Doctor Who celebrates International Women’s Day with the Eighth of March box set!

To celebrate International Women’s Day, Big Finish have released a box set of four stories focusing on some of the amazing women from the Doctor Who universe!

Happy International Women’s Day! This year, Big Finish Productions have made something very special to celebrate this day, and indeed, the women of the Doctor Who universe in general. The aptly named The Eighth of March box set features some of the best female characters from Doctor Who old and new, and unsurprisingly, it’s out now.

Whether your preference is Classic Series, New Series or even beyond, The Eighth of March has something for every Whovian with its four stories.

The first episode, Emancipation, features a clash of eras with River Song meeting Leela. These are two very strong women, but in completely different ways. As an archaeologist, River has learned a great deal. She’s also witty and very flirty, two things Leela is virtually the opposite of.

Leela’s intelligent in her own way, but she also sees things in a more primitive and instinctual perspective. Considering how different these two major characters are, it’ll be interesting to hear how they get along.

The Big Blue Book features Seventh Doctor companions Ace and Benny on their own. I’m glad to see these two included. This is partly because Ace was a huge step in the right direction towards the end of the Classic Series. Generally speaking, she was written in a way that was considerably more fleshed out and developed than what we had seen with most of the previous companions. So it’s great to see her included in this set.

More than that, Bernice Summerfield is one of the greatest characters created for the Doctor Who universe. With the character having just celebrated twenty years on audio last year, it would have been criminal for her (or her actress, Lisa Bowerman) not to be included in this box set, despite not being as widely recognized as most of the other characters. However, I’m hoping that more people will discover the brilliance of Benny with this box set.

The Paternoster Gang and the two Osgoods

Inside Every Warrior is an episode that many New Series fans will be excited about, as it features the audio debut of the Paternoster Gang! The iconic team of Madame Vastra, Jenny and Strax has proved to be considerably popular with the fans. With their own spin-off series out later this year, this story should give us a nice preview of what to expect from their very own adventures.

Narcissus is another story that should be exciting for New Series fans. While we’ve been getting plenty of stories featuring Kate Stewart and Osgood in the spin-off series UNIT for a few years now, all the episodes have been firmly set before the events of The Day of the Doctor.

But Narcissus looks set to change that, as we’re finally getting a story with the two Osgoods! This idea has only been briefly explored in Doctor Who. In fact, while it was a key plot point in The Day of the Doctor, it was something of a significant reveal in The Zygon Invasion that the Zygon Osgood had stayed in her form. (It also presented a neat way of killing Osgood off in Death in Heaven while still having her return afterwards.)

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So it’s great that we’re finally getting a story that features both of them. Not only am I looking forward to seeing how their relationship will be explored, but also exactly how Kate Stewart deals with having two geniuses!

New voices

In a first for Big Finish, The Eighth of March is a Doctor Who box set that has been written by a team of all-female writers, many of whom are writing for the Doctor Who universe for the first time. So discovering what these fresh voices at Big Finish bring to these characters is exciting.

Director Helen Goldwyn – who’s directed many releases by this point, including The Doctor Chronicles series and the excellent stories The Night Witches and Time in Office – gives us an idea of how this box set explores the women of our favorite series, particularly across history:

"It seems very timely to celebrate some of the women of Doctor Who, especially as the female characters in the series have evolved over the years to reflect how women’s roles have changed in society too; from assistants and inferiors to equals and adversaries!"

We’ll be taking a look at each of the stories featured in this very special release over the next few days, so be sure to check out our reviews for The Eighth of March, which is out now on CD or download directly from Big Finish.

Will you be listening to The Eighth of March? Which characters are your favorites out of the ones featured? Which story are you most excited to listen to? Let us know in the comments below.