Doctor Who

Over the years, there’s been a surprising amount of Doctor Who scripts that were never made: stories that fell afoul of budgetary and logistical issues; stories that were too similar to others; stories that were too awful for human consumption – the list of reasons for their non-existence goes on.

However, the biggest one-off clump of unmade Doctor Who stories came after the end of Colin Baker’s first full season, when Michael Grade decided to ‘rest’ the show. Eighteen months later, it returned with the 14-part The Trial of a Time Lord and the original ‘season 23’, upon which production had already begun, never saw the light of day.

At least not on tele. Some of them were novelised by Target back in the 80s/90s, but now Big Finish has taken it upon itself to adapt some of these missing season 23 stories as full cast audios; it’s also having a go at some other ‘lost stories’ from previous seasons in a new range of plays collectively called… well, have a guess.

The first of the range is The Nightmare Fair, former producer Graham Williams’ first solo script. He was given the task of writing a story that reintroduced the First Doctor’s whacky enemy, the Celestial Toymaker from (who’d have guessed it?) The Celestial Toymaker. To make things even easier, the story also had to be set in Blackpool.

Are you feeling the thrill yet?

Continue reading “Review: Doctor Who – The Lost Stories – 01 – The Nightmare Fair”