The podcast, which will start releasing weekly on Saturdays from March 2024, will showcase fan-favourite stories from Big Finish’s back catalogue, presented in episodic, 30-minute instalments.
Each episode will feature a brand-new introduction read by Sixth Doctor star Colin Baker, and will also include behind-the-scenes interviews, with the podcast being available via all podcast platforms, with listeners able to stream it for free with ads.
Genuinely excited about this. I'm a big audiobook fan, but I've never done these kinds of audio stories, how different are they to audiobooks?
I'd say as different as theatre is to novels. These audio plays are multicast productions of original stories, featuring the same actors as on the TV show along with new characters. So it's an actual drama, with music and sound effects added to make it as immersive as an episode on TV.
They vary. Some of them are done by one person, some of them have several. The ones I like the most are the ones that explore more around the characters, lines like The Companion Chronicles; I'm much less interested in more peripheral stuff like Jago and Lightfoot.
I'll admit I haven't listened to any in years now. At the time, the thing that I disliked most was their need for everything to be episodic: you'd have the story, and then at the end of it, something would happen and everything would reset so that it had minimal impact on the person or whatever. Like they'd have Frazier Hines in as Jamie after he left the Doctor, and he'd have another alien encounter during which his memories would come back, but then they'd disappear again at the end of the story. It just made those stories feel ... I dunno, hollow?
That said, I know that in more recent years, they've been doing ongoing storylines that'll run through multiple BF seasons. Which is nice, but I just don't have the time for that kind of thing any longer.
Some of original The Lost Stories stuff is nice, but they've been straying farther from there original concept there, away from things that were mostly fleshed out toward things that were more story outlines.
I downloaded a bunch of them like 10 years ago. I think theyre referred to as "teleplays" it has sound effects and dialog, but i dont think there was much narration. I would hope they're remastered because there was some hard panning that bothered me.