As an Eighth Doctor fan, I feel extremely lucky in terms of how much content we get of my favorite Doctor. Admittedly, there's incredibly little content of his era on television - limited to just a TV movie, a minisode, and a brief appearance in an anniversary special. But on audio, we're regularly given two or three full box sets a year.
Even better is that these releases highlight the long life that Eight's been given on audio. For example, the first Eighth Doctor box set released this year, "Echoes", takes place right in the middle of his long life, when he's traveling with Liv (Nicola Walker) and Helen (Hattie Morahan).
More recently, "Reflections" took place much closer to the end of his life, right in the middle of the Time War when he's traveling with his great-grandson Alex (Sonny McGann) and Cass (Emma Campbell-Jones). We'll be taking a look at each of these box sets later this week.
It's perhaps somewhat fitting that the latest Eighth Doctor box set, "Deadly Strangers", is set much closer to the beginning of Eight's life. At this point, the Doctor is still traveling with Charley Pollard (India Fisher), a companion introduced in Big Finish's first-ever Eighth Doctor story, "Storm Warning". He's also traveling with Lady Audacity Montague (Jaye Griffiths) - a companion introduced much more recently in last year's box set "Audacity".
Matthew Jacobs
While the companion of Charley provides strong ties to the early days of Eight, the opening episode "Puccini and the Doctor" has even stronger ties to Eight's beginnings. The strongest, in fact. Because this story is written by Matthew Jacobs - the writer of the TV movie.
Honestly, having the writer who helped define the Eighth Doctor write for Big Finish feels huge. The movie might not have been perfect, but the Eighth Doctor's characterization was brilliant: intelligent, passionate, joyful, eccentric, and so much more.
As a kid who had only seen a few repeats before, how well the Eighth Doctor was written in that film helped to make me a fan back in 1996. So it's wonderful that Eight's first writer is writing for him again, for the first time in almost three decades. Unsurprisingly, Jacobs himself is also excited about writing for the character again.
"This is the first time I've written a Doctor Who adventure since 1996. The Doctor is such an integral part of my life, so it's been fascinating over the years to see it grow and grow. Paul has kept the Doctor alive at Big Finish in a marvellous way and he has become so much more sophisticated as a character than when we were starting."Matthew Jacobs
Considering how much the movie referenced Puccini, it seems very fitting that Jacobs's first audio story explores the relationship between the composer and the Time Lord. It's certainly an episode that I'm eager to listen to.
The return of the Mara
The second episode of the box set, "Women's Day Off" by Lisa McMullin, sounds like another fascinating exploration of history. I'll be honest, I had never heard of the women's strike in Iceland in 1975 before - which is exactly why a story like this should be told. Audacity and Charley also seem like a great fit for this story, especially as the strike is essentially an event from their future.
The box set finishes with "The Gloaming". This is an exciting story for two reasons. First, it's written by Lauren Mooney and Stewart Pringle - two great writers who gave us the excellent Cyberman story "The Quintessence" earlier this year. It was a wonderfully atmospheric Third Doctor story that has me eager to listen to more from this writing team.
The other reason I'm excited about "The Gloaming"? The return of the Mara. A creature of the mind that originally appeared in Fifth Doctor stories "Kinda" and "Snakedance", there have been surprisingly few appearances of the Mara in expanded media. (While they appeared in Torchwood audio "Art Decadence" earlier this year, this was their first Big Finish appearance since 2010's "The Cradle of the Snake".) So their return to Doctor Who is extremely exciting, especially with a completely new TARDIS team to face. Something that producer David Richardson was very keen to explore.
"We've been wanting to bring the Mara back to Doctor Who for a while now, and I thought it would be interesting to see how they would work in the context of a different TARDIS team. Every previous TV and audio tale has focused on the fantastic Fifth Doctor team, but it's good to shake things up and here it's the Eighth Doctor and his friends who face their malign influence."David Richardson
You can expect a review of this volume shortly. In the meantime, you can purchase and listen to the story on CD and download right now from Big Finish's website.