Big Finish Productions

Our
rating:

Our rating: 5 out of 5 Daleks


Site added: 29 December 2004 · Last updated: 12 July 2007

Big Finish Productions produce all of the Doctor Who audio adventures – starring members of the series’ original cast… and Daleks, of course.

Big Finish
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You’ve got to hand it to Big Finish. When the BBC abandoned (er, we mean rested) Doctor Who, Big Finish picked up the baton and really ran with it.

The company produces a massive range of excellent audio adventures – and was, in many people’s eyes, responsible for rescuing Doctor Who (and the Daleks) from the pantomime image it had received as a result of the low-budget lacklustre productions in the classic series’ final years.

The plays are intelligent, well-scripted and very well acted – often featuring the original cast.

From a Dalek fan’s perspective, Big Finish achieved so much more. In a world where the TV series had reduced the Daleks to being Davros’ mindless minions, Big Finish reinvented the Daleks and brought them back to not only where they had been, but where their potential could take them. Again, and at last, the Daleks were scheming, brutal beings – not mindless clones, but evil individuals which could manipulate and control others.

return-of-the-daleks.jpgReturn of the Daleks, a Big Finish audio adventure

Much of this work was done by Nicholas Briggs, writer and actor and the man responsible for the Dalek voices in the new series of Doctor Who. Briggs’ Dalek Empire series (loosely based on actions within some of the very earliest Dalek comic strips) were a total reinvention of the Daleks, taking them to new heights – and very much influencing how the Daleks were characterised and written in the new series of Doctor Who.

Doctor Who fans and Dalek fans owe Big Finish a massive dept – for keeping the faith, keeping the franchise alive when the owners did not, and for encouraging many writers and performers to take Doctor Who – and the Daleks – properly into the twenty-first century.

If you’ve never heard one of the Big Finish audio adventures, you simply don’t know what you are missing.

Go to Big Finish Productions