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Doctor Who: From Light to Legacy – Comparing Big Finish’s anniversary releases

By James Aggas

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After the release of The Legacy of Time, we decided to look at Big Finish’s other major anniversary story, The Light at the End. How do the two anniversary releases compare?

(Photo credit: Doctor Who/Big Finish Productions.

Image obtained from: Big Finish Productions.)

Following the release of Big Finish’s twentieth anniversary box set Doctor Who: The Legacy of Time, we look back to their other major anniversary story, The Light at the End. How do these very different approaches compare?

Last week saw the release of The Legacy of Time – a six-hour box set from Big Finish designed to celebrate twenty years of their Doctor Who audios. It’s an amazing achievement, and I’m not ashamed to say that I’ve already listened to the set three times.

Unsurprisingly, it reminded me of Big Finish’s other major anniversary release – The Light at the End. Released in 2013, this multi-Doctor story was designed to celebrate fifty years of Doctor Who. As someone who’s listened to both, how do the two compare?

The first thing that stands out is the story. While The Light at the End is one single two-hour long story, The Legacy of Time gives us six distinct but carefully linked episodes. Each one focusing on a different Doctor, as well as different characters, making each story stand out in its own way.

What’s also interesting is the overall focus that each anniversary release has. Unsurprisingly, each release feels highly appropriate to the anniversary it’s celebrating.

For example, The Light at the End has a heavy focus on Doctors and companions featured in the original TV series and played by their original actors. While the first three Doctors do show up in brief, cameo appearances – played by either actors who had played the companions or by someone brand new – the surviving Classic Doctors are much more heavily focused on.

This extends to the companions, too. All of them featured in the original TV series with the exception of Charley, and that’s mainly because the Eighth Doctor didn’t have the chance to travel with anyone on-screen. Even the major enemy is one that TV viewers will be familiar with – the Master, as played by Geoffrey Beevers, who originally appeared on television in The Keeper of Traken. While there are one or two cameos from Big Finish characters, the heavy focus in the story is what’s been established from the TV series.

A wider universe

By comparison, The Legacy of Time is more balanced in its focus between TV and audio. Characters from the TV series appear – both Classic and New this time – but there are also many characters from the expanded universe who show up.

This is established from the very first episode, Lies in Ruins. The episode features the popular character of River Song, but it also features Bernice Summerfield, who’s had her own series at Big Finish for over twenty years. She started out in the novels, but these days, it’s through Big Finish that the character continues to live on.

Other stories in this box set have similar combinations – characters from the TV series meeting companions or enemies exclusive to Big Finish. The major characters in each story are also likely to have their own audio spin-offs, too. Even Tim Treloar’s take on the Third Doctor gets a full episode, rather than a cameo like in The Light at the End. So the overall focus in The Legacy of Time is celebrating Big Finish and its wider universe.

While The Light at the End was mainly focused on celebrating the history of the TV series, The Legacy of Time takes a much wider view.

(Image credit: Doctor Who/Big Finish Productions.

Image obtained from: Big Finish Productions.)

Many Doctors

Another clear difference between Light and Legacy is how they take on the multi-Doctor story angle. From start to finish, The Light at the End is a clear multi-Doctor story. All of them show up and interact with one another, as they’re all trapped in the same situation and exploring it from different viewpoints. (Four and Eight in particular have some great moments together in this one.)

By contrast, The Legacy of Time isn’t a multi-Doctor story – at least, not as a whole. While all of them are affected by the same major problem, each of the Doctors has their own separate adventure. This does change in the final episode, Collision Course, but even then, this is saved for the latter half of the episode. Before then, it’s firmly a Fourth Doctor story. (Two Fourth Doctor stories, in fact.) So those looking for a solid multi-Doctor story might find The Light at the End more appealing.

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However, if you’re instead looking for something that not only gives you a taste of Big Finish, but also leaves an impact, then The Legacy of Time is definitely the one to go for. The Light at the End is highly enjoyable, but it’s also entirely self-contained – to the point where the story leaves no impact on Big Finish’s mythology.

By contrast, The Legacy of Time – while still acting as a great jumping-on point – also clearly has plenty of hints and foreshadowing of what’s to come. River Song gives us a clue about one of her next (or previous?) adventures with Eight in Lies in Ruins, one that we don’t know about yet, while hints at the Doctor’s previous encounters with his enemy the Nine are given in Relative Time. So there’s the strong sense that this release isn’t just about glorious nostalgia, but celebrating the future, too.

I love both The Light at the End and The Legacy of Time. I think they do a great job of celebrating what they aim to celebrate. I must admit however that I do prefer Legacy right now. Telling a huge event across six stores, six Doctors and a whole host of companions and spin-off characters is an incredible achievement, and truly shows how much Big Finish has grown since it started in 1999.

Next. The Fourth Doctor gets a new companion in 2023!. dark

If you’ve yet to listen to either of these releases, which one appeals to you more? If you’ve listened to both, which story do you prefer? Let us know in the comments below.

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