Dividing up the content surrounding the Wilderness Years of Doctor Who has been an interesting experiment of trial and error. I had initially planned to read the two Companion Novels during the time time I was listening to the Lost Season 23 audios, but it became clear that these books would be a slow burn, and in the end it did take me about 18 months to get around to finishing them both. Is this a commentary on their quality? Perhaps. I'm still glad I read them though, and it helps provide a good context to where tie-in media was at during this era of the show. I'm also glad I got them out of the way before I dive into the Wilderness Years proper.

I also decided that, since most of the content released during the Wilderness Years is at least somewhat contemporary, I would tackle the two Third Doctor radio dramas beforehand as well. All four pieces of media are set during the original run of the show, and each takes a different approach that I think helps lay the groundwork in a big way for how future works such as the novel ranges in the 90s and Big Finish later on would approach creating content set during previous eras. And I have to say, the audios have already come a long way from where Slipback left off less than a decade earlier.

The two novels were bought used as they are no longer in print, but the two radio plays are available as audio books from sites such as Audible. I've ranked each story based on it's medium, though I found both audios superior to the novels.

( But he was a good man, and a brave one. It's silly, I know, but I feel as though I've lost my best friend. )

Doing these audios was never really something I considered when I was planning my watch of Classic Who, and it was only after I did my previous "lost season" watch that I realized another "season" like it actually existed. It makes complete sense that the show's future had already been charted when the BBC pulled the plug back in 1989, and these audios probably don't reflect what the season would have truly looked like the way the previous ones did, but the way they've been changed and adapted feels much more faithful to the direction the series actually did take after it was cancelled with the novels and the subsequent revival. The fact that much of it was also helmed by Andrew Cartmel himself was a major selling point for me, and upon listen I was surprised by how much of it ended up being a large, linked "season-long" arc.

However, I will say that because these stories weren't as fleshed out as the ones from the aborted season 23, they by and large feel much thinner. That's not to say I didn't enjoy them - I really did! - but they almost felt constrained by what they could do with The Doctor and Ace since so much ground has already been covered elsewhere. What they did get, however, was extremely satisfying, and this listening experience has really inclined me to look into Big Finish more once the dust has settled a bit more.

All four stories are available for purchase from Big Finish as well as on platforms such as Audible. This "season" ended up being difficult to rank due to how interconnected they each were, and its entirely possible my ordering will change after I hit publish. I should also note that I actually lost a huge chunk of this review due to hardware failure and had to rewrite it later, which means that parts of it have been written much later and in less detail than I originally gave.

( So... is that it for us? I bet you're already into other dodgy schemes, with other dodgy people. )

Ever since I began watching Doctor Who, I had this plan that slowly grew in the back of my head about how I would cover the Sixth Doctor era. I already knew about Slipback, but it wasn't until I did more research into the hiatus that I learned that an entire season had been planned in detail and then aborted when the BBC shifted their plans for the show. (Well, cancel, and then uncancel with an eighteen month hiatus). There was enough work put in that three of those stories ended up getting novelized anyway, and later got audio adaptions from Big Finish along with another. That, combined with the revelation that two companion-centric novels were also released around this time, gave birth to my final strategy: do this "lost season" of Doctor Who in between Seasons 22 and 23, somewhat padding out what ended up being a very short era for the Sixth Doctor.

I'm gonna preface this by saying that I know these aren't the equivalent of having actual, televised stories. But the audio tracks I listened to during the First and Second Doctor eras for the missing episodes helped me grow accustomed to switching back and forth, and the experience ended up being much more seamless than I had expected, even with the absence of linking narration. I ended up enjoying this season a lot, and I was surprised at how much they allowed themselves to progress the relationship between the Doctor and Peri in these stories. Hopefully one day, if there is enough material to work with, Big Finish will be able to release some version of the remaining two stories Yellow Fever and How to Cure It and The Children of January - particularly the latter as they had originally made plans to do just that in 2009 before they hit a roadblock. In the meantime, I'm thankful for what we do have, and it's definitely made me interested in checking out the Big Finish range once I've completed watching the Classic series.

I was originally going to include the two companion novels in the same review (albeit a different section), but I thought it would be best to separate those out so the audios were still fresh in my mind, and because they are ultimately a very disconnected from them. Three of the four Big Finish audios are available to listen to on Spotify. This "season" had four stories, as well as a radio drama that was released in 1985, and ended up being pretty straightforward in terms of ranking.

( Haven't you been listening? If you want to leave this ship alive, I suggest you follow me! )