Doctor Who: 30 Years of Seven – Top 5 Seventh Doctor audio stories
By James Aggas
Big Finish
Earlier this week, we took a look back at five of the best Seventh Doctor stories on television. Today, on his 30th anniversary, we dip into the expanded universe, and look at five of his greatest audio adventures!
Let me be clear. I enjoy all the serials included in my list of the Seventh Doctor’s top 5 TV stories. But I will be honest, I don’t think TV was the best medium for his Doctor. It could have been, but his era took a while to find its feet, and was brutally cut short when it did. It also hadn’t been given the budget it deserved, and a lot of the time, it showed.
Thankfully, the expanded universe has helped to flesh out and develop the Seventh Doctor considerably. Back in the nineties, this was most effectively demonstrated by his own range of New Adventures novels.
Over the last two decades, however, it’s Big Finish that have continued to develop his Doctor in bold ways. With no visual FX budget and a chance for McCoy to really shine in the role, they’ve told many of my favourite stories with the Seventh Doctor. Which is why I’ve decided to create another top 5 list, this time just for his audio adventures.
Before we begin
A couple of points I need to make. One: this list is entirely my own preference. Obviously, you know this already, and at the end of the day, all rankings come down to personal preference, even the surveys.
But there are a rather large number of brilliant Seventh Doctor stories on audio. Because of this, there’s probably a good chance that some of your favourite Seventh Doctor stories won’t be on this list. If so, I must apologise, but like I said, it really is personal preference.
Secondly, the stories I’m focusing on are firmly focused on the Seventh Doctor. This doesn’t include cameos, or even multi-Doctor stories. (Or at least, not ones where he’s not the main Doctor, as it were.) So while the adaptation of Cold Fusion is one of my favourite Doctor Who audio stories, it’s not included in this list, as I felt it was closer to a Fifth Doctor story than a Seventh Doctor one.
Now that’s out of the way, let’s take a look at five of the greatest (in my personal opinion, anyway) Seventh Doctor audio stories!
Big Finish
5. ‘Live 34’
Live 34 is a great “experimental” story. In some ways, it shares a lot in common with Eighth Doctor story The Natural History of Fear. It plays with unusual storytelling conventions, at least as far as Doctor Who is concerned.
What I love about Live 34 is the form that it takes: four half-hour broadcasts of a live radio programme. The programme is broadcast to Colony 34, and we learn more about this place and what the Doctor and his friends are up to as we hear more.
That’s something I really loved about the story: that we don’t get to experience this adventure with the Seventh Doctor and his companions from the start. In fact, when the story begins, each of them already seems to be in the thick of it. We learn more about how they got into such a desperate situation with each broadcast. We also get a greater sense of how much of a fascist state Colony 34 really is.
Make no mistake: like The Natural History of Fear, this makes for some rather grim and gritty listening. Despite taking place on a colony far from Earth, this society feels in some ways all too close to home. It’s the kind of society that you believe exists, but don’t want to read about. It’s absolutely terrifying, but it’s also absolutely brilliant.
Big Finish
4. ‘Master’
What’s interesting about Master is how little the title character himself actually appears. Oh, Geoffrey Beevers is in it for the whole story. But in this, he plays the character of John Smith, a kind medical doctor who has been living in the colony of Perfugium. He doesn’t remember anything before he arrived there ten years ago, but mostly, he has been very happy. He’s made friends, and is well-respected by the community.
Of course, that all changes when the Doctor arrives…
There are two things I really love about this story. First, the heavy focus on five characters in one house, during a single night. It feels almost like a play at the theatre. The story is focused on the relationships between all of them, and how they affect each other. It’s an entire episode before the Doctor arrives, but that’s not a problem at all. The first half-hour simply focuses on these old friends who have known each other for years, and so helps us to become familiar with them in a very personal way.
Psychological drama
The second element I love is that, while Beevers doesn’t play the Master much in this story, he is the focus of it. The story asks its audience many questions: why is the Master evil? Is there even a chance of redemption for the Doctor’s greatest enemy? What makes a man do terrible things?
All of these are great philosophical questions that the story explores in a big, dramatic way. Virtually all the actors are given some great, meaty drama to perform, and I love it. Both McCoy’s and Beevers’s performances are especially great. Particularly when the Doctor acts friendly to “John”, and is trying hard to hide just how much he really knows.
Oh, and this story has the mother of all villain origin stories. It’s incredibly dark and shocking, and you might not look at either Time Lord in quite the same way again…
3. ‘UNIT: Dominion’
I absolutely adore this one. It’s a story that I’ve listened to so many times now. It’s not as experimental as Live 34 or a character study like Master, but it is heaps of fun.
What I really enjoy about UNIT: Dominion is the sheer epic scale of it. And I don’t mean just the number of alien invasions that take place in this story, of which there are many.
No, what I mean by “scale” in this sense is how, even when UNIT: Dominion is portraying an incredibly huge event, it also focuses heavily on many characters. The epic length helps to flesh them out, and they feel that much more believable because of it. That’s really great to have in a UNIT story. There have been a number of adventures where it would involve a few characters that we knew already, plus a ton of nameless soldiers just for the battle scenes. Dominion thankfully changes that. It’s great to have a story where even the regular soldiers in the background get fleshed out more.
Klein
Of the returning characters it does feature, Elizabeth Klein stands out. Essentially, Dominion is really her story, although she has no idea of that. She finds herself haunted by someone. Someone who keeps watching her when he thinks she’s not looking. Someone who has taken an interest in her, and yet she has no idea why. She calls him “the Umbrella Man”. To everyone else, he’s simply known as “the Doctor”.
While Klein has been a major character before, what’s great about Dominion is that you don’t need to have caught up on her journey. If you have heard her stories before, you’ll know why the Doctor is interested in keeping an eye on her. If you haven’t, you’ll be wondering along with Klein about him, but his behavior does get explained eventually. Either way, it’s a story that works really well.
There’s one more reason why I love UNIT: Dominion: Alex Macqueen. He gets a great part in this story, playing a future version of the Doctor. He clearly has a great deal of fun with it, and his scenes with McCoy are fantastic to hear. But is he all he seems to be?
(Spoiler alert: no.)
Big Finish
2. ‘Damaged Goods’
I’m going to be upfront: of all the novels that Big Finish have adapted into plays, I’ve never actually read any of them. I was sadly far too young to read the New Adventures at the time. These days, they’re out of print and rather hard to come by.
So I’m super grateful for the brilliant stories that Big Finish have adapted, at least. Love & War, All-Consuming Fire and Original Sin were all stories that I loved listening to. But if there is one release that is one of my absolute favourites, not just of the adaptations, but of all the audios, it’s got to be Damaged Goods.
I really do adore this release. The first story Russell T. Davies ever wrote for Doctor Who, it also just might be one of his best. At least, judging from Jonathan Morris’s adaptation.
I think a big reason for this is how dark and mature it is for a Doctor Who story. No, not just that – there are a number of Doctor Who stories that have tried to be “dark” and “mature”. Some have been successful, some have failed in a big way. But this is “dark” and “mature” Who done exactly right. Listening to Damaged Goods is like listening to a story that’s perfectly balanced between Doctor Who and the considerably more adult spin-off Torchwood.
Russel T. Davies’s greatest strength
I’ll be honest, I’m not the biggest fan of Russell T. Davies as a story writer. I think he could be very hit-and-miss at times, with the epic finales especially having massively rushed endings. But I listen to Damaged Goods, and realise how brilliantly he can write a Doctor Who story when he isn’t under huge pressure, both in terms of time and in terms of keeping it family friendly. I’m aware that the audio adaptation has been toned down from the original novel considerably in some parts. But even then, I can’t imagine a story like this being remotely told on television.
There’s a strong human element that’s down to Earth, too. This was always Davies’s greatest strength when it came to his writing. The Tyler family especially (no relation to Davies’s other, more popular Tyler family) are given some great, tragic human drama.
The alien Seventh Doctor
What I love especially about this isn’t just how the human element contrasts against the science-fiction part of the story. It’s also how much it contrasts against the Doctor. I listened in interviews that Davies was a big fan of how utterly alien McCoy’s Doctor could be. I was actually really surprised by this. In my opinion, Davies seemed to write two of the most “human”, or at least relatable Doctors of the entire series.
But the contrast between McCoy’s Doctor and the ordinary humans is absolutely fantastic to hear. The Seventh Doctor is at his strongest when he’s focused more on the bigger picture and shows just how alien he is. That’s a quality that this story uses perfectly.
Whether you want a glimpse of what the expanded universe of Doctor Who was like in the nineties, or whether you want to know what the first ever Doctor Who story was like from the man who brought it back, Damaged Goods is easily a must listen.
Big Finish
1. ‘A Death in the Family’
I must admit, ranking the Seventh Doctor’s audio stories has been trickier than with his TV stories. For one thing, there are far, far more audio stories to choose from. For another, his audios have been arguably stronger and more consistent overall than his TV work. So picking which ones are in my top five has been difficult.
Except for the number one spot. From the start, I knew A Death in the Family was my favourite Seventh Doctor story.
It’s just such an incredibly bold and beautiful piece of drama. Within two hours, it packs an incredible amount of story and emotion. You think it’s going to be about an epic battle between the Doctor and an incredibly powerful villain. Then it throws a curveball at you and becomes something else entirely. Each of the four episodes feels very distinct, like they’re all telling their own story. And yet at the same time, they’re clearly all part of a greater narrative that flows together seamlessly.
Links to the past (and to the future)
There is one thing that makes this drama slightly difficult to recommend, at least to newcomers. That’s the sheer amount of continuity it uses to tell and develop its story. Not only is it continuing directly from the previous story, Project: Destiny, but it has a ton of connections to other stories, too. Connections and developments that go all the way back to Project: Twilight. Which had been released nine years previously!
Now sometimes, using too much continuity can be a problem, especially if it relies on that solely for its plot rather than its drama. But what makes A Death in the Family work so well is that every single one of these connections feels like a natural part of the story.
For example, many of the links and references are specifically to do with the story of audio companion Hex. In the previous story, he had faced some major revelations. Revelations which had been a long time coming. A Death in the Family focuses on how he deals with all of that, as well as what he will do next.
A celebration of Seven
But it’s the Seventh Doctor that A Death in the Family is really about. It explores his Doctor in such a way that no other story had done before or has since. It focuses on his journey, on the mistakes he’s made and the mistakes he will make. Of how he’s affecting his companions, and where they will go from here. How far he’s willing to go to save everyone, no matter what the cost to himself or his friends. It even explores just how much he’s changed since he was Six. There’s a rather heartbreaking conversation he has with his former companion Evelyn that beautifully highlights this.
In many ways, A Death in the Family feels like the regeneration story that Seven should have been given. It’s epic, tragic, beautiful and bittersweet, all in one. It’s a brilliant celebration of the Seventh Doctor, but that’s not why it’s number one. I’ve ranked it this high because it really is one of the greatest Doctor Who stories in any media.
Next: Season 10 in-depth ranking of episodes