1.
Big Finish Productions
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Big Finish Productions is a British company that produces books and audio plays based, primarily, on cult science fiction properties. Many of those involved in Big Finish had worked on the Audio Visuals fan series of unlicensed Doctor Who audio plays. In 1999, Big Finish obtained a licence to produce official Doctor Who plays. Doctor Who and spin-offs have remained the part of the companys output ever since. The companys first foray into books also came through Benny and a series of paperbacks and this range was later abandoned, but the company then obtained a non-exclusive licence to produce hardback Doctor Who short story collections. Eventually, this ended, and the collections went out of print. The company subsequently returned to Benny books and other Doctor Who spin-offs, until July 2006, Gary Russell served as producer of the Doctor Who audios. When Russell left the company, Jason Haigh-Ellery and Nicholas Briggs took joint responsibility as Executive Producers, Briggs now bears creative responsibility for Big Finishs Doctor Who range, along with script editor Alan Barnes. The Managing Director of the company is Jason Haigh-Ellery, on 11 June 2011, Tenth Planet Events hosted the first Big Finish Day in Barking, with such guests as Sophie Aldred, Colin Baker, and Sarah Sutton. On 11 February 2012, a one was held with such guests as Tom Baker, Paul Darrow, Louise Jameson, Terry Molloy, Katy Manning. As of September 2015, there have been seven Big Finish Days, in February 2008, Big Finish launched a new download service through their website, which would provide audio plays in MP3 format, free of any DRM. They currently provide the majority of their catalogue in MP3 and M4B format. In June 2008, Big Finish announced a subscription service that mirrors its physical CD service. In addition, those who purchase Big Finish productions on CD through the companys website receive access to a download of the story. In September 2008, they released their first free downloadable play, UNIT, The Coup had previously been given away with an issue of Doctor Who Magazine. Since then, the company has made a couple of single-episode plays from its Companion Chronicles line available for exclusive download through Doctor Who Magazine. More recently, selected complete stories and single-episode samplers from longer stories have made available through SoundCloud. The late Jon Pertwees voice is featured in the 40th-anniversary story Zagreus and his part in the story was pieced together from snippets of Pertwees dialogue from the fan-produced Doctor Who video Devious
2.
Audio drama
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Radio drama is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance, broadcast on radio. Radio drama achieved widespread popularity within a decade of its development in the 1920s. By the 1940s, it was an international popular entertainment. With the advent of television in the 1950s, however, radio drama lost some of its popularity, however, recordings of OTR survive today in the audio archives of collectors and museums, as well as several online sites such as Internet Archive. As of 2011, radio drama has a presence on terrestrial radio in the United States. Much of American radio drama is restricted to rebroadcasts or podcasts of programs from previous decades, however, other nations still have thriving traditions of radio drama. In the United Kingdom, for example, the BBC produces and broadcasts hundreds of new plays each year on Radio 3, Radio 4. Like the USA, Australia ABC has abandoned broadcasting drama but New Zealand RNZ continues to promote, podcasting has also offered the means of creating new radio dramas, in addition to the distribution of vintage programs. Thanks to advances in recording and Internet distribution, radio drama was experiencing a revival in 2010. The terms audio drama or audio theatre are used synonymously with radio drama, however. Audio drama can also be found on CDs, cassette tapes, Radio drama traces its roots back to the 1880s, In 1881 French engineer Clement Ader had filed a patent for ‘improvements of Telephone Equipment in Theatres’. English-language radio drama seems to have started in the United States, a Rural Line on Education, a brief sketch specifically written for radio, aired on Pittsburghs KDKA in 1921, according to historian Bill Jaker. Newspaper accounts of the era report on a number of other experiments by Americas commercial radio stations. In February 1922, entire Broadway musical comedies with the original aired from WJZs Newark studios. Actors Grace George and Herbert Hayes performed a play from a San Francisco station in the summer of 1922. Aware of this series, the director of Cincinnatis WLW began regularly broadcasting one-acts in November, the success of these projects led to imitators at other stations. By the spring of 1923, original pieces written specially for radio were airing on stations in Cincinnati, Philadelphia. That same year, WLW and WGY sponsored scripting contests, inviting listeners to create original plays to be performed by those stations dramatic troupes
3.
Doctor Who
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Doctor Who is a British science-fiction television programme produced by the BBC since 1963. The programme depicts the adventures of a Time Lord called The Doctor and he explores the universe in a time-travelling space ship called the TARDIS. Its exterior appears as a blue British police box, which was a sight in Britain in 1963 when the series first aired. Accompanied by a number of companions, the Doctor combats a variety of foes, while working to save civilisations, the show is a significant part of British popular culture, and elsewhere it has gained a cult following. It has influenced generations of British television professionals, many of whom grew up watching the series, the programme originally ran from 1963 to 1989. There was an attempt to revive regular production in 1996 with a backdoor pilot. The programme was relaunched in 2005, and since then has been produced in-house by BBC Wales in Cardiff, twelve actors have headlined the series as the Doctor. The conceit is that this is a Time Lord trait through which the character of the Doctor takes on a new body, each actors portrayal differs, but all represent stages in the life of the same character and form a single narrative. The time-travelling feature of the means that different incarnations of the Doctor occasionally meet. The current lead, Peter Capaldi, took on the role after Matt Smiths exit in the 2013 Christmas special The Time of the Doctor, in 2017, Capaldi confirmed he would be leaving at the end of the tenth series. Doctor Who follows the adventures of the character, a rogue Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey. He fled from Gallifrey in a stolen TARDIS – Time and Relative Dimension in Space – a machine which allows him to travel across time, the TARDIS has a chameleon circuit which normally allows the machine to take on the appearance of local objects as a disguise. However, the Doctors TARDIS remains fixed as a blue British police box due to a malfunction in the chameleon circuit, the Doctor rarely travels alone and often brings one or more companions to share these adventures. His companions are usually humans, as he has found a fascination with planet Earth, as a Time Lord, the Doctor has the ability to regenerate when his body is mortally damaged, taking on a new appearance and personality. The Doctor has gained numerous reoccurring enemies during his travels, including the Daleks, the Cybermen, and the Master, another renegade Time Lord. Doctor Who first appeared on BBC TV at 17,16,20 GMT, eighty seconds after the programme time,5,15 pm. It was to be a weekly programme, each episode 25 minutes of transmission length. Discussions and plans for the programme had been in progress for a year, writer Anthony Coburn, story editor David Whitaker and initial producer Verity Lambert also heavily contributed to the development of the series
4.
Sixth Doctor
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The Sixth Doctor is an incarnation of the Doctor, the protagonist of the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who. He is portrayed by Colin Baker, although his televisual time on the series was comparatively brief and turbulent, Baker has continued as the Sixth Doctor in Big Finishs range of original Doctor Who audio adventures. Within the series narrative, the Doctor is a centuries-old Time Lord alien from the planet Gallifrey who travels in time and space in his TARDIS, when the Doctor is critically injured, he can regenerate his body, in doing so, his physical appearance and personality change. Baker portrays the sixth incarnation, a flamboyant man in brightly coloured, mismatched clothes whose brash. The Sixth Doctor appeared in three seasons, Colin Baker had been signed up for four years, as the previous actor Peter Davison had left after only three years. Prior to its postponement, season 23 was well advanced with episodes already drafted and in at least one case distributed to cast and production. These were all dropped with the reconception of the season in mid 1985 in favour of a 14 episode story arc called The Trial of a Time Lord, the Sixth Doctor also appeared in the special Dimensions in Time. There are also novels and audio plays featuring the Sixth Doctor, the sixth Doctors regeneration was initially unstable, and he nearly strangled Peri before he came to his senses. He encountered many old foes including the Master, Daleks, Cybermen and Sontarans and he also faced a renegade female Time Lord scientist, the Rani, who was conducting experiments on humans using the Luddite riots as a cover. Later, the Doctor and Peri landed on the devastated planet Ravolox, before they could discover the reason for this disaster, the TARDIS landed on Thoros Beta. In reality the trial was a cover-up organised by the High Council, the prosecutor at that trial, the Valeyard, turned out to be a possible future evil incarnation of the Doctor himself who was out to steal his remaining lives. He had also edited the Matrix recordings of the Doctors travels, the events of the trial tangled the Doctors timeline slightly, as he left in the company of Mel, whom he technically had not yet met. When the TARDIS is attacked by the Rani, the Sixth Doctor was somehow injured and regenerated into the Seventh Doctor, attempts have been made by various authors to fill in these narrative gaps. The Virgin Missing Adventures novel Time of Your Life states that the Doctor went into an exile to avoid becoming the Valeyard. He was lured back into travelling by the Time Lords, although now travelling again, he attempted to avoid meeting Mel and recruited other companions such as history lecturer Evelyn Smythe and Edwardian adventuress Charley Pollard. He eventually encounters Mel accidentally during the events of the BBC Books novel Business Unusual, pip and Jane Bakers novelisation of Time and the Rani provides the first relatively brief attempt to explain the Doctors regeneration. In these events, the Doctor, through the TARDIS telepathic circuits, forces his own regeneration and then travels towards Lakertya, setting up the events of Time and the Rani. In 2015, Big Finish Productions released The Sixth Doctor, The Last Adventure, the message caused the past Sixth Doctor to fly his TARDIS to Lakertya, where he ended up exposed to radiation deadly to Time Lords
5.
Evelyn Smythe
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A professor of history from the 20th century with a fondness for chocolate, she is a companion of the Sixth Doctor, and encounters the Seventh Doctor as well. Evelyn first appeared in the play The Marian Conspiracy, when the Sixth Doctor found her while searching for a temporal nexus point. Traveling with the Doctor back to 1554, she became involved with the surrounding the reign of Queen Mary. At the end of that adventure, Evelyn insisted on accompanying the Doctor further, because as a historian, Evelyn was fifty-five when she began her travels with the Doctor. Being more mature than most of the Doctors other companions, she was more than a match for the more abrasive Sixth Doctor, often questioning his decisions, in turn, the Sixth Doctor recognized Evelyns wisdom and ability and respected her advice. Their relationship was not always smooth, Evelyn had a heart condition which she kept from the Doctor, fearing that he would return her home if he found out. She also blamed the Doctor for his inability to save a woman named Cassie in Project, Lazarus, something the Seventh Doctor said she never forgave him for. When she and the Doctor returned a year later, Evelyn decided to stay and she subsequently became involved in the politics of Világ and underwent surgery for her heart. The surgery, however, did not correct her condition, without her knowledge. The infusion disguised Evelyns heart condition but also caused her to suffer headaches, increased aggressiveness. Two years later, the Sixth Doctor brought his new companion Mel to visit Evelyn on Világ, during their visit, Evelyn was kidnapped by a political enemy, and during the ordeal she became seriously ill as a result of the Killoran blood in her system. With the Doctors aid, Rossiters daughter Sofia, a physician, during her recovery, Evelyn was secretly paid a visit by the Seventh Doctor. He wanted to tell Evelyn that Cassies son, Hex, was now travelling with him, Evelyn continued to appear alongside the Sixth Doctor in new audio releases, set before her departure. The end of her life is chronicled in A Death in the Family, a few years later, Hex was dropped off on Pelicham after the Seventh Doctor died fighting a pan-dimensional enemy called Nobody No-One. Evelyn took Hex in as her ward for several months and told him about his mother, the Doctors other companion, Ace, resurrected the Doctor, and he travelled to Pelicham on the day Evelyn died of a heart attack. With her consent, he trapped Nobody No-One in her mind, at the end of Instruments, the Doctor agreed to take Evelyn back to her proper time, and to take the scenic route, implying further adventures. The novel also featured the first meeting between Evelyn and Mel, how these events can be reconciled with those in Thicker than Water is not clear, and supports the proposition that the novels and audios take place in separate continuities. The story was produced for the BBC website by Big Finish, Big Finish producer Gary Russell, who wrote the story, has also stated that he has no firm plans for continuing the story and it should, for the moment, be regarded as unofficial
6.
Paul Cornell
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Paul Douglas Cornell is a British writer best known for his work in television drama as well as Doctor Who fiction, and as the creator of one of the Doctors spin-off companions, Bernice Summerfield. As well as Doctor Who, other British television dramas for which he has written include Robin Hood, Primeval, Casualty, Holby City, for US television, he has contributed an episode to the modern-day set Sherlock Holmes series Elementary. Cornell has also written for a number of British comics, as well as Marvel Comics and DC Comics in America, soon after, he wrote Timewyrm, Revelation, a novel for the Virgin New Adventures series of Doctor Who novels. Timewyrm, Revelation was a reworking of a fan fiction piece Cornell had penned previously for the fanzine Queen Bat. Several other Doctor Who novels followed, including the award-winning Human Nature and his episode, entitled Masturbation, starred Ioan Gruffudd as Jack. He was due to be one of the writers on Red Production Companys planned Queer as Folk spin-off series Misfits, but the series was never made, being abruptly cancelled by Channel 4. In the 21st century he has written mainly for the BBC and he also contributed to the 1950s-set Sunday evening prime time drama series Born and Bred and was one of the writers of the 2005 series revival of Doctor Who, writing the episode Fathers Day. The episode was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form in 2006, Cornell later wrote a two-part story for Doctor Whos 2007 series, based on his 1995 Virgin New Adventures novel Human Nature. The title of the first episode was also Human Nature, while the second was titled The Family of Blood, in 2008, the two episodes were nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form. He later announced on his blog that he was writing a second Robin Hood episode for later in the first series. His first episode, Who Shot the Sheriff, aired on BBC One on 21 October 2006. His second, A Thing or Two About Loyalty, followed on 2 December 2006 and he also wrote an episode for the second season of another Saturday evening family adventure programme, the ITV science-fiction series Primeval, transmitted in February 2008. He also wrote the one-off pilot Pulse, which was shown on BBC Three in early June 2010. co. uk in 2003 and he has also co-authored several non-fiction books on television, including The Guinness Book of Classic British TV, X-treme Possibilities, and The Discontinuity Guide. He has also written comics, both for Doctor Who Magazine and the 2000 AD spin-off Judge Dredd Megazine and he has written Wisdom, a 6-issue limited series for Marvel Comics MAX imprint, featuring the character Peter Wisdom, with art by Trevor Hairsine and Manuel Garcia. It was announced at the 2007 Wizard World Chicago comic book convention that Cornell would be following Chris Claremont on Marvels New Excalibur, plans were subsequently changed with the cancellation of the New Excalibur title and Cornells new project was announced as being titled Captain Britain and MI,13. The third trade paperback, Vampire State, was nominated for the 2010 Best Graphic Story Hugo Award, in 2008, he wrote a comic which featured on the Doctor Who website. He has also written the Young Avengers limited series that ties into Dark Reign and Black Widow, Cornell became the next Action Comics writer after War of the Supermen. Cornell signed with DC Comics exclusively in 2010 as part of writing for Action Comics and his 16-issue run on the series included number 900
7.
Nicholas Briggs
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He is also a co-creator of Big Finish Productions, for which he has produced, directed and written several audio plays. In the late 1980s, Briggs also provided the voice of an incarnation of the Doctor for a series of unofficial audio dramas by Audio Visuals. This version of the Doctor also appeared in Party Animals, an installment of the Doctor Who comic published in Doctor Who Magazine issue 173, cover date 15 May 1991. He wrote and appeared in several made-for-video dramas by BBV, including the third of the Stranger stories, In Memory Alone opposite former Doctor Who stars Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant. He also wrote and appeared in a non-Stranger BBV production called The Airzone Solution and directed a documentary film, Briggs co-wrote a Doctor Who book called The Dalek Survival Guide. He also voiced the Cybercontroller and Professor Osborn in the 2002 Webcast audio series Doctor Who, since Doctor Who returned to television in 2005, Briggs has provided the voices for several monsters, most notably the Daleks and the Cybermen. Briggs also voiced the Nestene Consciousness in the 2005 episode Rose, on 9 July 2009, Briggs made his first appearance in the Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood in the serial Children of Earth, playing Special Government Advisor Rick Yates. Briggs has directed many of the Big Finish Productions audio plays, and has provided Dalek, Cybermen and he has also written and directed the Dalek Empire and Cyberman audio plays for Big Finish. In 2006, Briggs took over from Gary Russell and became producer of the company. In 2007, he guest starred in the Sapphire and Steel audio drama Water Like a Stone, Briggs voiced the Daleks in a charity theatre production of The Daleks Master Plan and briefly appeared on stage playing a regenerated Doctor. In 2010 he starred in Doctor Who Live as Winston Churchill, in 2012, his Doctor Who novel The Dalek Generation was published by Random House/BBC Books. Briggs has a role in the drama playing actor Peter Hawkins. In November 2013 he also appeared in the one-off 50th anniversary comedy homage The Five Doctors Reboot, Briggs has also been playing Sherlock Holmes in an acclaimed series of audio dramas for Big Finish Productions since 2011. He also appeared in the films Adulthood and 4.3.2.1, Briggs became the presenter of Radio 7s Seventh Dimension, daily science fiction segment in 2011. As of 15 April 2013, he is part of a rotating line-up of hosts of the 7th Dimension on BBC Radio 4 Extra, Doctor Who The Dalek Survival Guide Official website Nicholas Briggs at the Internet Movie Database
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