BBV Productions

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Nicola Bryant and Colin Baker in the BBV production The Airzone Solution.

BBV Productions (also known as Bill & Ben Video and sometimes, erroneously, as Bill Baggs Video) is a British video production company known for its many unofficial video and audio Doctor Who spin-offs. A number of personnel behind-the-scenes and in front of the camera would go on to work on the revival of Doctor Who after 2005, most notably Nicholas Briggs, who acted in, wrote and directed a number of BBV productions, and author/actor Mark Gatiss. BBV developed a repertory company of actors that appeared in many of these productions, often playing different roles. Many of these actors were well-known from their work in Doctor Who and included former Doctor actors Jon Pertwee, Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy, and companion actors Caroline John, Louise Jameson, Nicola Bryant and Sophie Aldred. Several actors appearing in these productions early in their careers went on to some notability, including Mark Gatiss and Alan Cumming.

Work in Video

BBV's first production was the 1991 video release Summoned by Shadows, which was co-produced by the BBC Film Club and starred Colin Baker playing an unnamed character only known as the Stranger and Nicola Bryant as Miss Brown. The Stranger's adventures were chronicled on six videos and an audio adventure, many of which featured former Who cast members. The sixth video, Eye of the Beholder, was later re-released as the audio story Eye of the Storm.

BBV's next release was the ecologically-themed thriller The Airzone Solution, which was about a near-future conspiracy. The video was released in 1993, coinciding with the 30th anniversary of Doctor Who and featured four actors previously cast as the Doctor.

In 1994, BBV released the first video in the P.R.O.B.E. series, The Zero Imperative, which saw a departure for BBV as Liz Shaw was the only character from the Who universe to appear (although numerous Who actors made appearances as different characters). This proved problematic for the series, as Liz Shaw seemed very much changed following her leaving from UNIT; this was due to BBV only acquiring the rights to use the character and had no rights to the Doctor, meaning that the series could make no explicit reference to any other aspect of Who – including the stories where Liz was present.

BBV's next series of spin-off videos focused on UNIT and their battles with the Autons. The first video of the series, Auton, was originally to feature Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, however he had to withdraw due to ill health. The Brigadier was replaced by the original character of Lockwood, an enigmatic UNIT agent played by Michael Wade.

After the success of the Auton trilogy, BBV went on to produce Cyberon, which featured an alien race of cyborgs reminiscent of the Cybermen called the Cyberon. The Cyberon would later go on to appear in an audio story, Cybergeddon.

In 2001 BBV released Do You Have a License to Save this Planet?, a film in which Sylvester McCoy played a character called the Chiropodist (aka Foot Doctor) as he fought Cyberons and Sontarans. The video not only made references to past BBV productions, but to Doctor Who and the unlicensed nature of BBV's work.

BBV's latest video production is Zygon: When being you just isn't enough, in which Mike Kirkwood dreams of being a monster; he is in fact a Zygon, believeing himself to be human. This story also features Jo Castleton's character of Doctor Lauren Anderson, from Cyberon.

Work in Audio

After experimenting with audio for a few years, BBV began regularly releasing audio dramas in 1998 under the umbrella title "Audio Adventures in Time and Space". One line of adventures was The Time Travellers, starring Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred as the Professor and Ace; the two so closely resembled their Doctor Who characters that, by the seventh story, the BBC had stepped-in and demanded changes to not infringe copyrights – the main change was that the main characters were now the Dominie and Alice.

The first of the Audio Adventures that didn't feature McCoy and Aldred was a two-story series called The Wanderer, which featured Nicholas Briggs as an amnesic space-traveller who one of the other characters dubs "Fred". Briggs had previously played the Doctor for unlicensed fan audios made by Audio Visuals.

BBV moved away from audio stories about characters that could be the Doctor after the establishment of Big Finish's officially-licensed line of Doctor Who audio dramas, instead moving on to audios featuring characters from the Who universe such as Romana and K9.

Following the success of the Auton trilogy, BBV made standalone audios featuring alien races from Who (licensed directly from the writers that created them), and in some instances allowing the writers to author new stories featuring their characters (such as The Rani Reaps the Whirlwind, written by Pip & Jane Baker). Also released by BBV was a series of stories by Lawrence Miles about his history-spanning cult organisation, Faction Paradox.

In 2002 BBV announced that it would be no longer producing audio stories and instead would focus on video releases.

Published Works

Videos

The Stranger

P.R.O.B.E.

The Auton Trilogy

Other

Documentaries

Audios

The Time Travellers

The Wanderer

The Stranger

Adventures in a Pocket Universe

Zygons

Krynoids

Sontarans

Cyberons

The I

The Rani

Wirrn

The Faction Paradox Protocols

Rutans

Guy de Carnac

Mike Yates

Other

Also See

External Links

BBV Productions
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