Doctor Who Spin-offs - Audio

Audio

Main articles: Doctor Who audio productions, Doctor Who audio releases

Many audio productions based upon Doctor Who have been produced over the years. The first, in 1976, was a children's audio adventure entitled Doctor Who and the Pescatons by Victor Pemberton.

In 1985, during a period when the series was on a sabbatical at the BBC, BBC Radio hired Colin Baker and his TV companion Nicola Bryant to reprise their TV roles for a new production called Slipback.

In the 1990s, the BBC began issuing the soundtracks of serials from the 1960s on cassette and compact disc; initially these were the "lost" episodes, but have also included serials from the 1970s and 1980s. There were also two further radio dramas: The Paradise of Death (1993) and The Ghosts of N-Space (1996), both featuring Jon Pertwee, which like Slipback were first broadcast on BBC Radio.

Beginning in 1999, Big Finish Productions, under licence from the BBC, began a range of audio plays on compact disc, with one released every month. Big Finish have also produced a limited-run series of audio plays based around one of the Doctor's former television companions, Sarah Jane Smith, as well as a limited Doctor Who Unbound series that explores possibilities contrary to the established mythos (for instance, "What if the Doctor had never left Gallifrey?"). From 6 August 2005, several of the Eighth Doctor audio dramas are being broadcast on the digital radio station BBC 7 — these are Storm Warning, Sword of Orion, The Stones of Venice, Invaders from Mars, Shada and The Chimes of Midnight. A new series of original audio dramas featuring the Eighth Doctor and new companion Lucie Miller began airing on BBC7 on 31 December 2006. These are Blood of the Daleks, Horror of Glam Rock, Immortal Beloved, Phobos, No More Lies and Human Resources. A second series of audios featuring the Eighth Doctor and Lucie Miller were broadcast on BBC7 in 2009, having first been released on CD by Big Finish Productions.

In 2009 and 2010, Big Finish Productions released further series of "old" material, firstly audio versions of Doctor Who stage plays from the 1960s to 1980s. This was followed by the "lost" season 23 featuring the Sixth Doctor - these were scripts originally written for the season that was cancelled before returning in the Trial of a Time Lord. The second season of The Lost Stories, to be released in 2010, includes audio versions of unmade episodes featuring the First Doctor and Second Doctor, the original "Dalek" pilot made for US television, and stories originally commissioned for the cancelled season 27 featuring the Seventh Doctor.

There are also several other Doctor Who-related audio mini-series including Dalek Empire, Dalek Empire II: Dalek War, and Dalek Empire III, Gallifrey, UNIT, Kaldor City and Faction Paradox Protocols. The canonicity of these audio productions is uncertain, even though several were commissioned by and broadcast by the BBC, albeit on radio (in particular Slipback, the Pertwee serials, and the more recent BBC7 McGann series).