The Medium is Not Enough

Freshly plucked news about the audio plays from a nice man who went to a US convention where Big Finish head honcho Jason Haigh-Ellery was in residence.

• Their Doctor Who licence has just been extended again. It will now run until December 2009. (And apparently, the request for an extension was the first thing on Gary Russell’s desk on his first day on the job in Cardiff on the new series.)
• We have not heard the last of the newer companions created in the Big Finish range like Charley, Hex, Erimem and so on, but there will be fewer stories with them after the relaunch as more emphasis is placed on the TV companions, and they’re also considering creating some more new companions.
• The BBC7 series will run on Sunday nights beginning on New Year’s Eve. Exact time slot is yet to be determined. It will have the David Arnold theme music, but it’s been remixed a bit, and also, episode three, Horror of Glam Rock, will feature its own “glam rock” version.
• While the BBC7 McGann CDs are coming out, there will not be any other McGann stories coming out in the CD range… it’ll be 5-6-7 until the radio season is finished coming out.
• Matthew Sweet is writing a Doctor Who audio that’s a silent movie. Yes, you read that right.
• Sylvester McCoy said over the weekend that he’d quite like to be a baddie in something for Big Finish, and Jason liked the sound of that a lot.
• Sales have recovered quite a bit since the big hit they took after the relaunch of the TV series in 2005.
• Jason was “95% sure” that Renaissance of the Daleks with Peter Davison will co-star Sarah Sutton as Nyssa. It hasn’t been recorded yet though. She has told them that she’d like to do more audios again than the one-a-year she had cut it back to.
• There’s nothing more for Turlough in the pipeline at the moment simply because of Mark Strickson’s schedule, but they will always record more with him when he’s in the UK and available.
• Unless sales pick up there will probably not be a third series of Sapphire and Steel audios. All weekend long Nigel Fairs kept forcing the phrase “Sapphire and Steel starring David Warner and Susannah Harker” into the panel discussions, to increasingly funny effect. By Sunday the audience were saying it along with him. For the same reason, there will probably not be anymore Doctor Who audio script books or music CDs.