Doctor Who Audio: Over 30 Episodes From Big Finish Now Streaming For Free
By James Aggas
Don’t know where to start with Big Finish’s audio adventures of Doctor Who? Don’t worry: many are now available to listen to for free!
As you can probably tell from my ongoing reviews, I do enjoy my Big Finish audios. Not only are they a great way of listening to more stories of my favourite Doctors, they also keep up a high level of consistently brilliant drama. A lot of my potential TV viewing gets taken up just by listening to Big Finish.
However, for newcomers, the sheer size of their catalog could be off-putting. What doesn’t help is how much their stories can cost to purchase. Many of the early adventures are as cheap as £2.99, but many later ones are considerably more expensive. If you want to give Big Finish a try, it’s not only difficult to know where to start but also risky to purchase a product you’re not even sure you’ll enjoy.
Thankfully, there are some stories that you can stream for free. Quite a lot, in fact. As io9 have helpfully pointed out, a number of Doctor Who audio stories and spin-offs can now be streamed on Spotify. Best of all, a rather handy list by Redditor electricmastro lists all the stories currently available to listen to.
There are a huge number of recommendations that I could make based on this list. Just the spin-offs alone are fantastic and well worth a listen.
Jago & Litefoot is a wonderful series that focuses on two brilliant characters from Tom Baker classic, The Talons of Weng-Chiang. Dalek Empire feels like a mix of the distinctive tone and feel of sixties Dalek stories, with the kind of human drama you’d expect from the Battlestar Galactica reboot. And I’ve already gone into great detail about how excellent I, Davros is.
The Eighth Doctor meets Lucie Miller in ‘Blood of the Daleks: Part One’. (Credit: Big Finish)
But I think I’ll keep my recommendations focused for those more experienced to New Who. The single best recommendation I can make for New Who fans is easily the first season of the Eighth Doctor Adventures. I’ll be reviewing these in much more detail soon. For the moment, however, I’ll just cover how they really are the perfect jumping-on point.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve never seen the Classic Series, as it’s made to be as accessible as the start of the New Series. The stories are told at a faster pace and feel “modern”. Overall, this is a nice way of diving into the series without worrying too much about continuity. It also retains the feel of the New Series very well while still nicely reminding us that it takes place a good while before. The series begins with Blood of the Daleks: Part One.
If you enjoy the more epic stories of the New Series, then UNIT: Dominion is also available to listen to. I’ve actually lost count of the number of times I’ve listened to this one. It just contains so much that I enjoy about the show, especially the epics. Featuring the Seventh Doctor, UNIT, a future Doctor, and a huge number of alien invasions all happening at once, it’s difficult to find a story more epic than this.
The only thing I will say is that it does feature a fair amount of continuity. Particularly with the UNIT scientist Klein. However, new listeners should still find the story very accessible, overall. And if you wanted to get a good sense of how intricate Big Finish’s continuity is, while still being able to enjoy a really good story on its own, then UNIT: Dominion is the perfect choice to make.
One final recommendation I can make is to follow the Eighth Doctor’s adventures from the beginning (or near enough). Beginning with Storm Warning, he had a number of stories told in the Classic Series template of four-part serials. However, as I’ve covered in my reviews, there were also hints of the New Series to come. Particularly with epic arcs and a strong emotional focus on companions.
Even as someone who owns most of these stories already, it’s wonderful coming across such a large amount of free Big Finish material. I hope this leads to many more fans discovering just how brilliant and immersive their stories are.
Next: Doctor Who TV: 4 Recap Moments From Knock Knock