The first panel at Big Finish Day 3 was entitled The Fiftieth Anniversary and featured Nick Briggs, Carole Ann Ford and John Ainsworth amongst others. After a lot of interesting chat including the forthcoming An Adventure in Time and Space - Nick mentioned his part as the original voice of the Daleks and Carole mentioned that she and William Russell had visited the set as guests. No more was allowed to be said.

The conversation then went on to the Destiny of the Doctor series and I list below the various points that were made (subject to the vagaries of memory)

Destiny of the Doctor

There was an interesting explanation of the concept behind the series: Destiny of the Doctor is aimed at those fans that might be buying nu-Who releases from AudioGo that could be tempted to buy stories for past Doctors. They are not aimed at hard-core fans with extensive knowledge of the show’s history but at casual listeners.

Each is meant to be stand-alone with the elements that make the arc not damaging the integrity of each story and the final story also can stand alone.

Nicola Bryant and Sophie Aldred were confirmed for Trouble in Paradise (Sixth Doctor) and Shockwave (Seventh Doctor) much as I had anticipated.

There was then a lengthy discussion about Babblesphere which is written by Jonathan Morris. It transpires that Jonathan was picked specifically on the strength of his novel Festival of Death which won the Best Past Doctor Adventure of 2000 in a DWM poll. Apparently Lalla Ward was so taken by the quality of the script that she rated it as good as any she had seen apart from those by Douglas Adams. This has inevitably whetted my appetite for next month’s release!

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