“Doctor Who: Absent Friends” Takes Win at BBC Audio Awards
By Ani Bundel
The BBC Audio Awards were held over the weekend, and a big congrats is in order to Big Finish and their winning radio play “Doctor Who: Absent Friends”
On Sunday, the BBC’s annual Audio Drama Awards were held in Radio Theatre at Broadcasting House. The annual awards show, which was created back in 2011 to help showcase radio dramas, which are still highly popular in the UK, even as the advent of television and the internet have pushed them almost out of existence elsewhere. It also helps highlight the shows played on BBC’s in house radio stations, namely Radio 3 and Radio 4.
The award ceremony, hosted by Sir Lenny Henry and BBC’s director of radio and music Bob Shennan, was mostly filled with categories that went to the aforementioned Radio stations, especially to The Sky is Wider, which was produced by Radio 4. But the BBC didn’t overlook Doctor Who. Though the radio plays and audio dramas are produced by Big Finish, the television version of Doctor Who is one of the BBC’s biggest draws.
In a category seemingly almost designed for Big Finish to own, the “Online Only Radio Dramas”, there were actually two Whoniverse nominees, both by Big Finish.
The Eighth Doctor and his companions in the Doom Coalition Series (Credit: Big Finish)
The winning story was “Absent Friends” which was written by John Dorney, and is part of the Doom Coalition 3 box set that was released in back in September 2016. This audio series is notable for starring Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor and Alex Kingston as River Song, which is a pairing fans had been long fanficcing over.
Also nominated in the category: the Torchwood based audio drama “More Than This” which is also by Big Finish. Rounding out the nominees was Baker’s End: The King Of Cats, from Bafflegab Productions, which also happened to star Tom Baker, as well as Katy Manning, who played the Third Doctor’s companion Jo Grant.
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Congrats to Big Finish on their win! We can wait to see what they bring us in 2017.