Dark Gallifrey: Missy Part 1
Starring Michelle Gomez
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12 Actors who went from Audio to TV Doctor Who
16 May 2025
Big Finish listeners may have recognised these faces – or their voices, at least – when they showed up in Doctor Who TV episodes…
2025’s new TV series of Doctor Who features, alongside Ncuti Gatwa and Varada Sethu, several guest stars who will be familiar to listeners of Big Finish’s audio dramas. But this isn’t the first time that actors have gone from audio to TV within the Whoniverse.
We’ve compiled a selection of stars who showed up in Big Finish releases before joining the Doctor for televised adventures in time and space.
- For a very limited time, selected audio dramas featuring these actors (and more!) are discounted up to 50% off. Click here to browse the sale offers, which expire no later than 23:59 (UK time) on 20 May 2025.
The Robot Revolution, the first episode of 2025's TV Doctor Who series, guest-starred Jonny Green (also seen in It’s a Sin and White Lines) as the sweetheart of companion Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu).
But Big Finish listeners will know Jonny as Tyler Steele, journalist turned Torchwood agent. Tyler first appeared in the Aliens Among Us arc in 2017, and returned to the Torchwood range most recently in May 2025’s story, The Boy Who Never Laughed.
Though he’s a household name today, David Tennant was relatively unknown when he played a number of Doctor Who audio drama roles in the early 2000s. He made his debut in monthly range story Colditz, before playing UNIT’s Colonel Ross Brimmicombe-Wood and Dalek Empire’s Galanar.
Tennant first appeared in TV Doctor Who in 2005, as the immensely popular Tenth Doctor. More recently, he earned the distinction of being the first actor to play two official incarnations of the Time Lord, becoming the Fourteenth Doctor for the 60th anniversary specials. He has also returned to Big Finish on more than one occasion to star in the Tenth Doctor Adventures range.
Ruth Madeley made her Doctor Who TV debut in 2023’s 60th anniversary specials, having previously worked with showrunner Russell T Davies on Years and Years. She plays UNIT scientific advisor Shirley Bingham.
But before Shirley, she was Hebe Harrison, marine biologist. The Doctor’s first wheelchair-using companion, Hebe joined the Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker) in his travels for four Sixth Doctor Adventures audio drama box sets released between 2022 and 2023.
Another actor joining Doctor Who's 2025 TV series, Charlie Condou is well known for his roles in Coronation Street and Holby City, as well as his LGBTQ+ activism. He appears in the episode The Interstellar Song Contest.
Charlie has guest-starred in the Eighth Doctor Adventures box set Ravenous 1, as well as Classic Doctors New Monsters story Five Hundred Ways to Leave Your Lover, in which he played the boyfriend of the Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann) in a reality threatened by the sinister Monks.
Previously known for her comedic roles in Green Wing and Bad Education, Michelle Gomez won over Doctor Who fans in 2014 when she first appeared as Missy, the cackling and chaotic female incarnation of the Master.
Gomez has since reprised this role for Missy’s own series of audio dramas. But her first Big Finish credit was in fact back in 2007, when she played Jevvan in the monthly range story Valhalla, opposite Sylvester McCoy’s Seventh Doctor.
British film and TV legend David Warner first acted for Big Finish Productions when he played the Unbound Doctor in 2003’s Sympathy for the Devil. Warner continued to play this parallel universe version of the Time Lord throughout the Unbound range and subsequently in The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield, up until his death in 2022.
His only appearance on TV Doctor Who was in the 2013 episode Cold War, playing Professor Grisenko opposite Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor.
Big Finish’s creative director Nicholas Briggs has contributed countless voice roles since the very first releases. Most notably, he’s the voice behind the Daleks and the Cybermen.
His penchant for voicing monsters, robots and aliens was noticed by the BBC’s Doctor Who production team, who brought him onboard to voice the Daleks, Cybermen, and various other characters for the TV show. Twenty years later, he’s still in demand and can be heard voicing the titular machines in The Robot Revolution as well as the Vlinx.
Since 2013’s 50th anniversary TV special The Day of the Doctor, Ingrid Oliver has been recognised by fans as Petronella Osgood, a scientific advisor to UNIT. She played the role in four TV episodes, as well as in several volumes of UNIT – The New Series.
Before that, however, Oliver voiced different characters in the 2010 monthly range story Project Destiny, and the 2011 Lost Stories release Earth Aid, both times alongside Sylvester McCoy’s Seventh Doctor.
One of the main talking points of the 2024 TV series of Doctor Who was the identity of Ruby’s fourth-wall-breaking neighbour Mrs Flood, played by Anita Dobson. The EastEnders legend also returned as this mysterious character in the 2025 series.
In fact, Dobson’s Doctor Who debut was back in 2006. She played planetary president Eileen Klint in the Eighth Doctor Adventures story Blood of the Daleks, alongside Paul McGann and Sheridan Smith.
From Spaced to Mission: Impossible, Simon Pegg’s career has been full of iconic roles, so the Doctor Who world is lucky to have had him involved twice. The first occasion was in the 2002 monthly range story Invaders from Mars, in which he played crime boss Don Chaney.
Then in 2005, Pegg guest starred in TV episode The Long Game, as the sinister Editor of Satellite 5. He has also starred in two of Big Finish’s 2000 AD audio dramas, as mutant bounty hunter Johnny Alpha. (Sadly, these are no longer available to purchase.)
The latest actor to take on the role of the Master, Sacha Dhawan made his Doctor Who TV debut in 2020’s Spyfall, and faced off against Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor across five episodes of her era.
He’s since reprised the role for his own Big Finish series, Call Me Master. But Dhawan’s Big Finish debut was back in 2014’s Dark Eyes story, The Reviled. He has also guest starred as various characters in Classic Doctors New Monsters, Torchwood: Aliens Among Us, and the monthly range story Ghost Walk.
Best known outside of the Whoniverse for The League of Gentlemen and Sherlock, Mark Gatiss has been a regular guest star in Big Finish’s audio dramas since the very beginning. He voiced characters in the first Bernice Summerfield audio drama, Oh No It Isn’t!, and the first Doctor Who audio, The Sirens of Time, among many others.
After Doctor Who returned to TV in 2005, Gatiss not only wrote several episodes, but also earned multiple acting credits, including as Richard Lazarus in The Lazarus Experiment and as Captain Lethbridge-Stewart in Twice Upon a Time.
