Time’s Champions
Big Finish celebrate 20 years of Doctor Who on audio with box set The Legacy Of Time
Audio drama production company Big Finish celebrates 20 years of Doctor Who releases with The Legacy Of Time. The box set brings together six Doctors and numerous companions and recurring characters to face a threat to time itself.
All of the living Doctors from the classic era appear, as do Paul McGann’s Eighth Doctor and Tim Treloar’s take on the Third Doctor. “It’s six one-hour dramas”, says Producer David Richardson. “Each features a different Doctor. At first the stories seem standalone, but as you get further into the set, the different strands get tighter and tighter and you’ll start to see how things have been linked all along.”
Although the stories are separate, that doesn’t mean the various incarnations of the Time Lord never meet. “It was a balancing act. We’re taking a different approach to our previous multi-Doctor story, The Light At The End, but we do bring the Doctors together and give the listeners the payoff that they want to hear.” Meanwhile, the nature of the temporal threat allows for plenty of unusual character pairings. “People who shouldn’t meet are brought together. The Fifth Doctor encounters his daughter Jenny; The Eighth Doctor meets River Song again; the two different eras of [Who spinoff ] Countermeasures are united. Time is going wrong, which is all part of a bigger plot.”
Despite the scale of the story, Richardson says you can listen to it without having memorised the minutiae of the company’s 250-plus Doctor Who CDs. Still, there are treats in store for long-term listeners. “I was keen to have Easter eggs for fans,” he says. “If you’ve been listening to Big Finish for 20 years, or even just a few years, there are things in there that will bring a big smile to your face.” WS
The Legacy Of Time is released on download and limited edition CD box set in July.