Big Finish Pocket Reviews

I’m writing this at the end of 2019, and I’ve been a fan of Big Finish Doctor Who for a while now. As a long-time fan of the show, I learned about Big Finish at some point during the “wilderness era,” but they weren’t commonly available in America at the time, so much like the novels, I ignored them. Sometime in 2012, I realized that downloads were available, and I made a few purchases...which I failed to listen to, because I fell asleep while listening. In late 2013, I tried again with the 50th anniversary special, "The Light at the End." Because I was recovering from an injury, the only exercise available to me was walking, so I listened while I walked. That gave me the revelation that the stories are better listened to while doing something that occupies my hands or feet, but not my mind.

From that point, I was off to the races. Big Finish has sales quite frequently, and by the time I’m writing this, I’ve acquired all of the Main Range, the Short Trips series, and a good chunk of the Companion Chronicles, as well as the box set specials for a number of the other Doctors. I generally stick to stories in which the Doctor appears, because I have to draw the line somewhere, but I’ve also purchased all the UNIT and River Song sets.

I find that I need to have a “project,” some order in which I’m listening to the stories. I usually listen to new ones right as they come out, but that’s not enough for the amount of listening I do. I can’t just pick stories at random to listen to, unfortunately; maybe it’s a lack of creativity. So a few years back, I listened to everything I own in release order, and that took me about three years to finish. In the first part of 2019, I decided to start over, but listening to the stories in chronological order, according to the Doctor’s timeline, as laid out by Craig Brawley in the Big Finish Listeners Facebook group. However, Mr. Brawley doesn’t include a lot of the Short Trips from before 2018 or so. I had to make my best guesses about where those go.

At the end of November 2019, I decided to take a few minutes after each story and write down what I thought. I started with the Fifth Doctor, because he’s my favorite, and because my collection has only a few gaps in his era. After I finished with that, I planned to loop back around to the First Doctor, then jump back to the Sixth, then the Second, and so on. I hope that by the time I get to the eras with more gaps, I’ll have filled them in. I’ll present these reviews in chronological order for the Doctor, but I’ll tag each with the real-world date I wrote the review. That means that for most stories, I’ll write the review shortly after listening to the story, but for the Fifth Doctor, I had to backfill some earlier stories I listened to. I don’t know how long I’ll continue this project; it depends on whether I get bored.

Update, November 2025: Clearly, I didn't get bored. Equally clearly, this project accelerated my acquisition of Big Finish stories. I now have almost no gaps anywhere in the Doctor's timeline, and I have complete collections of a number of the spin-off series as well. And because Big Finish never stops, my collection of stories from the modern era has grown to a size I never could have imagined when I started this project.