List of Doctor Who: The Classic Series audio plays by Big Finish
This is a list of audio productions based on the classic era of the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who produced by Big Finish Productions.
Cast
The dramas feature both former actors who portrayed the Doctor and his companions, and new continuing characters as well as elements from other spin-off media. The canonicity of the audio dramas, as with other Doctor Who spin-off media, is unclear. To date, productions have featured the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Doctors portrayed by their original actors.Big Finish's current licence from the BBC allows it to produce audio dramas featuring the first thirteen incarnations of the Doctor and associated characters introduced into the series between 1963 and 2022.
Nearly all of the companions from the original series have appeared, voiced by their original actors. They include Susan, Ian Chesterton, Vicki, Steven Taylor, Sara Kingdom, Polly, Jamie McCrimmon, Victoria Waterfield, Zoe Heriot, Jo Grant, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, Sergeant Benton, Mike Yates, Leela, K9, Romana I, Romana II, Adric, Nyssa, Tegan Jovanka, Vislor Turlough, Peri Brown, Melanie Bush and Ace.
Several actors who played the Doctor and companions of previous Doctors have appeared in other roles, including Russell, O'Brien, Marsh, Wills, Watling, Padbury, Caroline John, Manning, Elisabeth Sladen, Leeson, Daphne Ashbrook, Tennant and Bernard Cribbins. Sladen also reprised Sarah Jane Smith in a spin-off series simply entitled Sarah Jane Smith. Sladen never appeared as Sarah alongside any incarnation of the Doctor for Big Finish; a series with Tom Baker was planned, but was never recorded due to Sladen's untimely death in April 2011.
Initially Matthew Waterhouse declined to reprise the role of Adric so the character was recast and played by Andrew Sachs as an older version of the character. Waterhouse later returned to the role on an ongoing basis.
Big Finish also started The Companion Chronicles series of plays, featuring a companion or friend of the Doctor and a supporting cast member. Ford, Russell, O'Brien, Purves, Marsh, Wills, Hines, Watling, Padbury, Manning, Jameson, Tamm, Ward, Sutton, Strickson and Aldred have all reprised their roles in this series along with John.
As well as this, Big Finish started the Doctor Who: The Early Adventures series of full-cast plays, featuring the First Doctor and the Second Doctor, and companions Barbara Wright and Ben Jackson, and Russell, Ford, O'Brien, Purves, Marsh, Wills, Hines, Watling and Padbury reprising their roles from the original series. They also started The Third Doctor Adventures series of full-cast plays, featuring Tim Treloar recast as the Third Doctor, Manning as Jo, and Franklin as Yates.
New companions created for the audio series include Evelyn Smythe, Charley Pollard, Erimem, Hex Schofield, C'rizz, Lucie Miller, Thomas Brewster, Abby, Tamsin Drew, Elizabeth Elizabeth Klein, Flip Jackson, Molly O'Sullivan, Liv Chenka, Helen Sinclair and Constance Clarke. Lisa Bowerman has appeared as Bernice Summerfield, a companion from the Virgin New Adventures, in several Doctor Who audio dramas as well as in original productions with her as the central character. Robert Jezek and Jemima Rooper have appeared as Frobisher and Izzy Sinclair, companions from the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip, Travis Oliver and Yasmin Bannerman have portrayed companions Roz Forrester and Chris Cwej from the Virgin New Adventures, and Matt Di Angelo has played Fitz Kreiner, a companion from the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures.
Charley, C'rizz, Lucie, Tamsin and Molly were all referenced by name in the mini-episode "The Night of the Doctor".
Broadcast
In 2005, six of the audio dramas featuring Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor were broadcast on the digital radio station BBC 7: Storm Warning, Sword of Orion, The Stones of Venice, Invaders from Mars, Shada, and The Chimes of Midnight. These plays were rebroadcast on BBC7 beginning in July 2006. The Chimes of Midnight was repeated again as part of "The New Eighth Doctor Adventures" Series 1 & 2 in 2009.In January 2007, a new series of Eighth Doctor audio adventures was broadcast on BBC7. These starred McGann alongside Sheridan Smith as the aforementioned new companion Lucie Miller. There were eight 50-minute episodes in total; the first and last stories were two-parters, and the rest were single episodes. These adventures have since been released on CD. In 2008, BBC7 broadcast the second series of The New Eighth Doctor Adventures bar the final two-part story. All fourteen episodes were then repeated in 2009, and the final two-part story later that year. Big Finish has gone on to produce two further series of these Adventures, and four selected stories from the third series were aired in 2010, with BBC Radio 4 Extra skipping ahead to the fourth series in early 2013.
In May/June 2011, BBC Radio 4 Extra broadcast the Fifth Doctor stories Cobwebs, The Whispering Forest, and Cradle of the Snake. In May/June 2012, these were followed by the Seventh Doctor stories A Thousand Tiny Wings, Survival of the Fittest, Klein's Story and The Architects of History. For the fiftieth anniversary of the show, BBC Radio 4 Extra repeated several stories and broadcast two new stories; Protect and Survive starring Sylvester McCoy and 1963: Fanfare for the Common Men starring Peter Davison. In May 2015, BBC Radio 4 Extra broadcast the first series of Fourth Doctor Adventures starring Tom Baker and Louise Jameson. In 2016, the station broadcast a run of Sixth Doctor adventures: The Crimes of Thomas Brewster, Industrial Evolution and The Curse of Davros.