April 23rd, 2024
11 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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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!
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
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?