A Guide to the Big Finish Early Years - Part One: 1999

My favorite period of Big Finish's long span of twenty years on this planet is probably the early years. What are the early years you may be asking? Well, I'll tell you throughout this series! The Early Years is basically the period between 1998 and 2006 when Gary Russell was the executive producer of the company.

This means Gary Russell's reign as executive producer oversaw a pretty sizeable chunk of the spin-offs on offer at Big Finish today such as I, Davros, Dalek Empire, Cyberman, Bernice Summerfield, Gallifrey, Sarah Jane Smith, UNIT, and so on so forth. However, those are topics for another day. Throughout this series, we will be instead looking at the audio dramas he produced in the Doctor Who Monthly Range. So now, if you'll allow me to do so, let me take you on a journey back in time to 1999, when the first three Doctor Who audio dramas were released.

The first of the three audios released in 1999 was The Sirens of Time penned by none other than Nicholas "Voice of Everybody in the Universe" Briggs. It's a multi-Doctor story that sees the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Doctor deal with a time anomaly that poses a threat to Gallifrey. It's a pretty solid script, even if it plays it super safe, and it is possible to enjoy it... if you're used to the audio medium. Yeah, the thing that really drags this story down is the acting and sound design. Everybody in the cast except for Nicholas Briggs, Peter Davison, and Colin Baker seems to be pretty unsure about voice acting and it causes this huge contrast between the actors that's pretty distracting. The sound design isn't particularly good either as this is Big Finish fresh out from their Audio Visuals origins, so they're still learning here. But speaking as someone who happened to listen to this as one of their first audios, I'd say skip it and come back to it later. Though it's a solid script, it's not a solid delivery of said script.

Next up is Phantasmagoria which was written by Mark Gatiss... yes, that Mark Gatiss. It's the first of two audio plays he wrote for Big Finish and it's possibly the best story that he has written for Doctor Who, which really isn't saying much. It sees Five and Turlough land in the early eighteenth century as a bunch of disappearances and murders happen, the only thing linking them being the victims lost games of cards to a mysterious man named Sir Nicholas Valentine. Despite some of my less than favorable opinions about Gatiss's work, I admit this script is actually pretty good, most of the characters are pretty enjoyable and Mark's humor actually works wonders for this story. As far as acting and sound design goes, it's a lot better than the last one. Everybody in the cast has distinct voices and are confident about the production this time 'round which really makes the story that much more enjoyable. The sound design, however, isn't quite there yet. Though it's a major improvement over what we got in The Sirens of Time, there's just something missing, and it stays like that until The Fearmonger, which I'll be discussing in the next time. Overall the script is yet another solid one, even if it once again play it safe and isn't too experimental. Unlike The Sirens of Time, however, it has the acting and sound design to back it up and therefore offers a more enjoyable experience. While it's not the greatest, I think everybody should be kind and give it a go as there isn't really any excuse not to. For God's sake, it's 2.99 on the Big Finish website and free with the Spotify Web Player or (if you listen to Spotify on mobile) free with your Spotify subscription.


The final audio to be released in 1999 was written by Justin Richards and is called Whispers of Terror... By God, he tried. Whispers of Terror is technically the first "experimental" Big Finish story as it deals with a monster made entirely out of sound, which is an interesting idea but the script fails to deliver. The story takes the form of this boring political murder mystery/scandal thing that involves a museum of sound recordings and, as previously mentioned, a creature made completely out of sound. The acting is pretty alright, not particularly amazing, just alright, and it doesn't play any part in the killing of this story. What kills the story is the script and the sound design. There isn't anything in the script that's particularly engaging. It doesn't grasp the listener's attention, a lot of the characters blend into each other and it's just generally bland. The sound design is also not only back to square one, it's back to square negative one. People don't usually realize this when talking about audio drama as a medium, but the acting can be all over the place as long as the script and the sound design are good, mainly because those are the factors that keep you gripped and in this story both fail to deliver. It's a nice concept, but the entire production feels less than half-baked and just doesn't work because of it.

Anyway, those are the first three audios from the Doctor Who Monthly Range. While it is a bit of a rough spot in Big Finish's history, you have to cut them a bit of slack. They were still a brand new company that was mostly run by inexperienced fanboys who, at that point, only just had the actual license to the Doctor Who brand thrown at them out of nowhere. They were still a company finding the footing and it really shows in their first few releases, but rest assured it only gets better from here on out. They wouldn't have lasted this long if it didn't. So, join me next time where we'll delve into the first full year of the Monthly Range audios and see the first golden age of Big Finish start to come into existence. Until then, this is Brian signing off!