June 1st, 2026 no comments

We earn a commission for products purchased through some links in this article.

Big Finish The Eighth Doctor Adventures: New Pathways

The Eighth Doctor vs the Sycorax!

There are new companions and an old enemy in store for Paul McGann in The Eighth Doctor Adventures: New Pathways, a box set of full-cast audio drama, due November 2026.

The Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann) returns later this year for a six-part audio drama miniseries, to be released across two box sets, titled New Pathways and Fear the Reapers. Throughout, he’ll be joined in the TARDIS by the strong and loyal Alfie Steep (Sam Stafford) and new recruit Chase Moyo (Natalie Gumede).

As New Pathways begins, the Doctor is travelling with Alfie when he encounters Chase – and realises he has already spoken to her, throughout his life, on the end of a phone line. What is the connection between the TARDIS and a call centre in northern England?

Then, on Chase’s first venture into the universe, the time travellers encounter a deadly enemy – the Sycorax. These tribal aliens first appeared in 2005 Doctor Who TV special The Christmas Invasion, fought the Seventh Doctor in a 2016 Classic Doctors, New Monsters audio episode, and now face off against the Eighth Doctor for the first time.

And in the third episode, the TARDIS arrives in the late twenty-first century to discover something is very wrong with Britain…

This box set also includes The Eighth Doctor: A New Pathway, a brand-new feature-length audio documentary, celebrating thirty years of Paul McGann’s Doctor and giving a detailed look at the creation of this new era in his life.

Doctor Who – The Eighth Doctor Adventures: New Pathways is now available to pre-order for just £19.99 (download to own) or £24.99 (download to own + collector’s edition CD box set), exclusively from www.bigfinish.com. Please note: the collector’s edition CD box set is strictly limited to 1,500 copies and will not be re-pressed.

The three exciting new stories for the Eighth Doctor are:

Chase by Alan Ronald

• Chase had hoped for a different life… She sees no escape from her soul-sucking call centre job. But when she is accidentally connected to a mysterious police box, and the extraordinary Doctor Smith – who is just beginning one of his many long lives – her entire world will change forever.

Magic of the Sycorax by Katharine Armitage

• It’s time to put Chase through her paces and so the TARDIS follows a distress signal to a remote mining base, beset by powerful forces. The Doctor’s defeated the Sycorax before but, this time, they seem to have more magic, more darkness, and everyone has much more to lose…

Blast from the Past by Robert Valentine

• When the TARDIS starts playing up, the Doctor accidentally brings Chase and Alfie to Burnley in 2096, only to discover that the UK has become an authoritarian dictatorship under fascist leader Bastian Clore. Chase in turn discovers that her descendants, the Moyo family of No. 19 McKellen Drive, are major players in the underground resistance movement. Beyond the obvious, something is seriously wrong with history. Has the past been rewritten by more than just the propaganda wing of Clore’s jingoistic regime? And can Chase live up to the idealised memory her great-great-grandchildren hold of her?

The guest cast of New Pathways includes Susan Aderin, Ben Fox, Barnaby Edwards, Harriet Kershaw, Alexandra Mathie, Lara Lemon, Nicole Deon, Sara Powell, Derek Griffiths, Richard Goulding, and Nicholas Boulton.

Script editor Matt Fitton said: “The Eighth Doctor’s had such a rich and varied life. It felt fitting that what we would do to celebrate it was invent a whole new era and bring in Chase and Alfie as new companions.

“We threw Natalie and Sam’s names into the mix quite early on in the process, and so we were able to build those characters around them. This new team has a different energy and a different way of looking at the Doctor, and that brings out new things for Paul to do as well.”

On kicking off this new era, the first episode’s writer Alan Ronald said: “I was given a bit of a blank slate to introduce two companions. With Alfie, we hit the ground running, and he’s already gadding about with the Doctor, and then we meet Chase, and see how the Doctor crashes into her humdrum daily life.

“Given that it arrives on the thirtieth anniversary of the Eighth Doctor first appearing, we had to find a way to touch on that, but not have it be all about that. I didn’t want it to be a look backwards, it had to look forwards. So, my approach to that was through Chase and the call centre, with her connecting with the Doctor across that entire period. We have a thirty-year period of storytelling condensed into her week!”

Big Finish listeners can pre-order The Eighth Doctor Adventures: New Pathways together with the following box set, Fear the Reapers, as a multibuy bundle for just £38 (as digital downloads to own) or £47 (downloads + collector’s edition CDs), exclusively from www.bigfinish.com.

Alternatively, listeners can buy the two volumes as part of a bundle of all 15 Classic Doctor Who box sets released in 2026 for just £285 (download to own).



ebay advert





Categorised under: CD, The 8th Doctor