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The Children of January - particularly the latter as they had originally made plans to do just that in 2009 before they hit a roadblock.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! )