Another fascinating day in Slough among Big Finish fans at Big Finish Day 8, writers, actors, musicians and everyone in between. A densely packed stream of talks in the main room, lots of things to buy (focussed on recent boxsets) and plenty of people to catch up with.

I made notes of various talks and share them below for those who weren’t there and didn’t get access to the periscope feed.

General thoughts

Big Finish are very busy and their commitment to innovation and quality remains undiminished. This does mean they want to focus and are still very cost conscious. Getting the license for modern Doctor Who has meant some titles became pushed to the side in the bow wave (eg Omega Factor) but now various new ranges are kicked off we can expect more to come from across the portfolio.

Not all talks were Doctor Who, nor were all conversations. In this post I’ll focus on things I heard and put other news in other posts.

The Big Finish Session

Led by Nick Briggs with David Richardson (and later Matt Fitton and John Dorney joined in), this covered news and questions. While he waited Nick took a quick straw poll as to the future of Vortex — much support in the room and Nick explained he asked as some within Big Finish think Vortex should go quarterly.

Proceedings kicked off with the announcement of Leela joining the War Doctor in the fourth volume of  War Doctor stories, Casualties of War. Once the dust settled a range of topics were covered.

The announcement of Leela led to an audience led swell of interest in Ace meeting the War Doctor. This led to a slightly convoluted mention of another way to explore the setting — no details but I took it to mean there might be stories told in the Time War without John Hurt. Just speculation

Other points:

• The website needs some re-engineering, Nick has meetings later this month
• There is a massive update to the Big Finish app and 20 beta-testers were signed up for the iOS version
• No sign of the Paternoster Gang appearing any time soon
• The current re-casting is all for now (ie Elliot Chapman as Ben Jackson, Tim Treloar as the Third Doctor and Jemma Powell as Barbara Wright)
• Original Counter Measures was made in Black and White the new series is full colour. All the characters are returning and in the special we find out Who Killed Toby Kinsella?
• In 2017 there will be full cast releases of classic HG Wells (I assume War of the Worlds, Time Machine, Invisible Man and Island of Doctor Moreau). There are no plans to tackle the more mainstream titles, nor the short stories
• The possibility of another writers’ opportunity is being considered but needs to be less arduous on the evaluators than previous such events. No timetable
• John Dorney would like to write the ‘missing’ Avengers story where Dr Keel finally gets to Avenge himself on everyone who tore his life apart in the first story Hot Snow
• Matt Fitton would like to explore much more of the Survivors universe and this could include what happened much later on, ie a later generation

The Prisoner Session

A conversation with Nick Briggs, Barnaby Edwards and Mark Elstob discussing how Nick created the audios. The second set was announced, it is too early for Nick to give details but we should expect a mix of old and new stories, but he did confirm a good level of sales.

War Doctor Session

A massive collection of characters including Nick Briggs, Matt Fitton, John Banks, Jacqueline Pearce, Barnaby Edwards, David Warner, Beth Chalmers, Lucy Briggs-Owen.

Much admiration for John Hurt and a repeat of the Leela announcement / trailer.

Blakes’ 7 Session

Cavan Scott did his best to keep order but the panel of Jacqueline Pearce, Paul Darrow, Lisa Bowerman, Hugh Fraser, Justin Richards, Jamie Robertson and Guy Adams made if difficult. Great to have Paul Darrow after his many problems last year though his wit and repartee took no prisoners. We did learn a few things:

• Paul Darrow is in the first story of Liberator Chronicles 12 and it has been recorded
• Guy Adams wrote the final two stories and they follow on from The Armageddon Storm and David Warner is back
• Series D is still out of bounds
• There will be more full-cast stories set across series 1-3
• Gan and Dayna will be recast
• There have been some chats with Colin Baker about the idea of returning to the part of Bayban the Butcher
• There might be stories set after series 4 (just an idea for now)

Other bits

I missed some other sessions, tidbits included:

• Some details and a cover for Unit Shutdown
• We have some more novels [it turns out this is an old piece of news I’d missed]:
  • Nightshade a Mark Gatiss Seventh Doctor, Ace and Susan story (Carole Ann Ford and Tom Price)
  • Original Sin – no surprise to get the origin story for Chris Cwej and Roz Forrester as originally written by Andy Lane and adapted by John Dorney
• Something is in the works for Bernice Summerfield (a mention in the podcast session).

What did I miss? Let me know!