The Minister of Chance (series)

The Minister of Chance was a series of fantasy audio and video stories written by Dan Freedman and produced and released by Radio Static. The series centered on the eponymous Minister, who was introduced in Freedman's Seventh Doctor webcast Death Comes to Time, and his involvement in court intrigue on the planet Thea.

You may be looking for the title character or the novelisation.

The eponymous main character, the Minister of Chance, is portrayed and characterised consistently with his debut appearance in Death Comes to Time. Although in this series he was played by Julian Wadham rather than Stephen Fry, initial promotional material for the series explained this by describing him as a "defrocked Time Lord" "now in his second regeneration".^[1] The events of Death Comes to Time are alluded to as a tragedy in the Minister's past, and following from the Seventh Doctor's revocation of his TARDIS in that story, the Minister travels through time and space by "the scientific formula for doors".

Stories

Audio

Five one-hour audio stories and a ten-minute prologue were released from 2012 to 2013.^[2]

The episodes were later remastered, split into four parts, and re-released as a weekly podcast from 5 October 2020 to 23 February 2021.^[3]

The Pointed Hand, a prologue to the series, introduced Paul McGann as Durian and Sylvester McCoy as the Witch Prime.

#	Title	Author	Featuring	Released
0	The Pointed Hand (third release)	Dan Freedman	Durian, the Witch Prime	13 July 2012^{[nb 1]}
1	The Broken World		The Minister of Chance, Kitty	13 January 2012
2	The Forest Shakes			13 January 2012
3	Paludin Fields			20 July 2012
4	The Tiger			1 March 2013
5	In a Barque on the River Hex			17 May 2013

Film

A video adaptation of the prologue was released on 17 October 2014^[4] to promote a Kickstarter for a full film adaptation of The Minister of Chance,^[5] but it ultimately failed to meet its fundraising goal.^[6]

Book

On 8 December 2016, Dan Freeman announced on the Kickstarter that the series would be made into a novelisation.^[7]

On 1 June 2022, Arcbeatle Press released a short webcast on their YouTube channel titled He is Coming…, and on 30 June 2022, The Minister of Chance novelisation was released.

Notes

Despite the audio series' cast's limited size, it had a substantial overlap with the Doctor Who and related productions, including Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann, Julian Wadham, Lauren Crace, Jenny Agutter, Paul Darrow, Beth Goddard, Tamsin Greig, Peter Guinness, Kemi-Bo Jacobs, Gethin Anthony, Simon Hickson, Mark Lewis, Sophie Aldred, Daniel Easton, Richard Garaghty, James Manley-Buser, Gareth Jones, and George Murphy.

Gallery

Promotion

Promotional image for the series.
Promotional image for the series.
Promotional image for the series.
Promotional image by Lee Sullivan for the series.
Promotional image by Lee Sullivan, released to tie into Paludin Fields.
Promotional artwork by Lee Sullivan, featuring the Second Minister and Kitty.
Promotional image by Lee Sullivan, released to tie into In a Barque on the River Hex.