Big Finish Lost Stories

Big Finish Lost Stories

The Lost Stories was a range of Doctor Who audios released by Big Finish Productions from 2009 to 2013. It took scripts or story treatments that had been officially proposed to the BBC from 1963 to 1990, converted them into audio-appropriate scripts and recorded them with as many of the original cast members as possible. The line was wholly separate from their monthly Doctor Who and the Companion Chronicles ranges. During the production of this series, The Doctors and companions involved continued to be as active as they normally were in other ranges. The series ended in 2013 as Big Finish had effectively mined every existing unmade story of the classic era within a reasonable stage of development, and in order to focus on The Early Adventures, which tells new stories using a similar format to that used for the First, Second and Third Doctor ranges here. Each release features a reversible cover, the reverse evoking the format of the covers to the Target novelisations of the 1970s.

CONTENTS

CONCEPT

The idea of creating a series completing lost adventures had not been one unconsidered by Big Finish from the start – however, it was largely believed that a series based off of unoriginal material would not sell. The release and success of the Stage Play series, which adapted plays like The Ultimate Adventure into audio sories, put these thoughts at odds, as it soon became clear that fans were very eager to see these legendary lost tales brought to life.

Big Finish expanded the ambition of the range soon after announcing it. As the range developed, it changed from being about “the season 23 that never was ” to more generally producing a whole range of never-made television stories. Big Finish released stories for every classic Doctor except for The Doctor, whose unmade stories represent early drafts of The TV Movie and the concept of a reboot series. Stories involving the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Doctors were full cast audios, while stories from the First, Second, and Third Doctors’ eras had a format more akin to the “enhanced audiobooks” of the Companion Chronicles range, although featuring a greater number of voice actors and instead told from a third person viewpoint.

The key factor for the producers was that the stories in this range must have at some point been officially proposed to the BBC. In some instances, the scripts produced by Big Finish were essentially those that had been delivered to the BBC, in others, they were wholly written for Big Finish based upon story ideas that had been proposed to the script orof the era. In a few cases, finished scripts like The Song of Megaptera (originally titled The Song of the Space Whale) were tweaked for the audio medium. In others, as with Leviathan, they were more substantially altered.

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Thanks to Liam Carey and Matthew Turner for their reviews