Is there anything deflates Doctor Who excitement more than the words “audio drama”? Well, other than an enemy that looks really cool the first time is back for the 10th time ”(cough Screaming angels cough). Then again, these would mean that you have to spend for these processes. However, Big Finish’s ear-based Doctor Who stories have become the go-to medium for service that would be too expensive to actually film or concentrate on characters – and previous incarnations of The Doctor – that are no longer part of the main series. The BBC may be full of pounds (of all those expensive TV licenses, right?), But even an organization like this will not throw money at, say, a full series about Paul McGann’s Eighth Doctor as it tries to persuade people to to look new episodes about the current Doctor. Big Finish, however, is more than happy to do that kind of thing, and it has been doing so since before the actual TV show resumed in 2005 with Christopher Eccleston as the ninth incarnation of The Doctor.
Now, speaking of which, Big Finish is the impossible and enticing Eccleston to return to the TARDIS – which not even the 50th anniversary special of a few years ago could do, and requires the show to be played in a previously unnamed Doctor played by John Hurt. Eccleston’s run on the show lasted only one season (as a “series” when you serve the Queen), with him the last few years explain that he had a bad relationship with then-showrunner Russel T. Davies and promise never to work with him as to Doctor Who over and over again. However, Eccleston’s run is deeply underestimated, if only because his immediate successor (David Tennant’s 10th Doctor) is so easy, and it sounds like the positive reaction from fans in recent years has convinced Eccleston to take this whole time. Lord-thing to give another shot after 15 years.
As reported by Deadline, Eccleston will star in a 12-episode audio adventure across four box sets, with the first coming in May of 2021. Story details and all the other potentials Doctor Who characters that may appear are not yet announced, but it’s worth noting that Big Finish has already done ninth doctor-era stories with another actor, so he – as in the ninth doctor, not specifically the ninth doctor of Eccleston –has got been away on new adventures with Jackie Tyler in the canon Big Finish (if anyone that desperately wants to hear that). No matter what happens in this, hopefully we will see that Eccleston’s doctor is treated a little better than he was in its two-part TV broadcast, which involved bizarre and directly dated parodies of early 2000s British television. Remember The weakest switch? Hopefully you do, because there are a lot of bad references in a very important episode of Doctor Who!
.
