthew Waterhouse's return as Adric, a release expanding on the Sixth Doctor's regeneration, entitled The Sixth Doctor: The Last Adventure, which gave Colin Baker the chance to perform a regeneration story for his Doctor, and a Fifth Doctor crossover with Graceless, Wicked Sisters.
In 2021, Big Finish ended the monthly range after the 275th release, The End of the Beginning, and began splitting each classic Doctor into their own distinct ranges of boxsets instead, beginning with The Eleven, Forty: Volume 1 and Silver and Ice. Loose ends leftover from the monthly range were also picked up in standalone boxset form, with The Sixth Doctor and Peri: Volume One continuing the Sixth Doctor and older Peri's travels following The Rani Elite and The Lost Resort and Other Stories wrapping up the Fifth Doctor's travels with Marc.
In 2022, Big Finish released a special boxset entitled Peladon to mark the 50th anniversary of The Curse of Peladon airing, featuring the Sixth and Eighth Doctors.
As of 2023, Big Finish has been successful in recruiting every surviving classic-era companion actor to reprise their original roles. In addition, both "companion" actors from the 1996 TV movie, Daphne Ashbrook and Yee Jee Tso, have recorded several Who releases for the company, but portraying different characters, as the company does not have the rights to non-Doctor movie characters.
Adventures of the first four Doctors
Alongside their full cast dramas, Big Finish launched a monthly series entitled The Companion Chronicles in 2007, featuring hour-long "enhanced audiobooks" narrated primarily by former companions of the Doctor. The story's companion narrates the adventure, relating the events to the listener in-character, while usually one other major role in the story is performed by another actor. The series allowed Big Finish to produce stories involving the first three Doctors for the first time, despite their original actors being deceased, along with the Fourth Doctor, despite the fact that Tom Baker was unwilling to participate at the time. As a result, all eight "classic series" Doctors were now represented in some way within their range.
Later Companion Chronicle releases featured stories from the perspective of a companion of the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Doctors and also introduced spin-off characters, including UNIT members Matheson and Sato, portrayed by TV movie actors Daphne Ashbrook and Yee Jee Tso, whilst The Mahogany Murderers, reuniting detectives Jago and Litefoot from The Talons of Weng-Chiang, became a backdoor pilot for their own spin-off series. Companions such as Sara Kingdom and Liz Shaw, who did not get much screentime in the show, were given the opportunity to have much vaster development, in stories featuring the original actor.
In 2012, following a box set of Lost Stories, Tom Baker returned to the role of the Fourth Doctor in a brand new series of The Fourth Doctor Adventures, completing the set of surviving "Classic Who" Doctor actors. Unfortunately, by that time companion actors Elisabeth Sladen, Ian Marter and Nicholas Courtney were all deceased; Baker was able to record a season of stories with Mary Tamm before her death in 2012 but has primarily been paired with Louise Jameson and Lalla Ward reprising their roles Leela and Romana respectively, with occasional appearances by John Leeson as K9 and Matthew Waterhouse as Adric. Big Finish also began to incorporate the first three Doctors into The Lost Stories range, featuring larger casts including original companion actors, and using such actors to provide narration and lines for the Doctors.
At the conclusion of The Lost Stories and the monthly Companion Chronicles in 2013, Big Finish announced the launch of a new range entitled The Early Adventures starring the surviving members of the black and white era stories. The Companion Chronicles continued in a new format of one 4-story box set per year alternating between the First and Second Doctors.
In 2014, Big Finish began an additional range for the Fourth Doctor featuring stories produced by Philip Hinchcliffe, entitled Philip Hinchcliffe Presents. The Fourth Doctor was also included in the Novel Adaptations and in 2019 appeared in the only boxset of The Comic Strip Adaptations.
In 2015 Tim Treloar recast for voicing the Third Doctor in The Third Doctor Adventures in place of late Jon Pertwee. Initially he was joined by Katy Manning as Jo Grant, however the range later expanded to include recasts in the roles of Liz Shaw, the Brigadier and Sarah Jane Smith.
In 2017 Big Finish launched a new full cast range for the First Doctor entitled The First Doctor Adventures. Initially these stories featured the cast of An Adventure in Space and Time playing the roles of the actors they had played in the docudrama, however in 2022 it expanded with Stephen Noonan playing the First Doctor opposite Lauren Cornelius as Dodo Chaplet.
In 2021, Big Finish started a range of audiobooks, entitled The Audio Novels, beginning with a Third Doctor story, Scourge of the Cybermen.
In 2022, Michael Troughton was cast in his father's role of the Second Doctor, debuting in a multi-Doctor story in Volume 9 of The Third Doctor Adventures, The Annihilators. He subsequently played the Second Doctor in the The Second Doctor Adventures, beginning with Beyond War Games in July 2022. These releases were also Big Finish's first stories to be explicitly set in Season 6B.
Unbound Doctor Who
In 2003 Big Finish released six stories set in variants of the Doctor Who universe with premises fundamentally altered, in a range entitled Doctor Who Unbound. These stories featured new versions of the Doctor played by Geoffrey Bayldon, David Warner, David Collings and Arabella Weir, as well as Michael Jayston reprising his role of the Valeyard and Derek Jacobi as a writer in a meta-textual storyline where Doctor Who had never aired on TV. After the initial six releases, two sequels were released expanding on the Doctors played by Bayldon and Warner, in 2005 and 2008 respectively.
David Warner’s Unbound Doctor was later incorporated into The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield, beginning with The Unbound Universe in 2015. This Doctor subsequently appeared in four more volumes of the range, as well as appearing in the set The Story So Far: Volume Two to mark Benny’s anniversary, until Warner’s death in 2022. An incarnation of the Master played by Mark Gatiss from the universe of the Unbound Doctor also appeared in the fourth volume of The War Master series and in the special marking 50 years of the Master, Masterful.
In 2022 Big Finish revived Unbound with a duology of boxsets entitled Doctor of War. Unlike previous storylines this used an established Doctor actor, Colin Baker, but had him performing a new version of his Doctor called the Warrior.
Revived era Doctor Who
Initially, the terms of Big Finish's Doctor Who licence restricted any intellectual property from the 2005 revival, preventing them from producing any stories featuring the Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh or Twelfth Doctors, nor any related characters, even if they were no longer featured in the TV series.
Numerous Big Finish personnel and employees, including David Tennant, Georgia Moffett, Anthony Stewart Head, Gareth Roberts, Gary Russell, Mark Gatiss, Paul Cornell, Matt Jones and Robert Shearman, have gone to do work for Doctor Who, The Sarah Jane Adventures and Torchwood. Shearman's episode Dalek was directly based on his audio drama Jubilee. Nicholas Briggs currently serves as the executive producer Big Finish, concurrent with his ongoing voice-over work on the BBC Wales series. A number of actors from the BBC Wales TV series have worked with Big Finish after becoming known on TV, but playing characters other than their TV roles. Examples include Arthur Darvill and Noel Clarke.
In late 2012, Big Finish announced that it was partnering with AudioGO to produce a series of 11 audio dramas in 2013 to mark the 50th anniversary of the franchise, a series entitled Destiny of the Doctor. These were Big Finish's first productions involving the Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Doctors. It featured actors from the revival series including Catherine Tate and Jenna Coleman as readers, and the Eleventh Doctor cameoed in each story. Due to AudioGO going into administration, The Time Machine, the final release featuring the Eleventh Doctor, as well as the accompanying series boxset, were released solely by Big Finish.
In later years, the BBC began to show varying degrees of leniency in terms of the breadth of licence. A number of stories contained allusions to the Time War, most notably Dark Eyes in 2012 and Gallifrey VI in 2013. For Gallifrey, Big Finish was also granted special permission to use the revival series Daleks on the packaging. The "origin" story The Beginning, released in the same year, was altered before release to depict the TARDIS capsule seen in the television story The Name of the Doctor and to implicitly reference Clara Oswald. Additionally, Big Finish depicted an apparent future Doctor's TARDIS on the cover of Dominion with the exterior of the Eleventh Doctor's. However, many references in the past had been able to get around licensing restrictions through vagueness and implicature: the 2006 story The Kingmaker mentioned a "northern chap with big ears"; the 2010 story Klein's Story quoted from Time Crash, referencing the TARDIS control room's "leopard skin desktop theme," whilst another, City of Spires, quoting Rose, referenced the "assembled hordes of Genghis Khan" and their attempt to enter the TARDIS. Later stories such as Luna Romana, along with numerous Gallifrey and The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield releases more directly referenced an escalation in conflict on Gallifrey. Finally, the company's audio adaptation of the novel Damaged Goods directly referenced the Torchwood Institute and the Last Great Time War.
Around August 2014, (BFX: Extinction) it was revealed that the terms of their licence changed and that it was now extended to encompass a part of the "new series." [4] Later in the beginning of 2018, Nicholas Briggs confirmed during a Q&A on his Facebook that Big Finish's licence was further extended and now included the Twelfth Doctor era.[5][6]
In 2014 Big Finish announced that they would be producing stories featuring Winston Churchill, Strax, River Song, members of UNIT featured in the new series, and a new box set entitled Classic Doctors, New Monsters, featuring new series aliens such as the Weeping Angels, Judoon and Sycorax, and the Sontarans of the Time War as encountered by the Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors. They also announced that they had gained the rights to produce audio dramas based on the spin-off television series Torchwood.[4]
In October 2015, Big Finish announced that John Hurt reprised his role as the War Doctor in a series of box sets set during the Time War, and a prequel starring Paul McGann as an older Eighth Doctor during the early stages of the War would also be released.[7] The War Doctor range ended in 2017 following the death of John Hurt, with a tribute to the actor being included on the final boxset Casualties of War.
In 2016 a set of Tenth Doctor Adventures starring David Tennant and Catherine Tate was released, marking the company's first true foray into "New Series" Doctor Who.[8] Later volumes of The Tenth Doctor Adventures featured Billie Piper reprising her role as Rose Tyler, Alex Kingston as River Song, and also included characters established in other Big Finish ranges, such as Anya Kingdom from The Fourth Doctor Adventures.
In 2017 Big Finish began releasing a series of partially narrated stories, The Doctor Chronicles featuring the Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Doctors, with Nicholas Briggs and Jacob Dudman performing the narration and Doctor's dialogue. This allowed Big Finish to tell stories with Doctors whose actors were not currently contributing to the company. The range expanded to include the Twelfth Doctor. In 2021 the Chronicles series was changed to a full cast format, with Dudman now playing the Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors. Beginning with the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors in The Jago & Litefoot Revival, revived series Doctors also began to appear in the Short Trips range and were later included in The Audio Novels, beginning with Emancipation of the Daleks.
To mark twenty years of their Doctor Who ranges, Big Finish produced a special boxset entitled The Legacy of Time, which crossed over classic Doctors with revived era characters including River Song, Jenny, Kate Stewart and Petronella Osgood.
Beginning in 2020, Big Finish produced a trilogy of multi-Doctor stories, entitled Out of Time, involving the Tenth Doctor meeting the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Doctors.
In 2021, Jonathon Carley debuted as a recast War Doctor in a new range exploring the younger days of the character following The Night of the Doctor, entitled The War Doctor Begins. This range came to an end in 2023, following the sixth boxset Enemy Mine, which included an guest appearance by Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor.
In 2021 Christopher Eccleston made his Big Finish debut as the Ninth Doctor in a new series entitled The Ninth Doctor Adventures. This leaves only three of the shows' headlining actors left to partake in this aspect of the Doctor Who franchise (Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi & Jodie Whittaker, respectively).
Beginning in 2022, Big Finish started utilising characters from the spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures, with Anjli Mohindra reprising Rani Chandra on audio in the second release of the The Eighth of March series. A new range starring Rani, Rani Takes on the World, began in 2023, also featuring Daniel Anthony, Mina Anwar, Tommy Knight and Samantha Bond reprising their respective roles.
Spin-offs
- Main article: Big Finish Doctor Who audio spin-offs
Apart from stories featuring the Doctor, Big Finish has produced numerous spin-offs set within the Doctor Who universe and usually branded "from the worlds of Doctor Who". Big Finish also secured rights to produce audio stories based on television spin-offs of Doctor Who.
Books
Through much of the 2000s, Big Finish complemented its audio line with a series of short story collections entitled Short Trips, a continuation of a series established by BBC Books. Most volumes centred around particular themes, with most books containing at least one story for each of the first eight Doctors, as well as occasional stories focusing on other characters. After BBC Books retired its BBC Past Doctor Adventures novels at the end of 2005 in favour of focusing on the current Doctor, Big Finish's Short Trips became the only source for officially licensed fiction featuring the first eight Doctors.
In April 2009, Big Finish was forced to terminate its prolific Short Trips anthology series when the BBC did not renew its licence to publish Doctor Who-related prose.[9] However, in February 2010, Big Finish announced that they had opted to continue producing the Short Trips range in the form of anthology audiobooks featuring brand new authors accompanied by prolific Big Finish writers.[10] Big Finish also published prose fiction featuring characters such as Erimem, Bernice Summerfield and Iris Wildthyme. Non-fiction books related to its series have also been published, including select audio scripts and Bernice Summerfield: The Inside Story.
In 2013, Nicholas Briggs authored the BBC New Series Adventures novel The Dalek Generation. The story pit the Eleventh Doctor against the Dalek Time Controller, a recurring Big Finish villain who faced the Sixth and Eighth Doctors. The novel was one of very few instances were Big Finish and revived series material had been able to cross over, prior to the 2014 licence extension.
Other work
Big Finish previously produced original audio dramas based on franchises such as Sapphire & Steel, Stargate SG-1, 2000 A.D., Highlander and The Tomorrow People, and continues to produce original audio dramas based on a number of other franchises including Dark Shadows, Blake's 7, Sherlock Holmes, The Avengers, Terry Nation's Survivors, The Omega Factor, and The Prisoner.
More recently Big Finish has also produced a number of original and reworked releases based on the works of celebrated TV producers Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, including Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, Space: 1999 and Terrahawks (the latter of which was a direct continuation of the original TV series, rather than an adaptation of novels or a remake like the former three). It has also produced wholly original comedy and sci-fi audio dramas.
Big Finish has also published original prose, including Love Songs For the Shy & Cynical and other short story collections by Rob Shearman and The Mervyn Stone Mysteries by Nev Fountain.
The ranges and series published by Big Finish are presented in the chronological order of the first release in the following table:
Legend
- To distinguish them from officially recognised ranges, series titles are on a light blue background, following either a small dark blue rectangle or, in case of subseries of the Torchwood range, the name of the range. The latter treatment is also applied to named subranges of the Bernice Summerfiled range.
- Ranges and series marked "DW" are under Doctor Who license.
- Ranges and series marked "NS" are parts of The New Series range and include licensed elements from the post-2005 series.
- The "DW" and "NS" designations are not applicable to audio ranges and series based on the television spin-offs Torchwood and Class.
- An empty polygon represents the start of a range or series; a filled polygon represents its end; years with releases in between are marked with filled circles.
- Only the first release of a story counts. Neither individual re-releases such as Cyberman: The Complete Series 1 and 2 nor re-release ranges such as Short Trips Rarities are represented in the table.
- Special and bonus stand-alone stories such as The Sixth Doctor: The Last Adventure are not represented in the table. Neither are subscriber specials released alongside another story.
- More generally, "collected" ranges that are created postfactum by collecting stories from other ranges featuring a particular Doctor are not represented in the table.
- "Bonus Releases" and "Special Releases", representing a mix of the previous two situations, are excluded too.
- Books are not represented in the table.
- The Bernice Summerfield range is broken into three subranges: Single Releases (1998–2010), Box Sets (2011–2013, 2018) and The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield (2014–2017). They are distinguished by vertical shifts and varying polygons used (including for the years in between).
- The symbol ✹ is used in the Torchwood range to represent years that had both regular releases and special releases not represented in other rows. An example of such a special release is The Torchwood Archive. By contrast, Before the Fall is represented in the row of Torchwood One subrange.
- Series that are not presented as ranges on the Big Finish website, such as The Third Doctor Adventures are identified based on the combination of a recognisable name and designated consecutive production codes.
External links
Clicking on external links in this article will most definitely lead to pages that will spoil details of upcoming stories.
Footnotes
- ↑ Big Finish (March 23, 2014). Big Finish FAQ (From 2002). Big Finish. Retrieved on 2002.
- ↑ Doctor Who audio dramas from Big Finish guaranteed until 2030!. Big Finish Productions (10 December 2021). Retrieved on 10 December 2021.
- ↑ https://www.bigfinish.com/news/v/12-days-of-big-finishmas-10-20-years-of-bernice-summerfield
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 More New Series Doctor Who from Big Finish. Big Finish Productions (27 June 2015). Retrieved on 28 June 2015.
- ↑ Nicholas Briggs Facebook Q&A. Facebook (2 January 2018). Retrieved on 5 February 2018.
- ↑ Nicholas Briggs Facebook Q&A. Facebook (2 January 2018). Retrieved on 5 February 2018.
- ↑ http://www.bigfinish.com/news/v/doctor-who-the-war-doctor
- ↑ Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor Adventures. Big Finish Productions (26 October 2015). Retrieved on 26 October 2015.
- ↑ Short Trips Announcement. Big Finish - News (17/04/2009). Archived from the original on April 20 2009. Retrieved on 18th September 2012.
- ↑ The Return of Short Trips. Big Finish - News (10/02/2010). Archived from the original on March 30 2010. Retrieved on 18th September 2012.
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