Audio Drama

Doctor Who: The Ninth Doctor Adventures
1.1 Ravagers 1: Sphere of Freedom

My Doctor Who 60th anniversary celebratory marathon now officially moves into the nuWho era — although the War Doctor is an entirely nuWho concept, so, y’know — but here is where nuWho actually began: with the Ninth Doctor.

Finding “things I’d never experienced” for some of the Modern Who Doctors was a challenge — having lived through those eras, I saw all the main stuff as it happened. Therefore, it has to be tie-in media for them; but that’s still tricky when it comes to the Ninth Doctor, because his era was so short-lived. Not only did I see all of his TV episodes, I read several of the tie-in novels (perhaps all of them; I forget — it was almost 20 years ago!) and DWM comic strips (again, I definitely read some, perhaps all). Fortunately, the last couple of years have seen Christopher Eccleston give in and start recording new adventures for Big Finish — and, somehow, I’ve made it all this way into my 60th celebrations without listening to a single Big Finish production! Perfect timing, then. (In fairness, I probably would’ve listened to one for the Eighth Doctor if it weren’t for them being almost my only option for the Ninth Doctor. I didn’t decide on these texts in chronological order, y’know. Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey.)

Somewhat as an aside to the actual listening, this choice brings up the issue of how I number Big Finish releases on here — by which I mean the "1x01" bit before the episode title. I'm often unsure how to go about that with Big Finish titles, in part because they seem to provoke the confusion themselves. I mean, when they announced Eccleston would be back for a second series with them, a lot of people were confused, because hadn't they just released a second box set and a third was on the way? But no, you see, because box sets 1 to 4 were his first series, and now he was doing four more, which would be a second series. Okay? Except each of those first four sets has its own title, as well as individual titles for the episodes in the set — so what makes them a series split into four sets, rather than just four sets? What makes the fifth box the start of a "new series" and not just a fifth set in a run of at least eight sets? And bearing all this in mind, does that mean that (for example) the first episode in the second box is actually episode 1x04, not 2x01? Or is it neither — is it Respond to All Calls 1x01? But, hold on, isn't it just part of series one...?

In short: argh! I don't know if they do this deliberately and revel in it, because there's definitely a part of Who fandom that seems to delight in how messy the canon is — you know, how something like Trial of a Time Lord can simultaneously be one story and four stories. Or perhaps they just don't think about it, and are happy to write whatever they think sounds best in any given press release. Who knows. I've gone with the slightly messy layout that I've gone with, because it's actually clearer than some others I tried, and it broadly reflects the numbering on the boxes themselves (the first four are just number 1 to 4, but "series two" are labelled 2.1 to 2.4. I've not bought any "series three" yet).