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Doctor Who: The Monthly Adventures, formerly subtitled as the Main Range,[1] is a full-cast audio drama series based on the Britishscience fiction television programme Doctor Who. Produced by Big Finish Productions between 1999[2] and 2021,[3] each audio drama stars one or more of the original actors who played the Doctor in the programme's classic series.
Doctor Who revolves around the adventures of an alien called the Doctor, whose people are called the Time Lords. He uses a spaceship called the TARDIS, which can travel in time as well as space. While travelling, the Doctor works to save lives and liberate oppressed peoples by combating foes. The Doctor often travels with companions. The programme has a concept of regeneration, in which, when a Time Lord is fatally injured, their cells regenerate and they are reincarnated into a different body with a different personality, but the same memories.
The Classic Series of Doctor Who, which these stories are based on, originally ran from 1963 to 1989 with a TV movie in 1996. In 1999, Big Finish obtained a non-exclusive licence to produce official Doctor Who audio plays.
Big Finish Productions began producing audio dramas featuring the Fifth Doctor, Sixth Doctor, and Seventh Doctors, under the "Main Range" banner, starting with the multi-Doctor story The Sirens of Time in July 1999. They gradually developed a pattern of thirteen releases per year, one every month with two in September or December. From 2001 to 2007, the main range also included releases featuring the Eighth Doctor; future releases with the Eighth Doctor were more sporadic, coincident with the beginning of the Eighth Doctor Adventures. Various companions appeared throughout the adventures in main and guest roles, mostly originating from television, though some originated from various spin-offs such as novels and comics, and some debuted in the Big Finish audios themselves.
In May 2020, Big Finish announced that The Monthly Adventures (which had recently changed its subtitle) would conclude with its 275th release, to be replaced with regular releases of each Doctor in their own boxsets throughout the year from January 2022, as part of a revamp. The number of these boxsets for each Doctor was announced in May 2022, with the first, second and fifth getting one boxset, and the other five, including the third and fourth, receiving two. With 275 releases over 22 years, the series holds the Guinness World Record for longest running science fiction audio play series.
Though the programme had been put on indefinite hiatus in 1989 (and despite the failed revival attempt with the 1996 TV movie), the BBC still published, as well as gave non-exclusive licences to other companies to produce, Doctor Who stories through various mediums such as novels and comics.[4]Big Finish Productions, which mostly consisted of fans who started out recording fan audio plays, were given the licence to record some of the New Adventures, a series of novels from Virgin Books which had originally been licensed Doctor Who stories, into audio plays.[5][6] This eventually transitioned into a licence to produce original audio dramas featuring the past Doctors, with The Sirens of Time being the first story to be released in July 1999.[5]
A number of Doctor Who spin-off writers formed the group of original writers, including Gary Russell, Nicholas Briggs, Justin Richards and Mark Gatiss.[5][6] Future Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat also joined, but left after it became clear that the licence did not extend to the then-incumbent Eighth Doctor. The still alive actors of the Fourth to Eighth Doctors were approached for the role, but Tom Baker, the Fourth Doctor, declined.[6] The releases therefore alternated between the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Doctors, with the licence extended to include the Eighth Doctor in 2001 (although his releases were generally not included in the alternating schedule, instead that year's Eighth Doctor releases would all come out one after the other before then returning to the normal rotation of the other Doctors). Doctor Who was revived in 2005, returning to television, and the next few years saw the introduction of new spin-offs, including The Eighth Doctor Adventures, and the Eighth Doctor mostly moved away from the Main Range.[5]
Various companions from the television show returned across the next few years.[7] March 2000 saw the first time a companion originated in Big Finish itself, with the introduction of Evelyn Smythe, played by Maggie Stables;[8] October 2000 saw Lisa Bowerman reprise her role of Bernice Summerfield from Big Finish's spin-off of the same name, a character who originated in the Virgin novels;[8] and November 2000 saw the introduction of Frobisher, who originated in the comics, with Robert Jezek playing the role.[9] Since then, every televised companion has reprised their role in Big Finish (with the exception of Jackie Lane's Dodo Chaplet).[10]
Big Finish has been characterised as “augmenting the canon" by utilising "fan experiences and memories of fans" from TV, steeping itself in "fan nostalgia", even using the serial format of the original series and the corresponding theme tunes;[11] it has also been derogatorily referred to as being full of 'fanwank' for emphasising "fan pleasure" through references to continuity, over plot.[12] The releases have also been compared to fanfiction, in the way they try to "correct perceived transgressions",[13] focus on and deepen the characterisation and emotions of characters,[14] and revitalise the earlier dynamics of some villains[15] while also recontexualising their motivations.[16] On a more neutral level, they have been characterised as focusing more on the 'interpersonal' than the 'epic'; that instead of homages, they serve as supplements to the story, improving and emphasising other parts of the plot.[17]
Though the BBC has not echoed the sentiment, executive producer Nicholas Briggs considers the audios to be completely canonical.[18]
From the start of the Main Range in July 1999 with The Sirens of Time up to the November 2002 release The Church and the Crown, the 1970s version of the theme tune by Delia Derbyshire was used anachronistically for all Fifth Doctor, Sixth Doctor, and Seventh Doctor stories in the Main Range, with the exception of the Seventh Doctor story The Rapture, released in September 2002, which used electronic dance remixes of the theme tune in keeping with the Ibiza nightclub theme of the story. At the time, the budget of Big Finish did not extend to being able to pay Dominic Glynn and Keff McCulloch for their versions of the television theme tune from 1986 and 1987–1989 respectively. Derbyshire was a BBC employee at the time when she made her versions of Ron Grainer's theme tune, so Big Finish would not have to pay her or her estate any royalties for using any of her versions of the theme tune. Derbyshire's 1970s theme tune was also considered more definitive than Peter Howell's version from 1980–1985. Howell had also been a BBC employee when he did his version of the theme tune.
Eighth Doctor Big Finish stories from the Main Range first used a new arrangement of the theme tune by David Arnold, starting from the first Eighth Doctor release, Storm Warning, in January 2001, up to The Girl Who Never Was in December 2007. The July 2009 release The Company of Friends used a new arrangement of the theme tune by Nicholas Briggs, while the trilogy of stories from October to December 2011, featuring the Eighth Doctor with Mary Shelley as his companion, used a new arrangement of the theme tune by Jamie Robertson.
From December 2002 onwards, beginning with Bang-Bang-a-Boom!, which had the correct McCulloch theme tune for a Seventh Doctor and Mel story, Big Finish was financially secure enough to start using the specific era versions of the theme tunes. There was a rare exception to this with the December 2006 release Year of the Pig, which is set in between the TV stories Timelash and Revelation of the Daleks, but uses the anachronistic Glynn version of the theme tune instead of the Howell version that was used during season 22 of the television series. The December 2020 release, Plight of the Pimpernel, takes place just before The Trial of a Time Lord, yet uses the Glynn theme, creating a debate amongst Big Finish Doctor Who fans as to whether the Glynn theme or Howell theme for Plight of the Pimpernel should have been used.
The following table includes characters who have appeared in at least one year as a main character. Main cast refers to those who appeared multiple times across unrelated stories in a given year, while those marked guest-only appeared across one set of stories in a given year:
The following list mentions the guest actors who have never appeared as a main character in any year, but have appeared as allies or enemies of the Doctor various times in the Main Range, or were allied multiple times in other mediums. They are listed alphabetically by character's last name (or only names when the last name is unknown or does not exist):
Source:[19]
In May 2020, Big Finish announced that the Main Range would conclude with its 275th release, to be replaced with regular releases of each Doctor in their own boxsets throughout the year from January 2022.[233] With 275 releases over 22 years, the series achieved the Guinness World Record for longest running science fiction audio play series in 2021.[234] However, in terms of time-span the claim is contestable, as Ruby the Galactic Gumshoe by the ZBS Foundation has run sporadically since 1982, with a release as recently as 2025, and at the time of The Monthly Adventures receiving the award, had made a release in 2018, a 36-year lifespan then, and a 43-year lifespan as of the most recent release.
The revamp was stated by Big Finish to be an effort to be more accessible to newcomers by allowing for "a natural 'stepping on point'" for them; they also stated that it would allow for more "exciting new possibilities and creative freedom" in the cast combinations and story lengths and arcs.[233]