Hello!! Fairly new Doctor Who fan here—I’ve finished Nine and am partway through Ten and am absolutely loving it—and I had a question: when/where do you recommend starting with the audio dramas? I started one about Nine, but got the feeling that I was running into spoilers…thanks!

(Also, love your blog!)

hi there!! :D

I'm so sorry I've left this ask unanswered for so long 😅🙃 I hope you don't mind me finally coming around to answering your question now; hopefully you're still interested in the DW audios!! they are honestly so much fun, and it always excites me when I see someone new looking to get into them, whether they've been a long-time DW fan or are just getting into the show!!

maybe it'll help a bit if I just share my own experience with getting started with the audios--I started watching DW not long after Thirteen's first series (s11) aired, and enjoyed those episodes so much that I went all the way back to s1 and watched through the entire show. once I finished watching all of NuWho (all the episodes 2005-present), I wanted to try some Big Finish audios, but I didn't want to spend any money on them yet because I wasn't sure how much I was going to like them (and also I was a broke high school student 😅😂). I was informed that there were quite a few of the older audios available on Spotify (completely free!), so I found a list of some of the best stories online somewhere and listened to one audio from each of the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Doctor's storylines. I still knew basically nothing about any of the Classic Doctors or their companions or the story arcs they had on TV, so I was a bit lost with Five, Six, and Seven (although the Six story I listened to was 'Jubilee,' and I did thoroughly enjoy that one even without much prior context).

the one story that really stuck for me was the Eighth Doctor audio I listened to, 'The Chimes of Midnight'. there was some earlier context that I was missing that caused some of the major plot moments to be a bit confusing for me, but both the Doctor and the companion were brand-new and there wasn't a ton of show-canon context that I didn't have, unlike with the other Doctors' audios. so I went back to 'Storm Warning,' the first audio with Eight and the introduction to his companion Charley Pollard, and moved forward through Eight's audios from there.

so this is usually the path that I recommend people new to Big Finish take when getting started too! both because it's so accessible (due to the first major arc of Eight and Charley's stories being free and easy to access on Spotify), and because Eight barely has any screentime at all, so it was left up to the audios to pretty much develop the character from the ground up. and it worked really well for me and has done for others I've recommended starting this way.

however, if you'd rather try another course than this one, the Tenth Doctor's audios are also a pretty good jumping-on point for a new Big Finish listener. I've only listened to a few of them, but I enjoyed the ones I heard, and there wasn't really any context that you would need outside of Ten's TV episodes to enjoy them. (you definitely do need to have seen all of his TV run before listening to those audios, though.)

another decent place to start would be with the Diary of River Song audios, or the Tenth Doctor and River Song boxset (but only once you've watched through the Eleventh Doctor's era, and only if you actually like River Song as a character. otherwise these audios will probably just be irritating to you, since she's, ya know, the main character of them 😅)

I'm also going to leave this post open for any of my DW friends who would wanna chip in and add their recommendations for the best places to start with Big Finish to do so! there is honestly so much good storytelling in the audios; at this point, I really do think Big Finish does far more for my love of Doctor Who than the show (which isn't to diss the show at all; that's just how good the audio writers are and how much I really do enjoy the stories they come up with!)

(and aww, thank you!! ^-^ :D)