Doctor Who: The Merfolk Murders Part 1
Starring Peter Davison Janet Fielding
Big Finish's 15th Anniversary of Doctor Who releases - Offer 15!
10 August 2014
Fifteen years ago, we released Doctor Who: The Sirens of Time, starting a tradition of audio storytelling for the worlds of Doctor Who and beyond. And so we get to the last day of the Big Finish 15 celebration. Over the last year we've launched some hugely popular and praised new versions of old shows, a couple of Big Finish heroines have had new releases, and we celebrated the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who with our own multi-Doctor story. Read on for offers, remembrances from Big Finish folks, and pre-orders on upcoming titles...
Big Finish's Doctor Who at 15 - Offer 15
In late 2013 Big Finish finally confirmed a lot of fan hopes and rumours in the release of Doctor Who: The Light at the End, a story celebrating the show's 50th anniversary with all eight of the first Doctors represented - today we make the Standard edition available for £10 on CD or £8.50 on Download, or the Limited Edition for £20 on Download or £35 on CD. We've also put the unheard 5.1 mixed trailer live on the story's pages too.
It was a year when we really explored what we could do with other ideas, other shows. The Avengers - The Lost Episodes revisted a very different time of Cult televsion (volume 1 is available for this offer at £20 on Download, £25 on CD), Survivors took a regarded 1970s show and breathed infectious new life into it (volume one now available at £20 on Download, £25 on CD), receiving universal critical praise in the process. We also at last brought together an entire crew of the Liberator to record a series of full-cast Blake's 7 audio adventures, with the first - Blake's 7: Fractures - available for this offer at £6.99 on Download and £8.99 on CD, while volume 9 of the award-winning Blake's 7: The Liberator Chronicles is out today. It's worth mentioning that discount rated pre-orders or subscriptions are still available for all the next releases in The Avengers, Blake's 7 and Survivors, as well as Big Finish's 2014 celebration, The Worlds of Doctor Who.
The Eighth Doctor's first Big Finish companion - Charlotte Pollard - flew solo with four-disc set Charlotte Pollard - Series One, which can be bought here for £20 on Download and £25 on CD. And lastly, we end where Big Finish began - with Bernice Summerfield off on her adventures across the universe. The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield is available in this offer for £30 on Download and £35 on CD, a four-disc set including appearances from the Seventh Doctor and Ace, and one of the most praised Dalek stories ever.
Thank you to everyone who's participated in the Big Finish 15th Anniversary offers, be it snapping up a story that filled a gap in a collection, to taking a chance on a new range, from telling a friend about us for the first time, to emailing us best wishes. Here's to the next fifteen years!
Note that the above offers end in less that 48 hours. Clock's ticking!
A Few Words About the Last Year
"It breaks my heart that classic TV shows no longer exist in their entirely. That the first season of The Avengers is represented by just two full episodes, with the other 24 (apart from the first act of Hot Snow) lost, seemingly forever. So when the idea was mooted of authentically recreating them from the original scripts and story lines, I got very very excited. We weren’t just making a brilliant, much-loved piece of British television. We were resurrecting part of our cultural history. At last, fans can experience what those episodes would have been like!
I think the casting of Julian Wadham and Anthony Howell as Steed and Keel was one of the best ideas I’ve had since I started at Big Finish. It was an instant thought in my head, but I did go back and play their voices over again and again - just to let them bed into my brain, to make sure they were right. Of course they were - they have made those roles their own, and brought the series so vividly to life.
I’m very proud of this series. I sometimes look at the box set on my shelf and think, ‘I did that’. With, of course, an astonishing amount of hard work from my friends!"
David Richardson, producer, The Avengers – The Lost Stories
"Benny was there at the start of Big Finish, and I hope that she'll be there right at the end. By that time Jason Haigh-Ellery's country estate will have been turned into a retirement home. Benny will long ago have hung up her trowel, preferring instead to walk the halls. Matron Summerfield will do her rounds every evening. It will take some time, because there will be a lot of corridors. She'll look in on the carefully-ordered Gary Russell wing, shake her head at the amazing noises coming from the Briggs Suite, and laugh at the gossip coming from the Richardson Lounge, where a group of actors are lingering over yet another amazing lunch (at Big Finish Towers, every meal is lunch). As she passes, a voice will be saying "Of course, the great thing about audio is that you can do anything." And she'll nod. Because you can, and they did."
James Goss, producer, The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield
"15 years of Big Finish. How on Earth did that happen? What a wonderful thing. How many hours of audio drama? How many actors through the doors of those mysterious studios? How many wonderful lunches served?
Along with Cav Scott, I'm lucky enough to have had a home at Big Finish since practically the very beginning, pitching up at the studio in 1999 to cover a recording for SFX magazine. I ended up having a small part in The Fearmonger and finished the day in the back of a cab with Sylvester McCoy, heading to Teddington Studios. I had no idea where Teddington Studios was, but I was in a taxi with Doctor Who, so it didn't really matter.
Since then there have been vampires, Forges, musketeers, the reveal of a family secret, trans-temporal adventuresses in big red buses, time-travelling tracer twins, assassins and the crew of a ship called Liberator. The chance to write words for your childhood heroes is something that never, ever gets old, and one that I never take for granted.
Without Big Finish, I would't be doing what I do today, I wouldn't have learned so much, I wouldn't have such brilliant memories, or have met and worked with so many brilliant, talented people. Above all, Big Finish is like family.
Happy Birthday, Big Finish!"
Mark Wright, Award-winning Big Finish writer and producer
“From writing the novel The Forgotten (which gave us chance to get to know these brilliant characters again), to David Richardson’s call to contribute to the Liberator Chronicles with an epic, three-part story, we just seemed to click with Blake’s 7.” says Mark Wright. “The Armageddon Storm was one of those commissions that worked out better than you could have hoped on every level. Not only did we feel privileged to be given an entire box set to ourselves, we relished the chance to tell a Blake’s 7 story from several different perspectives.
“But like Project: Twilight for the Doctor Who range back in 2001, we had no idea that The Armageddon Storm would continue to have such a lasting effect on the Blake’s 7 ranges.”
Mark’s co-writer and new series Producer for Blake’s 7, Cavan Scott, picks up the story: “Only this week we were recording a new episode when reference to the Armageddon Storm was made and it's only a matter of time before Avon's actions come back to haunt him. Who would have thought, when we pitched the trilogy, that it would see Del Grant joining the Liberator crew and set in motion a series of events that will play a huge part in upcoming releases?
"As always, it's a privilege to work with your heroes and Blake's 7 is no exception. I was seven when I saw my first episode of Blake's 7, back in 1980. The seven-year-old me could never have dreamt that one day he'd be producing the continuing adventures of Blake, Avon and the rest. And there's plenty more to come..."
From Cavan Scott, Award-winning Big Finish writer and producer
"Despite my first play being released in 2008, I still feel like the new boy at Big Finish. It's only really in the last three years that I've been contributing to what's become a considerable output, and in only the last twelve months it's been exciting to see some significant new additions to the production schedule.
At Big Finish we're always talking about what new audio plays we might make, and David is often instrumental in finding new ranges for us to explore. But compared to the other new additions – and despite its links to the main range – one new series is unique.
Given that it was created by Terry Nation, Survivors might seem like an obvious range for Big Finish to produce, but we knew when we were working on it that we were making something unlike anything we'd made before. We were confident it was strong drama, but it's so straight and so dark that we had no idea how it would be received.
Of course we're over the moon it's been embraced so enthusiastically.
At Big Finish we really do love telling stories. It's this enthusiasm that made it possible for us to make Survivors and will, I hope, give us the opportunity to introduce many more new ranges in the years to come."
Ken Bentley, Big Finish writer and director extraordinaire
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