May 28th, 2024
22 comments
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Big Finish The Sixth Doctor Adventures The Trials of a Time Lord
Available to order from www.bigfinish.com
The Trials of a Time Lord
Colin Baker, Bonnie Langford and Nicola Bryant are put to the test in an epic full-cast audio drama, coming in August from Big Finish Productions.
2024 marks forty years since Colin Baker’s first appearance as the Sixth Doctor. Big Finish’s celebration of this anniversary began in March with The Quin Dilemma, and next up is an expansive six-part story, told across a three-disc box set.
The Trials of a Time Lord pairs Ol’ Sixie with both of his original television series companions, as he and Mel (Bonnie Langford) follow a distress call which leads to a reunion with Peri (Nicola Bryant). But there are dangers ahead for the time travellers, not least the Cyber Leader (David Banks, also reprising his role from the 1980s era of the TV series).
Doctor Who – The Sixth Doctor Adventures: The Trials of a Time Lord is available to pre-order now for just £22.99 (collector’s edition CD box set + download) or £18.99 (download only). The collector’s edition CD box set is strictly limited to 1500 copies and will not be repressed.
The Sixth Doctor’s fortieth anniversary celebrations continue, courtesy of LudoSphere Incorporated, with the greatest adventure ever streamed…
Responding to a distress call from an old friend, the Doctor and Mel find themselves in ‘Cyberia’, a prison camp run by an even older foe. But this time, the Cyber Leader’s machinations are just the tip of one very sinister iceberg, one that will test the Doctor to his very limit, and beyond…
We hope you’re hiding behind the sofa, because ‘The Trials of a Time Lord’ are about to begin!
The Trials of a Time Lord is one epic story scripted by three writers: Parts One and Two are by Rochana Patel, Parts Three and Four by Katharine Armitage, and Parts Five and Six by Stewart Pringle.
Producer Jonathan S Powell said: “The Trials of a Time Lord is the ultimate celebration of all things Sixth Doctor: an epic three-hour fight for survival against foes old and new, with both of Sixie’s television companions Peri and Mel brought along for the ride.
“It felt important when planning this anniversary special to capture the spirit of the Classic Series, but also to make something bold and expansive that speaks to the world we live in today. So while Trials will treat you to a host of familiar themes and faces, it’s also full of surprises, catapulting our hero into the far future to face a uniquely 21st century crisis…
“The title is obviously a play on Colin’s final story just as The Quin Dilemma was a play on his first, but Trials takes its lead from Season 22 just as much as 23. And there isn’t a court scene in sight! The scripts themselves have been beautifully written by the dream team of Rochana Patel, Katherine Armitage and Stewart Pringle.”
The Trials of a Time Lord is the second of 2024’s Sixth Doctor Adventures box sets, after March’s The Quin Dilemma. Together, these sets form a celebration of the Sixth Doctor’s fortieth anniversary. Both can be pre-ordered together in a bundle for just £44 (collector’s edition CD box set + download) or £36 (download only).
All the above prices include the special pre-order discount and are subject to change after general release.
Categorised under: Big Finish, CD, spin-offs
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Alan Silvester
September 3rd, 2024 - 7:15pmFollowing the recent website debacle, has anyone received notification of the CD dispatch for this release yet? My confidence in BF has been knocked, and I’m concerned orders have been lost.
Slitheen71
May 30th, 2024 - 2:01pmThis looks great and exactly the big finish I love. I don’t care about cannon, as the saying goes never let the truth get in the way of a good story.
Big finish does put out a lot and would cost a fortune if you bought everything, I own over 400 stories and thats a lot less than the overall Dr Who output Big Finish has put out.
When you have the original actor playing their Dr sells it to me. I don’t buy 1st , 2nd or 3rd Dr adventures because to me it takes me away from the story because I know it’s not them, my consumer choice.
Recently started the Sontarans vs Rutans range. First story 8th Doctor and Charlie,, great. Second story 3rd Dr, Sarah Jane and the Brig starring no one connected to Dr Who, now that’s fan fiction. Good news 6th Dr in the next but then young war Dr in the 4th , oh dear.
Classic Doctors ranges should be played by the original actors. I believe that if Big Finish had started back in 1999 with this many voice impersonators they wouldn’t have been so successful because it would have been seen as fan fiction like BBV before it.
More then 2 alphabets
May 29th, 2024 - 4:32pmHonestly, so much complaining!
There’s no break in continuity, looking at his hand, this is Davros between revelation/remembrance on TV and after/before the audio the juggernauts. “Older quenn peri” was collected by the doctor as we saw during the Blu ray trailer for season 23 This is Mel in her “time and the rani” outfit and 6 in his yellow neck tie so this is VERY LATE in 6s time which is an open area for continuity. Cybermen crop up all over the place and can be anytime in the doctors life.
As for “big finish is just fan fiction of X vs Y”:
6 last met the cyberleader in 2018 – 6 years ago!!!
6 last met Davros in 2012! (and no, im not counting the unbound war doctor as that is a separate iteration!)
People love to comment about the regular monsters, if you listen in release order then year, the frequency of them showing up increases……thats what happens when the actor has chance to bulk record! Listen in timeline/doctor order, you will hear a big difference.
AND if you want to be picky – as per RTD when discussing “the giggle”, The toymaker made a “jigsaw of the doctors life” which was a narrative devise to cover the shows many…………many errors.
Or if your a new series hater, pick your universe resting pilot device’s – the crack, the time war, the flux, all used to “reset” the universe so anytime it doesnt add up…..thats why.
Big finish have actually downsized their output – today we learn there’s no more 9 adventures. you will all complain when its gone…..so why complain there’s too much. Vote with your wallet and only buy what you intend to listen to………….I certainly am
Doctor Stu
May 30th, 2024 - 8:12amI love this little addition that RTD made so we can ignore what we don’t like, hopefully it means we can completely discount his new 2024 American reboot
More then 2 alphabets
May 30th, 2024 - 11:50amVery good Doctor Stu 🙂
I am genuinely enjoying this series, I understand the reasons people have but so far, ive enjoyed this more then the whole Chibnall era (and i liked jodie).
Different era’s for different people, as long as there is new Who, im there for the ride!
Anon
May 30th, 2024 - 1:12pmStu not liking something… how surprising! Loving the new series. Loved Jodie too.
Nick
May 28th, 2024 - 11:09pmThis looks awesome – brilliant cover!!
Dave
April 25th, 2024 - 9:48amAgree with the comments here about Big Finish’s recent output. I’m not a fan who is particularly bothered by canon, but it’s more the fact that the majority of releases now are sold on the “X meets Y” principle.
One of the things that really impressed me as a company with Big Finish in the early days is that they were quite restrained. They did the inevitable “Sixth Doctor / eighth Doctor meets the Brigadier” stories but generally they avoided a lot of the fan impulses. Multi-Doctor stories were rare, and when they happened they put a spin on it, the Master didn’t show up for a few years, they didn’t include Davros into they had a really good story for him. It just felt like an adult range in the way that the “scatter the action figures on the floor and whoever ends up next to eachother stars in the next boxset” approach just doesn’t.
I mean Harry Sullivan showing up in loads of recent ranges is just unfathomable to me. He was a perfectly good character for his run, but was explored as much as he needed to be. IF they had a great story that prompted his return that would let us know more about who Harry Sullivan was, then maybe recasting him and popping him in a dozen releases would work really well, but instead he just sort of bumbles around being a Harry-type character with a different voice to the one we know.
The reason Sarah Jane’s return in the new series had impact is that she was the same actress we knew and loved and the story had something to say about who she was and the Doctor’s attitude to the life he lives. Having Harry show up sounding different but doing all the old “I say, old girl” and not developing as a character is just baffling to me. If Sarah Jane showed up in the tenth Doctor’s era played by a different actress that looked a bit like Elisabeth Sladen, talking about women’s lib and saying “but, Doctor…” a bit, what would be the point? Would you really watch the Sarah Jane Adventures after that?
It seems like it’s been ages since there’s been a classic that a lot of people have talked about. Maybe that’s an artefact of the TV show being ongoing that BF can’t help, but periodically you would get a Big Finish story that people would genuinely talk and debate about as a story in it’s own right, like Spare Parts or Jubilee. And even stories largely hailed as rubbish would at least be talked about, because the producers were genuinely trying to produce great Doctor Who and sometimes that meant failing and putting out the Apocalypse Element by mistake.
That’s not to say BF doesn’t have their fans, but their fans generally tend to say “I enjoy a lot of Big Finish’s content” rather than a celebratory and specific “The Auton Infinity is a classic Doctor Who adventure, an Androzani for 2020s audio”.
I dunno. Big rant I guess. But it does feel like they’re lost in a slurry of “wouldn’t it be cool if the first Doctor and Susan met River Song and fought the Sontarans on Nerva Beacon?” in recent years. Maybe it helps sales in a world where “we’re producing new Doctor Who” isn’t a draw any more. But it feels cynical and it’s harming the output.
DDD
April 25th, 2024 - 10:59am“wouldn’t it be cool if the first Doctor and Susan met River Song and fought the Sontarans on Nerva Beacon?” you forgot “in an expensive boxset with more volumes to follow”. That sums up modern BF in nutshell. I agree its early days were the best.
Nick
April 28th, 2024 - 10:54pmActually DDD, I like the sound of that boxset!
Neil
May 29th, 2024 - 10:00am100% agree with everything you wrote. Far too much reliance now on Older versions of the companions appearing. Must admit though, I enjoy Chris Naylor’s portrayal of Harry Sullivan and I actually think he sounds a lot like the late Ian Marter, and I also enjoy Sadie Millar’s take on Sarah Jane Smith, but would much rather have these characters in stories set during their original run, not turning up arbitrarily as Harry has done. Basically I think they are putting out far too much content, I remember when they first started, a new BF release was almost an event, nowadays I struggle to finish a month’s worth of releases before the next lot come along, and the ones that stand out and make me go ‘wow’ are very rare.
Also, I’m really not keen on the direction the Second Doctor Adventures are taking, this ‘post War Games’ nonsense. Couldn’t we just get a run of stories with The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe during their original time together? Or if they could get another soundalike as good as Elliot Chapman was to play Ben, some more Doctor/Polly/Ben stories would be fantastic, as those ‘Early Adventures’ were fantastic and really added so much to that team.
DDD
April 24th, 2024 - 10:53amBF nowadays is just gloried fan fiction. Its lost all control. If anyone higher up deemed all thier output was canon with the TV series I would not be happy. The gap between Planet of Fire and Caves of Androzani being saturated with 100s of stories being one such example.
Anon
April 24th, 2024 - 12:52pmQuite agree. If it was canon then we have to believe that peri does not age at all despite the hundreds of stories between fire and caves and that she decided to put the exact same outfit on hundreds of stories later! As far as I’m concerned less is definitely better than more when it comes to doctor who. I think the BBC should have done what gene roddenberry did for star trek when he said you can produce original novels but unless events occur in the TV series they are not official. Who should have done that from the start.
Matt
April 25th, 2024 - 12:25amI don’t think Doctor Who should pull a Star Trek. Yes, we’d lose a lot of bad stories, but we’d also lose plenty of good ones too. It’s not like anyone is ever going to actually listen to every single story in the gap between fire and caves. Is there over saturation with Big Finish? yes, but instead of decanonizing everything we should just let which stories are canon up to each individual fan. Who would even be the one to say what’s canon and what’s not? Doctor Who doesn’t have one founding figure like Gene Roddenberry is to Star Trek. If you just let it up to the showrunner then what’s canon is going to keep changing based on who’s in charge.
I also think calling Big Finish glorified fan fiction is a very good criticism. Look at the main show. We have people like Russell T Davies, Steven Moffat, and Chris Chibnall, all people who were fans since their childhoods, writing episodes. What they’re doing is essentially glorified fan fiction too.
Daniel Seymour
April 25th, 2024 - 6:46amBig Finish stories have an in universe explanation: they are parallel universe stories, simple. The Time War changed a lot of history and created multiple universes. Hence we can have a humongous gap between Planet and Caves. The company even touched on this themselves in the Audio of Return of the Cybermen: that story was explained as an alternative to the Prime Universe events of Revenge of the Cybermen by a Timelord to the Doctor.
“We have people like Russell T Davies, Steven Moffat, and Chris Chibnall, all people who were fans since their childhoods, writing episodes. What they’re doing is essentially glorified fan fiction too”. DONT AGREE with that. They are writing for the Prime TV show, so thier stories are prime canon.
Having said that I class the New Adventures books as Canon. So really the WHoniverse is massive buffett where you can mix and match what you please.
So….about the Dalek Movies lol
PJH1971
May 28th, 2024 - 8:36pmHave to Agree with Matt. Due do the current state of TV Who – it has made me look back and realise that all Nu-Who from Russell T Davies, Steven Moffat and Chris Chibnall is essentially glorified fan fiction, as they were fans of the classic show from childhood and weren’t original contributors. Just like with JJ Abrams & Rian Johnson with Star Wars, producing inferior product or merely trying to imitate what went before, but trying to put their own spin on it and messing up previously established canon in the process.
Matt
May 29th, 2024 - 3:57amPJH1971 That’s not at all what I was saying. You seem to all use fan fiction as an insult when it really isn’t. My point was that some of the best Who stories have been produced by fans. Just look at tons of the Wilderness Years content. We shouldn’t look at fan fiction and fan works as derogatory when we have people like Russell T Davies, Steven Moffat, Mark Gattis, and Paul Cornell writing for the TV show. New Who is not inferior to Classic Who. They didn’t mess up Doctor Who in any way. It’s still going strong. And if canon is your primary problem with New Who then maybe Doctor Who was never the show for you in the first place.
Cassandra
May 30th, 2024 - 6:25amDoctor Who really feels as though things are going wrong at the moment. I remember the late 80s and thought that was bad, but the last month has given me flashbacks albeit flashbacks dialled up to 11. I honestly think we’re heading for another hiatus in the next year or so. Maybe thats whats needed.
Koth
April 23rd, 2024 - 10:58pmNothing like shoehorning a story which conflicts with others!
Matt
April 24th, 2024 - 2:48amThere’s loads of Doctor Who stories that conflict with others.
Anomie
April 24th, 2024 - 9:43amAnd most of them by bf
The Outcast
April 24th, 2024 - 3:36pmHow does this conflict with anything?