A Quick Introduction to Big Finish Doctor Who, Part Four

Shortly before the 50th anniversary I watched a Doctor Who webisode, not expecting much of it. It started normally; a woman was in trouble and trying to get help, but then the Doctor entered and he was played by Paul McGann rather than Matt Smith. For a lot of people this was their first introduction to the Eighth Doctor, or at least it was their first reintroduction in a very long time. Soon people were demanding more, signing petitions, and saying a Doctor that good deserves more than one episode.  He had more than one episode. He actually he had over 80 episodes, they just weren't on TV.

The Eighth Doctor in his incredibly impressive TARDIS console room

Shortly after Big Finish had started producing Doctor Who plays they decided they wanted to try making stories with Paul McGann's short lived Eighth Doctor. The problem was that McGann had only done one episode, which was poorly received by Doctor Who fans. Everyone assumed that he would be bitter, or at least that he would want no part of it. It turned out that they were quite wrong, McGann loved Doctor Who and was only really sad that he didn't get to do more.

The Eighth Doctor's second outfit.

They had the rights to his Doctor as part of their deal with the BBC, but the Doctor Who movie had been made in part in the states and the rights to all the original characters belonged to Fox, and so Big Finish had to start over, which was probably for the best. Everyone involved was really excited; finally they had a chance to produce new episodes of Doctor Who, and they could really explore what happened to the Doctor after it got cancelled. The novels had already been doing this, but this was different since it had the actors and television writers involved. As a result of this the Eighth Doctor stories are different than the other dramas they produced. For all the other Doctor's I've only covered stories from the first 50, but these ones divide very nicely into four phases and so I will discuss the whole series.

Who is the Eighth Doctor? 

For a guy with only one episode he sure has a lot of costumes.

The Eighth Doctor makes me feel somewhat like a hypocrite. He has a lot of the qualities that annoyed me about the Tenth Doctor, and yet he's one of my favourites. He's a breathless enthusiastic Edwardian adventurer, which probably explains why he has had two companions from that time period. He has an innocence and joy that a lot of the Doctors lack, and yet he is also filled with a sorrow that doesn't overcome his enthusiasm. This is where I think he differs from the Tenth Doctor; Ten's happiness often feels forced, as though he is a depressed person trying to act cheerful. Eight, on the other hand, is genuinely cheerful, he's just also genuinely sad. He has experienced more tragedy than any other incarnation of the Doctor, and yet he still manages to be thrilled by the adventure.

The Early Adventures

The Doctor and Charley Pollard

These are the ones made during the same time as all the other stories I've discussed. The Doctor leaps into action on R101 and quickly meets his first companion, a young Edwardian adventuress named Charley Pollard. Charley was meant to die on the R101 which leads to all sorts of problems for the two of them. This is the least story based of all of the Eighth Doctor's adventures, but still has enough of a story line that I'd suggest listening to Storm Warning first.  Chimes of Midnight is one of the best things Big Finish has ever produced. Listen to it.
Highlights: Storm Warning, The Stones of Venice, Chimes of Midnight, Seasons of Fear, Neverland
Best Avoided: Minuet in Hell, Time of the Daleks

The Divergent Universe

The Doctor, Charley, and C'rizz

The Doctor and Charley find a universe of Anti-Time and things get a bit weird. Charley and the Doctor are sent into an alternate universe where there is no perception of time and no familiar enemies or allies. The worlds are all experiments conducted by someone much more powerful, and the Doctor and Charley have no familiar tricks or tools at their disposal as they explore them. This shouldn't be a bad thing, but it mostly is. The stories are extremely experimental, which is fine, except most of the experiments fail. And the Doctor goes from being cheerful and extremely likable with an edge of sadness and anger, to angry and depressed. He loses everything that made his incarnation so great. There are a couple good stories, but mostly this should be avoided.

During this time the Doctor gets a second companion named C'rizz, who's a genetically engineered serial killer monk. The less said about that the better. I think the idea was to add some edge and moral ambiguity by adding a companion who does evil actions that he doesn't appear to truly want to do, but it's mostly just annoying.

The other problem with the Divergent Universe arc is that it's supposed to run for four seasons, but only got two. In 2005 something significant happened, Doctor Who came back on TV and Big Finish decided that they needed to have the most recent Doctor be more accessible in case anyone wanted to listen to him, and swiftly brought him out of the Divergent Universe. This was unfortunate as the writers were just starting to find their stride with the Divergent Universe stories, and since it meant that they had to shove two seasons into one story which made the conclusion very confusing.

After this there were more stories in the regular universe, but I'm including them here as they still continued a lot of the Divergent themes and plots, and since a bunch of them were slightly rewritten Divergent stories anyway.

Highlights: Natural History of Fear, The Last. Terror Firma, Other Lives, Memory Lane, The Girl Who Never Was

The Eighth Doctor Adventures

The Doctor and Lucie Miller

The Doctor arrives on a dying planet in the midst of evacuation and meets a man who claims its all an alien conspiracy. This is all fairly routine for him, but more oddly he also finds a young woman name Lucie Miller who he's never met before standing in his TARDIS. She claims that the Time Lords have sent her to him as part of a witness protection program, although she doesn't know what she witnessed or why she needs protection.

This is essentially Big Finish trying out the new Doctor Who series format. They cut down the long stories to 50 minutes each, and have huge complex season finales, and it works remarkably well. The Doctor is back, and even better than he used to be, and his new Lucie Miller is pretty great too. The Eighth Doctor is a man who has lost almost all of his companions and yet he still manages to have a youthful enthusiasm and love of the thrill of adventure. The Eighth Doctor was fun again.

That is not to say that they are without flaws. It has an over-reliance on classic series villains, and some of the plot points in the finales make little sense. Some of the stories also could have been better served by being a bit longer. So really it has a lot of the strengths and weaknesses of the new Doctor Who series. These stories largely ignore everything that came earlier, making them a great jumping on point for new listeners.

Since these all have season arcs I will be listing necessary episodes rather than the highlights. These are not necessarily the best, but are the most essential in order to understand the story.

Season 1: Blood of the Daleks, Horror of Glam Rock, Human Resources
Season 2: Grand Theft Cosmos, The Zygon Who Fell to Earth, Sisters of the Flame, Vengeance of Morbius
Season 3: Orbis, Hothouse, The Eight Truths, Worldwide Web
Season 4: Death in Blackpool, Situation Vacant, The Book of Kells, Deimos, The Resurrection of Mars, An Earthly Child, Relative Dimensions, Lucie Miller, To the Death

Dark Eyes

The Doctor and Molly O'Sullivan 

The Eighth Doctor Adventures end very tragically. The Doctor is alone again and finding it harder than ever to go on, and so he decides to go to the end of the universe to see if there are answers there. He's stopped by the Time Lords who give him a new job, there is a woman in World War I who the Daleks want for some reason. The Doctor needs to find her and protect her. He begrudgingly agrees and soon finds himself wrapped up in something much bigger than he expected. This is a different format again; the whole series is done in box sets of 4 stories each that work together to make a larger adventure. It's sometimes hit or miss, but overall is really good stuff. And it's largely helped by having one of the best companions he's had yet, a WWI nurse. These stories also follow The Eighth Doctor Adventures pretty directly, so it's probably the worst starting point for new listeners.