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Doctor Who: The Companion Chronicles – Limited casts, unlimited creativity

By James Aggas

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The Companion Chronicles has long been a hugely popular series for Big Finish, exploring and fleshing out so many companions’ stories like Steven Taylor.

(Photo credit: Doctor Who/Big Finish Productions.

Image obtained from: Big Finish Productions.)

For over a decade, The Companion Chronicles has continued to give us unique Doctor Who stories like no other audio range from Big Finish. But why? We take a look at the series, and why it continues to be so successful at telling great stories.

Right now, we’re pretty lucky when it comes to getting brand new stories based around the Classic Doctors with Big Finish. Along with the original surviving actors playing their old roles in either the regular Doctor Who range or, in the cases of the Fourth and Eighth Doctors, their very own ranges, we’ve also had recasts and even some of the former companions rather convincingly voicing their Doctors in The Early Adventures.

But before we had any of those, we had The Companion Chronicles. In 2007, Big Finish began a new range of Doctor Who audios. This was only their third range after their regular monthly audios featuring the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Doctors, and a brand new series that began just at the end of 2006 called The Eighth Doctor Adventures.

However, The Companion Chronicles was extremely different to those two other ranges in three key ways. Firstly, the stories had rather limited casts, usually (but not always) involving two actors. Secondly, they’d usually be partially narrated directly from a companion’s point of view. And lastly, these were stories that focused on the first four Doctors – stories that couldn’t be told in any other way. (At least, at the time.)

Even with stories that didn’t feature the Doctor or their companions, The Companion Chronicles could still give us fantastic stories, as The Mahogany Murderers proved.

(Image credit: Doctor Who/Big Finish Productions.

Image obtained from: Big Finish Productions.)

Regular but not formulaic

It didn’t take long for The Companion Chronicles to become successful. Extremely successful. After two short seasons – seasons that were rather close together, in fact – Big Finish made them a regular monthly range from the third season onwards. For six years, The Companion Chronicles were as regular as the monthly stories. Indeed, some of them – such as The Prisoner’s Dilemma or Night’s Black Agents – even linked back to stories that the main range audios were telling.

There were many reasons why The Companion Chronicles were so successful, despite the reduced casts. First, there was the strong writing. The Companion Chronicles has given us so many brilliant stories, something that became even more true as the series became more confident over time.

Which leads me to the second reason why this range was so successful: it was never afraid of taking risks. Whether it was through experimenting with the format, introducing new companions, or even telling stories without the Doctor or any actual companions at all, The Companion Chronicles never worried about just sticking to a successful formula.

Lastly, of course, there’s the performances from everyone involved, both regular and non-regular. As heavily narrated as The Companion Chronicles tend to be, they always made sure to include some good, solid drama in there too.

The Companion Chronicles continues to be a strong range to this day, as brilliantly proven by September’s release of The First Doctor: Volume 3.

(Image credit: Doctor Who/Big Finish Productions.

Image obtained from: Big Finish Productions.)

Dual roles

On top of that, we’ve also discovered some amazing performances of Doctors played by their old companions. Perhaps the best standout performances are Peter Purves as Hartnell’s First Doctor and Frazer Hines as Troughton’s Second Doctor, both of whom capture the mannerisms and voices of their Doctors almost perfectly. William Russell’s rendition of Hartnell is also excellent to listen to.

Performances as strong as these perhaps lead to the creation of The Early Adventures range: full-cast stories of the First and Second Doctors. Just like The Companion Chronicles, the Doctors are voiced by some of their companions. The Early Adventures has been an equally effective and strong range, although we’ll get to why in a separate article.

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A unique series

The Companion Chronicles has given us many excellent stories over the years, and more or less continues to do so. While the range ended its original monthly run in 2014, box sets of four stories each have been released since 2015. These box sets have all focused on one of the first two Doctors, although they usually take place across their whole eras. They also continue to be extremely strong releases, as this year’s box set The First Doctor: Volume Three proved.

The fact that Big Finish continue to release The Companion Chronicles – albeit on a yearly basis instead of monthly as they used to – says a lot about how strong these audios are. Especially when there’s other ways of getting stories of the first two Doctors from Big Finish. Not only do we have The Early Adventures, but there’s also The First Doctor Adventures with David Bradley in the title role.

However, despite the limited casts and shorter lengths – or perhaps even because of it – The Companion Chronicles will always offer the listener something a little different. Whether as narrated stories or as dramas with extremely small casts, this is a range that continues to offer something unique, and I hope that continues for a long time.

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Have you listened to The Companion Chronicles? Which is your favorite story? What would you like to see in future from the range? Let us know in the comments below.

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