Big Finish Productions
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Image:BigFinish.png Big Finish Productions is a British company that produces audio plays released straight to compact disc, based on British cult science fiction properties. They are best known for their Doctor Who line; other properties include 2000 AD characters Judge Dredd and Strontium Dog; The Tomorrow People; Sapphire & Steel; Dalek Empire and The Adventures of Luther Arkwright.
The Managing Director of the company is Jason Haigh-Ellery, with Gary Russell as the producer of the Doctor Who audios.
The company name, "Big Finish", comes from the title of an episode of Press Gang.
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History
Many of those involved in Big Finish had worked on the Audio Visuals fan series of unlicensed Doctor Who audio plays.
Big Finish began with a series of audio plays adapted from New Adventures. These were a series of novels from Virgin Books which had originally been licensed Doctor Who stories, but by then had become officially independent from the show and were based around the character of Bernice "Benny" Summerfield. Big Finish then obtained a (non-exclusive) license to produce official Doctor Who plays, beginning with the multi-Doctor story The Sirens of Time. Doctor Who and spin-offs have remained the main part of the company's output ever since, although they have since diversified.
The company's first foray into books also came through Benny and a series of paperbacks. This range was later abandoned, but the company then obtained a (non-exclusive) license to do hardback Doctor Who short story collections. They subsequently returned to Benny books and other Doctor Who spin-offs, but have kept with the hardback format.
Doctor Who
The Doctor Who audio plays feature four of the surviving lead actors to play the character of the Doctor (Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann) as well as many of the regular supporting actors over the many years of the programme. The late Jon Pertwee's voice is featured in the 40th Anniversary story Zagreus. His part in the story was pieced together from snippets of dialogue (from the fan-produced Doctor Who video "Devious") recorded prior to his death.
As for the other surviving Doctors, Tom Baker has declined invitations to do so, and Big Finish's licence, which has been extended to 2007, only covers the original Doctor Who series. As such, Big Finish are unable to feature any material from or references to the new series, which excludes Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant.
Big Finish has said that the new series will not have much impact on the audio plays, save that the current grouping of Eighth Doctor adventures into "seasons" will cease and future releases starring McGann will be folded into the regular releases featuring previous Doctors. McGann, who appeared as the Doctor in a 1996 telemovie yet never got a television series of his own, concluded his fourth and last continuous audio "season" with the release of The Next Life in 2004.
Along with the Doctors from the original series, most of their companions have returned. These include Nyssa (Sarah Sutton), Turlough (Mark Strickson), Peri (Nicola Bryant), Mel (Bonnie Langford), and Ace (Sophie Aldred). It has been confirmed that Janet Fielding will reprise her role as Tegan Jovanka for one play, The Gathering.
The audio plays have also introduced their own companions. These include Doctor Evelyn Smythe (played by Maggie Stables), Erimem (Caroline Morris), Charley Pollard (India Fisher), C'rizz (Conrad Westmaas) and "Hex" (Philip Olivier). The character of Professor Bernice Summerfield, from the spin-off novels, has also appeared, and stars in her own line of audio plays, written by a number of authors including her creator Paul Cornell. Frobisher, a shape-changing alien stuck in the guise of a penguin created in the mid 1980s for the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip, has appeared in two stories, portrayed by Robert Jezek.
Other spin-offs include the Gallifrey series (with Lalla Ward as Romana, Louise Jameson as Leela and John Leeson as K-9); the Dalek Empire series; and the UNIT series. Big Finish have also produced a series of Doctor Who plays based on alternative scenarios (for example, what if the Doctor had never left Gallifrey), collectively titled Doctor Who Unbound. This has allowed them to cast other actors in the role of the Doctor, including Sir Derek Jacobi and David Warner.
A number of new villains have also been introduced, which include Nimrod, the deputy director of a United Kingdom "black ops" military research establishment known as the Forge. Thus far, Nimrod and the Forge have appeared in two Doctor Who audios, namely Project: Twilight and Project: Lazarus, both written by Cavan Scott and Mark Wright. Other writers for Big Finish include Rob Shearman and The League of Gentlemen's Mark Gatiss, who have also written for the 2005 relaunch of the Doctor Who television series.
Former adversaries of the Doctor who have reappeared in the audio plays include the Master, the Cybermen, the Daleks, the Nimon and the Silurians. The Sea Devils made an appearance in the Bernice Summerfield play, Bernice Summerfield and the Poison Seas.
The canonicity of Big Finish's productions in relation to the television series is unclear. Unlike, for example, Paramount Pictures which has a hardfast rule that only live-action televised or filmed Star Trek productions are canonical, the BBC has never made such an announcement regarding Doctor Who (the BBC's charter provide prohibits situations where television viewers must be required to purchase merchandise in order to follow the storyline). As such, the Big Finish audio productions (and print spin-offs) presently exist in a "grey area" in terms of canon.
Big Finish also publishes a series of short story anthologies taking place in the Doctor Who universe under the overall title of Short Trips. Three Short Trips collections were published by BBC Books in the late 1990s, before a hardback short story anthology license was granted to Big Finish, who took over the name and have produced them ever since.
Big Finish has also produced a number of short, single episode plays which have been released exclusively with issues of Doctor Who Magazine. To date, this has included several Doctor Who stories, as well as stories from the UNIT and Bernice Summerfield series. Most of these DWM releases have also included behind-the-scenes audio featurettes and previews of regular releases (including on occasion complete sample episodes).
2000AD
Big Finish have released eighteen audio plays featuring characters from the British sci-fi comic strip anthology magazine 2000 AD. These have mostly featured Judge Dredd although three have starred characters from the Strontium Dog strip.
In these plays, Judge Dredd is played by Toby Longworth and Johnny Alpha, the Strontium Dog is played by Simon Pegg.
Earthsearch
Earthsearch was a science fiction novel by James Follet which was adapted for radio by BBC Radio 4. However, his prequel novel Mindwarp was adapted by Big Finish and is being broadcast by the Digital radio station BBC 7. Earthsearch Mindwarp stars a number of actors from the Doctor Who range — India Fisher, Nicholas Courtney and Colin Baker.