Big Finish Doctor Who audio drama licence renewed until 2030

Big Finish Productions Doctor Who Montage

Big Finish Productions has announced the BBC has renewed its licence to make Doctor Who audio dramas until 2030. The company’s 2022 schedule is already looking exciting, with titles that include a celebration of four decades of the Fifth Doctor, with stories from across his timeline, Peter Davison reprising his role as the errant Time Lord.

Big Finish has been producing high quality, full-cast audio drama featuring characters from the worlds of Doctor Who since 1999. The first, The Sirens of Time, was released in July 1999 and, since then, over a thousand new adventures have been released on collector’s edition CD, digital download or vinyl LP.

Doctor Who - The Sirens of Time

Big Finish also produces the spin-off audio drama series Torchwood, Class, The Diary of River Song, Jenny – The Doctor’s Daughter, The War Doctor Begins, The War Master, UNIT, The Year of Martha Jones, Peladon, The Lone Centurion, The Robots, and The Lost Stories, plus a range of audio novels.

This year, the company was awarded a Guinness World Record for the longest-running science fiction audio play series, in recognition of the achievements of its Doctor Who range. 2022 will see the release of a raft of new ‘classic era’ box sets (starring original series actors Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann) plus new adventures for the Ninth and Tenth Doctors (played by Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant respectively).

Doctor Who - Peladon

Jan Paterson, Director of Books and Audio at BBC Studios, said: “Our partnership with Big Finish has been going for over 20 years. Over this time the team there has created the most extensive range of original Doctor Who audio dramas and readings, working with the original casts.

“This renewal of our long-term licence secures our partnership to allow Big Finish to create fantastic new adventures for the Doctors and their friends for many more years.”

“We are very grateful to the BBC for once again placing their faith in Big Finish,” Jason Haigh-Ellery, Big Finish Chairman and Co-Executive Producer, added, “and extending our license into another decade – this time up to 2030.

“This allows us to really plan ahead and create long term story lines and character development not just for the Doctors and the companions but also for new series and elements that we can’t talk about yet! We are excited about the next decade and the adventures we are going to create in the TARDIS for us all to enjoy together.”

“This rather lovely licence extension from the BBC for us to continue making Doctor Who audio drama until 2030 takes me past my official retirement date – although I have no plans to retire from anything,” commented Nicholas Briggs, Big Finish Creative Director and Co-Executive Producer. “I look forward to working with Big Finish’s great creative team and our colleagues at BBC Studios for many years to come!”

Big Finish Doctor 2022 Releases

The confirmed titles for 2022’s Doctor Who ranges currently look like this:

January

Doctor Who - Forty

The Fifth Doctor Adventures: Forty 1

Written by Matt Fitton Sarah Grochala
Starring Peter Davison and Sarah Sutton

Celebrating four decades of the Fifth Doctor, with stories from across his timeline.

1.1 Secrets of Telos by Matt Fitton

Professor Parry’s expedition to the tombs of Telos was hardly an unmitigated success. The handful of survivors limp home in a spaceship… unaware that the deadly peril they faced from the Cybermen is not yet banished.

Into this situation stumble the Fifth Doctor and his friends Nyssa and Tegan – and they’re soon in a deadly fight for their lives.

Except things aren’t quite that simple – something odd is happening to the Doctor. He’s suddenly in a different part of his own timeline inhabiting his future self with no idea of why or how this has happened.

Who is bouncing him through time? And what could they possibly want?

1.2 God of War by Sarah Grochala

The Doctor is still being jolted through his own timeline, and has now found himself with Nyssa, Tegan and Adric in ninth century Iceland near a Viking settlement on the edge of a volcano. A settlement whose leader has just found a god in the ice.

The TARDIS crew are soon in a battle with the fearsome Ice Warriors. There are a lot of lives to save… and not just those of their new friends.

The Doctor’s about to find that his biggest battle may be with his own conscience.

Doctor Who - The Eighth Doctor Adventures: Charlotte Pollard - The Further Adventuress

The Eighth Doctor Adventures: Charlotte Pollard – The Further Adventuress

Written by Alan Barnes Lisa McMullin Eddie Robson Nicholas Briggs
Starring Paul McGann and India Fisher

Four new adventures featuring the Eighth Doctor and his Edwardian companion Charlotte Pollard.

The Mummy Speaks! by Alan Barnes

The Carnaval de Paris, 1841. Amid the sideshow tents, the Doctor and Charley discover something truly novel: an Ancient Egyptian mummy that speaks – despite being dead for more than 4,000 years!

But what the mummy has to say translates into terror for the TARDIS twosome… and proclaims doom for the entire world.

Eclipse by Lisa McMullin

The collective noun for a swarm of moths is an eclipse. And when the chittering, nightmarish Hellstrung descend from the forest canopy of planet Pteron, they threaten to snuff out the lives of the human settlers below.

Wanting to know what’s stirred up the Hellstrung, the Doctor and Charley venture deep into the woods as darkness falls.

The Slaying of the Writhing Mass by Eddie Robson

The Doctor and Charley become trapped in a temporal traffic jam, caused by time tourists come to witness the pivotal event in the history of the planet Ileiko: the Slaying of the Writhing Mass, the alien entity that enslaved the Ileikans in their infancy.

The legendary hero Salan killed the Mass with a single stone, setting the Ileikans free. But what was the Mass, exactly? And what if the legend was wrong?

Heart of Orion by Nicholas Briggs

The TARDIS intercepts a strange signal, returning the Doctor and Charley to the Garazone System – where once they had a terrifying encounter with the Cybermen, and foiled a bid to change the course of a terrible android-human war.

Now, people are going missing from all over Garazone Central. The Orion War is far from over, and the Doctor and Charley have landed at the heart of it, again!

February

Doctor Who - The Third Doctor Adventures: The Annihilators

The Third Doctor Adventures: The Annihilators

Written by Nicholas Briggs
Starring Tim Treloar Daisy Ashford

There’s something in the water at Lewgate Docks. Something strange, and green, and deadly. Summoned to the North of England by a mystery informer, the Brigadier finds his investigations hampered at every turn by the local police. Just what are they trying to hide?

While the Doctor uncovers sinister goings-on in the city morgue, Liz attracts the attention of something unearthly. But with Time running out, quite literally, it’ll take more than the combined efforts of the Doctor and UNIT to deal with an alien menace that stands on the cusp of the total destruction of planet Earth…

Doctor Who - The Ninth Doctor Adventures: Old Friends

The Ninth Doctor Adventures: Old Friends

Written by Roy Gill
Starring Christopher Eccleston

Three brand new adventures featuring Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor. Story details to follow.

March

Doctor Who - The Fourth Doctor Adventures: Solo

The Fourth Doctor Adventures: Solo

Starring Tom Baker Nerys Hughes

11.1 Blood of the Time Lords by Timothy X Atack

The book known as The Dischord Grimoire is an incredibly powerful tome, believed capable of altering the true passage of time itself. And the Doctor has it in the TARDIS.

Wanting to look into this mysterious opus further, he decides to take it to an old friend in The Recusary – a monastery-like retreat on a moon of Gallifrey.

But he’s chosen an inauspicious time to arrive. Something else is visiting the Recusary. And this something hasn’t brought a book with it… but death.

11.2 The Ravencliff Witch by David Llewellyn

The TARDIS lands in Ravencliff, a small town on the English coast that stands in the shade of a newly built power station. And that just happens to be haunted.

Every now and then a spectral figure is glimpsed on the beach – the Ravencliff witch. And every time she appears, it’s the prelude to disaster.

The Doctor has to solve the mystery of her appearances if he wants to prevent a catastrophe. But he won’t have to do it alone – as he has the help of Margaret Hopwood, a renowned sculptor destined to play a big part in his life.

April

Doctor Who - The Eighth Doctor Adventures: Stranded 4

The Eighth Doctor Adventures: Stranded 4

Story details yet to be revealed

Doctor Who - The First Doctor Adventures

The First Doctor Adventures (Title to be announced)

Story details yet to be revealed

Dedicated Big Finish listeners can now pre-order a complete bundle of all 2022’s Doctor Who box sets for £274 on collector’s edition CD and £237 on digital download here.

• For loyal listeners who have already pre-ordered the previously-announced Fourth and Fifth Doctor adventures, there is a 10 bundle option here

Please note that Big Finish is currently operating a digital-first release schedule. The mail-out of collector’s edition CDs and limited edition vinyl LPs may be delayed due to factors beyond our control, but all purchases of these releases unlock digital copies that can be immediately downloaded or played on the Big Finish app from the release date. 



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