Big Finish Productions

Big Finish Productions
Private company
Industry Entertainment
Founded 1996[1]
Headquarters Berkshire, UK
Key people
 Jason Haigh-Ellery, MD
Nicholas Briggs, Executive Producer
Kris Griffin, Marketing Consultant
Barnaby Edwards, Casting Director
David Richardson, Producer
Ian Atkins, Producer's Assistant
Xanna Eve Chown, Books Production
Products List of Doctor Who audio plays by Big Finish
List of Dark Shadows audio plays
List of Blake's 7 audio plays
The Avengers (audio drama)
The Prisoner (audio drama)
Website www.bigfinish.com

Big Finish Productions is a British company that produces books and audio plays (released straight to compact disc and for download in mp3 format) based, primarily, on cult[2][3][4] science fiction properties. They are best known for their Doctor Who line; other properties include the characters Judge Dredd and Strontium Dog from 2000 AD, Dark Shadows, Torchwood, Sapphire & Steel, Stargate, Blake's 7, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes character and most recently The Avengers and The Prisoner.

History and organisation

Many of those initially involved in Big Finish had worked on the Audio Visuals fan series of unlicensed Doctor Who audio plays. Big Finish began in 1996 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. In 1999, Big Finish obtained a non-exclusive licence 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 licence to produce hardback Doctor Who short story collections. This licence ended and the collections went out of print. They subsequently returned to Benny books and other Doctor Who spin-offs, but have kept with the hardback format.

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 Finish's Doctor Who range, along with script editor Alan Barnes. In late 2007 David Richardson took over from Sharon Gosling and now holds the title of Producer, organising the schedules across the company's output, as well as having creative responsibility for The Companion Chronicles, Lost Stories and spin off Jago and Litefoot.

On 11 June 2011 Tenth Planet Events hosted the first Big Finish Day in Barking with guests including Colin Baker, Sophie Aldred and Sarah Sutton.[5] On 11 February 2012 a second one was held with guests including Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, Katy Manning, Anneke Wills, Terry Molloy and Paul Darrow.[6] As of September 2015 there have been seven Big Finish Days, with an eighth soon to come.[7]

The Managing Director of the company is Jason Haigh-Ellery.

Downloads

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 large majority of their catalogue in MP3 and M4B format, with very few outstanding exceptions.

In June 2008, Big Finish announced a download subscription service that mirrors its physical CD service. In addition, those who purchase Big Finish productions on CD through the company's website receive access to a complimentary 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.[8] Since then, it has also 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 been made available through SoundCloud.

Available Releases

Doctor Who

The Doctor Who audio plays feature seven of the ten surviving actors to play the character of the Doctor in the series (Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann, John Hurt and David Tennant), as well as many of the regular supporting actors over the many years of the programme.[9] 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 Pertwee's dialogue from the fan-produced Doctor Who video "Devious".

Of the surviving Doctors, Tom Baker for years declined invitations to return to the role. But he eventually changed his mind, having first returned as the Fourth Doctor for the BBC in The Nest Cottage Chronicles, which was made up of three audio series "Hornets Nest, 2009", "Demon Quest, 2010" and "Serpents Quest, 2011", and then for Big Finish audios since 2012. Currently, Christopher Eccleston, Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi (the incumbent) are the only surviving Doctor actors who have yet to reprise their roles in the audio plays.

Previously, Big Finish's licence only covered the original Doctor Who series. However, it was announced on 27 June 2015 that they were now permitted to use characters and themes from the revived series. Prior to that, Big Finish was unable to feature any material from or references to the new series. Before the restriction was lifted, the character of the Ninth Doctor made a silent "off-screen" appearance that affects the plot of 2006's The Kingmaker. A major exception to this restriction was an 11-chapter arc entitled Destiny of the Doctor, produced by Big Finish in conjunction with AudioGO, rights holders to the 2005–present series, which allowed Big Finish to produce storylines featuring the Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Doctors to mark the 50th anniversary of the franchise. In February 2015, Big Finish announced that following a licensing deal with BBC Worldwide, they had been permitted to produce an audio series entitled UNIT: Extinction, starring Kate Stewart played by Jemma Redgrave. The debut of the character on audio marks the second time Big Finish have been actively permitted to utilise material introduced in the 2005 revival. In May 2015, Big Finish announced a new series of Torchwood featuring John Barrowman.[10]

On 27 June 2015, it was announced that Big Finish would produce a line of stories featuring River Song and the Eighth Doctor, as well as stories from Winston Churchill and his interactions with the Doctor. Further it was announced that a special set would be released featuring classic Doctors (in this case, the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Doctors), with new series monsters (The Weeping Angels, the Judoon, the Sycorax, and the Sontarans. The latter story will also connect into the Time War. According to Big Finish's website, their licence extends no further than The Time of the Doctor. Therefore, they cannot feature the Twelfth Doctor or anything introduced in his era.[11]

Developments in the 2005 revival TV series also impacted the availability of certain characters. For example, Big Finish was no longer allowed to use the character of Davros following his return to the series in 2008, although this restriction has since been lifted and Davros returned to Big Finish in The Curse of Davros, released in January 2012. Prior to the character being featured in the new series, he had been used in several plays, portrayed by Terry Molloy, who played Davros in three TV serials in the 1980s. In a 2008 podcast, Nicholas Briggs explained that all scripts are sent through the TV show's offices in Cardiff to prevent any potential conflicts in continuity.[12] One reason for the restriction was that BBC Audiobooks has, since 2008, been producing its own exclusive-to-audio stories featuring the Fourth, Tenth and Eleventh Doctors, Sarah Jane Smith, and Torchwood, as well as releasing full-cast audio dramas (similar to Big Finish's format) based upon Torchwood. However, despite BBC Audio also producing an ongoing series of Fourth Doctor adventures, this has not affected Big Finish's ability to feature the character as well. The return of Sarah Jane Smith to the continuity of the TV series, and subsequent The Sarah Jane Adventures spin-off, resulted in the character no longer being available to Big Finish (forcing the cancellation of an ongoing Sarah Jane Smith audio series). According to Briggs, permission from Russell T Davies, producer and creator of The Sarah Jane Adventures, had been secured that would have allowed the character and actress Elisabeth Sladen to return to Big Finish for a series of stories alongside Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor, but Sladen's illness and death in April 2011 put an end to those plans.[13]

The return of Doctor Who to television in 2005 did not have an immediate impact on the audio plays, save that the grouping of Eighth Doctor adventures into "seasons" ceased and subsequent releases starring McGann were 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, and has continued to appear in standalone releases as of 2013.

Six of the earliest Eighth Doctor dramas were broadcast in BBC 7's The 7th Dimension slot between August 2005 and January 2006: these were Storm Warning, Sword of Orion, The Stones of Venice, Invaders from Mars, Shada and The Chimes of Midnight. (Minuet in Hell, originally released on CD between The Stones of Venice and Invaders from Mars, was judged unsuitable for the timeslot.) All six of these stories were rebroadcast on BBC7 beginning in July 2006 and again in September 2007.

In September 2006, Doctor Who Magazine announced that Big Finish would be producing a new eight-part audio miniseries featuring the Eighth Doctor and new companion Lucie Miller (played by Sheridan Smith), set later in the character's chronology (i.e. after he has parted ways with then-'current' companions Charley Pollard and C'rizz). The miniseries was broadcast on BBC 7 beginning on New Year's Eve 2006 and subsequently released on CD. Each episode was 50 minutes long; most were one-part stories, with two-parters beginning and ending the miniseries. A second series was released in 2008, with six of the eight titles broadcast on BBC 7. Meanwhile, the Eighth Doctor's 'earlier' stories were concluded and retired from the main range in 2007, with the release of The Girl Who Never Was. A third series of the Eighth Doctor's adventures was released in 2009. The episodes were initially released for sale as downloadable 30-minute weekly instalments, and released on CD later in the year. Several of these episodes were broadcast on BBC 7's successor, BBC Radio 4 Extra. A fourth, and final, series was released in 2010, with a follow-up box set, Dark Eyes, released in November 2012. An sequel anthology titled Dark Eyes 2 was released in February 2014, and will be followed by Dark Eyes 3 in November 2014 and Dark Eyes 4 in February 2015.

The relationship of Big Finish's productions in to the ongoing story of the television series has previously been unclear. Unlike, for example, Paramount Pictures, which has a rule that only live-action televised or filmed Star Trek productions are canonical, the BBC have always resisted making such an announcement regarding Doctor Who—importantly, the BBC's charter prohibits situations where television viewers must be required to purchase merchandise in order to follow the story. The Big Finish audio productions (and print spin-offs) has traditionally existed in something of a 'grey area' in terms of canon, although in the 2013 mini-episode of the TV series titled "Night of the Doctor", featuring Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor, previous companions that have only appeared in the Big Finish Audio Adventures are mentioned by name. Most recently, however, in Issue 59 of Big Finish's 'Vortex' magazine Nicholas Briggs stated that the audio dramas have always been canonical.

Big Finish also published 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 licence was granted to Big Finish, who took over the name and produced them until their licence to publish such stories was revoked in the spring of 2009. Big Finish currently continues to produce audio-only Short Trips productions.

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).

In 2016, Big Finish's licence to produce Doctor Who audios was extended to 20 June 2025.[14]

Characters, actors, and villains
Along with the Doctors from the original series, most of their companions have returned. These include Tegan Jovanka (Janet Fielding), Nyssa (Sarah Sutton), Turlough (Mark Strickson), Peri (Nicola Bryant), Mel (Bonnie Langford), Ace (Sophie Aldred) and Donna Noble (Catherine Tate). All the surviving actors who have played the companions of the respective Doctors in Big Finish have appeared, with the exception of Jackie Lane who played the First Doctor's companion Dodo Chaplet. However, although Daphne Ashbrook who played Dr Grace Holloway in the television movie has appeared alongside Paul McGann, due to the fact that Big Finish do not hold the rights to any of the characters created in the collaborative production, she played a different role.

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), Lucie Miller (Sheridan Smith), C'rizz (Conrad Westmaas), "Hex" (Philip Olivier) and Flip (Phillipa) Jackson (Lisa Greenwood). 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 in the preferred 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. One release also saw the audio debuts of comic strip character Izzy Sinclair, and the BBC novels' Fitz Kreiner, played by Jemima Rooper and Matt Di Angelo respectively.

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; the UNIT series; the Iris Wildthyme series starring Katy Manning; the Sarah Jane Smith series and the I, Davros 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, or had been a woman), collectively titled Doctor Who Unbound. This has allowed them to cast other actors in the role of the Doctor, including Sir Derek Jacobi, Arabella Weir and David Warner. In 2013, following the death of original Romana actress Mary Tamm, Big Finish introduced a previously unknown third incarnation of Romana, played by American actress Juliet Landau.

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 three Doctor Who audios, namely Project: Twilight, Project: Lazarus, and Project: Destiny, all written by Cavan Scott and Mark Wright. There were hints of the Forge's influence in the subsequent audios Cryptobiosis, written by Elliot Thorpe and The Gathering by Joseph Lidster. Project: Destiny concludes the Forge storyline for the time being.

Other spin-off series include Jago & Litefoot, featuring characters from the 1970s storyline The Talons of Weng-Chiang; Counter-Measures, featuring a group of scientists featured in 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks; and Vienna, focusing on an assassin named Vienna Salvatori (played by former Star Trek: Deep Space Nine actress Chase Masterson) who was introduced in the Seventh Doctor audio drama The Shadow Heart.

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. Shearman's 2005 TV episode Dalek has been acknowledged as being based upon his Big Finish storyline Jubilee.

Former adversaries of the Doctor who have reappeared in the audio plays include the Master, the Cybermen, the Daleks and Davros (both separately and together), Omega, the Nimon, the Ice Warriors, the Autons, the Zarbi and the Silurians. The Sea Devils made an appearance in the Bernice Summerfield play Bernice Summerfield and the Poison Seas, and the Draconians have also appeared. In 2011 the Sontarans made their first appearance.

2000 AD

Between 2002 and 2004, Big Finish released eighteen audio plays featuring characters from the British sci-fi comic strip anthology magazine 2000 AD. These consisted of sixteen Judge Dredd stories with two additional plays featuring characters from the Strontium Dog strip.

When initially announced, the intention was for the series to consist of stories based upon three strips with Rogue Trooper joining Judge Dredd and Strontium Dog. The first story to feature Rogue Trooper was supposed to be Nordland Calling by Gordon Rennie, but this was abandoned due to difficulties in creating the character’s unique personalities in the audio medium successfully on Big Finish’s limited budget and cast.

The Judge Dredd series drew heavily upon Big Finish’s repertory company established through their Doctor Who series with many actors crossing over such as Toby Longworth (who voiced Dredd), Clare Buckfield, Nicholas Briggs, Mark Donovan and Teresa Gallagher who voiced Chief Judge Hershey. The series would also feature many special guest stars such as The League of Gentlemen's Mark Gatiss playing Judge Death, Doctor Who companion actress Nicola Bryant (who would also direct 99 Code Red!) plus Blake's 7 star Stephen Greif as Efil Drago San. Writers for the series included David Bishop, Dave Stone and James Swallow.

For the Strontium Dog audio plays, Shaun of the Dead star Simon Pegg was cast in the leading role of Johnny Alpha with Longworth voicing his partner Wulf Sternhammer and Mark McDonnell taking on the role of Middenface McNulty. Despite critical acclaim, the sales of the first Strontium Dog release, Down to Earth, were disappointing and Big Finish focused almost exclusively on the better-selling Judge Dredd series. Writer Jonathan Clements would pen another Strontium Dog story for the series though with Fire from Heaven before the sixteenth play in the 2000 AD range, Pre-Emptive Revenge. This featured a crossover, with Johnny Alpha teaming up alongside Dredd in the aftermath of the Judgement Day storyline.

The final release in the 2000 AD series was a Judge Dredd play entitled Solo by Jonathan Clements, notable for star Toby Longworth voicing every single part through a combination of his own vocal dexterity and special effects.

A series of four talking books, entitled Judge Dredd: The Crime Chronicles, were released in 2009, with Longworth again performing as Dredd.

Blake's 7

In July 2011, Big Finish obtained a licence to produce audiobooks and novels based on the BBC television series Blake's 7.[15] On 1 February 2012, the first collection of audiobooks, Blake's 7: The Liberator Chronicles, was released featuring original cast members from the television series.[16] Since then two series of full cast audio dramas have been released.[17]

Earthsearch

Earthsearch was a BBC Radio 4 radio series written by James Follett which was later adapted as a science fiction novel. However, his prequel novel Earthsearch 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.

Former Releases

The Tomorrow People

Big Finish also produced and sold 5 seasons of The Tomorrow People audios until renewed licence negotiations failed in late 2007, the range was withdrawn in total in December 2008.[18]

Other productions

Big Finish has released audio dramas based upon other works as well, including Sherlock Holmes, Dark Shadows, Stargate, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Avengers,[19]Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, classic dramas, and also a line of works featuring newly written plays. In 2010-11, the company also received the rights to distribute AudioGO's Doctor Who product. An animated short featuring Benny Summerfield and an animated recreation of two missing episodes from the Doctor Who story The Reign of Terror are among the company's other endeavours.

In 2015 Big Finish produced its first series of Torchwood stories, produced by James Goss (producer) See (Torchwood (Big Finish series))

In 2016 Big Finish produced and released its first series of The Prisoner stories, written and directed by Nicholas Briggs and starring Mark Elstrob in the Patrick McGoohan role.

Warhammer

Big Finish is one of the production companies behind the Games Workshop Warhammer audios. These are often voiced by Toby Longworth and contain music and SFX by Jamie Robertson, Howard Carter, Toby Hrycek-Robinson and Steve Foxon with regular direction by Lisa Bowerman.

See also

References

External links

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