The Company of Friends (Lance Parkin, Stephen Cole, Alan Barnes & Jonathan Morris)

 The release for July 2009 is a series of plays featuring the Eighth Doctor, and companions from the comics and books...

"The Company of Friends" - the latest audio release from Big Finish Productions - promised to be something very special indeed. All four stories have been directed by Nicholas Briggs and were recorded on the 30th and 31st October 2008.

The double-CD set of four self-contained ‘short story’ episodes has become a well-established annual tradition for the Big Finish Productions Doctor Who audio adventures with the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Doctors all having taken their turn in previous years. Therefore it was only a matter of time before a set of single-episode stories for the Eighth Doctor would be released.

However, what sets this release apart from the others is the scale of ambition in exploring a few slightly different aspects of the Eighth Doctor’s history. Because in "The Company of Friends" he is paired up with a different companion in each episode – and not all of them have appeared on audio before but those that are new should seem familiar from other media.

Thus we have a tale involving Bernice Summerfield, Fitz Kreiner, Izzy Sinclair and Mary Shelley.

As revealed by script editor Alan Barnes ‘This was entirely my idea, I’m afraid. We at Big Finish have done an awful lot with the Eighth Doctor, but we’re conscious that he has had a life outside our audio adventures, and I thought this gave us a good opportunity to show the man in a slightly different light - different dynamics with different companions...’

Eighth Doctor

 There’s actually a lengthy list of characters Big Finish Productions might have chosen to bring to life; Samantha Jones, Anji Kapoor, Trix MacMillan, Fey, Destril... The reason why Big Finish Productions have used the ones they have is explained by Alan Barnes ‘Realistically we could only pick one companion for each episode, so we went for the characters that we felt had the most distinctive ‘voices’. There isn’t time to fill out their entire backstory, so they needed to be characters who were very ‘immediate’. Bernice, you could argue, was the very first Eighth Doctor companion she appeared in the novel "The Dying Days" not long after the 1996 "Doctor Who: The Movie" and, of course, at Big Finish we have a long-established strand featuring Bernice. We also wanted a male voice, and Fitz, from the BBC Books range, was the only significant male character. Anyway, the likes of Anji and Trix not only were they rarely alone with The Doctor, they have very complicated backstories. I wouldn’t say never, but it would be a big ask to present them convincingly in 25 minutes and in the context of a worthwhile, entertaining story.. As for Izzy, well I invented her, in a former life as editor of the DWM comic strip. Izzy, I think, comes across to the reader or listener very quickly because she’s essentially a ‘female fanboy’. The interesting thing I found writing for Izzy now is that she’s become a period piece. I was first writing her in 1996, and more than ten years on, I was struggling a little, until I realised that.’


"Benny’s Story" guest stars Lisa Bowerman as Bernice Summerfield, making her first return to Doctor Who since "The Dark Flame" in 2003. This story, written by Lance Parkin, finds The Doctor and Benny reunited during a perilous archaeological excavation on the planet Epsilon Minima.

Also starring are: Richard Earl and Su Douglas.


"Fitz’s Story", by Stephen Cole, features Fitz Kreiner - the popular companion who appeared in 50 of the BBC’s Eighth Doctor novels between 1999 and 2005. Fenella Woolgar (Agatha Christie in "The Unicorn and the Wasp") guest stars as Commander Hellan Femor. Fitz himself is played by Matt di Angelo, who is perhaps best known for playing Deano in EastEnders and for coming second in the 2007 series of Strictly Come Dancing.

‘Finding the right actor to play a much-loved character like Fitz was a real challenge’, says director and executive producer Nicholas Briggs, ‘but we were all delighted with Matt’s performance’.

Also starring are: Paul Thornley and Su Douglas.


Popular Doctor Who Magazine comic strip companion, Izzy Sinclair, makes her audio debut in "Izzy’s Story" which has been written by her creator Alan Barnes. Jemima Peoper (Lost in Austen, Hex) plays Izzy in a fantastical tale that sees the travellers returning to the town of Stockbridge.

Also starring are: Steve Hansell, Teddy Kempner, Anthony Glennon, Robert Forknall, Katrina Cooke, Robert Forknall and Ian Hallard.


Finally "Mary’s Story", by Jonathan Morris, teams The Doctor with real-life historical author Mary Shelley played by Julie Cox. Although this character hasn’t actually appeared in Doctor Who fiction before she was mentioned in "Storm Warning" where The Doctor recalled his adventures with her.

On the Back Cover:

Deep in the mines of Epsilon Minima, Professor Bernice Summerfield is up to her neck in it - as usual. The Countess Venhella has hired her to recover a lost Time Lord artefact: a TARDIS key, it turns out. Guess whose?

On the planet Entusso, the Doctor and Fitz Kreiner investigate Alien Defence Incorporated - your one-stop shop for protection against extraterrestrial invasion! But which is the greatest menace: the hideous Vermin Queens or ADI itself?

TARDIS travel opens one’s eyes to a universe of possibilities, reckons the Doctor
For geek girl Izzy, it’s also a fantastic way to track down ultra-rare back copies of ‘Aggrotron!’, the most dangerous comic in history...

Switzerland, 1816: at the Villa Diodati, Lord Byron’s house guests tell each other tales to curdle the blood and quicken the beatings of the heart. With a monster on the loose outside, young Mary Shelley isn’t short of inspiration.

It’s a while since I wrote The Dying Days, the first meeting of the Eighth Doctor and Benny Summerfield. While it was never discussed, because Virgin knew they’d lost the licence to publish Doctor Who books, I’m sure that Eighth Doctor New Adventures would have brought back Benny as his companion - we all know that she’s a popular and enduring character. I think they work well together, and it’s lovely to get the chance to try to demonstrate that with Paul McGann and Lisa Bowermon as my playthings.


Stephen Cole

I was glad to be asked to write Fitz into his first Big Finish audio, a decade after I helped create him for the BBC’s Doctor Who novel range. He was still there more than 50 books later and I think he worked because he was a believable mix of fault and virtue - he was sensitive, sometimes cowardly, a fantasist, a chancer, a joker a musician, a would¬-be Casanova... Best of all, he was fun to write for - then and now!


Alan Barnes

Nothing’s ever struck me quite so hard as the horrific realisatian that the funky geek-queen I invented to accompany the Eighth Doctor in the pages of the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip is now – aaargh! - a period character, Britpop Britain made flesh. Izzy was (variously) part Jarvis Cocker, part Louise Wener from Sleeper; part the girl off the Trainspotting poster, part Kira off This Life… and part me. Unlike me, however, Izzy is as fresh and vibrant as she ever was in the heady days of 1996; she, at least, gets to Live Forever.


Jonathan Morris

July 2008, and I receive an email from Alan Barnes. It’s an unusual brief. Ever since Storm Warning he’s been hinting in his stories at an untold adventure where the Doctor met Mary Shelley. Now he wants me to be the one to write it, based on his original outline: Mary, Byron, Shelley and Polidori, 1816 and the origins of Frankenstein. Quite an honour. The only drawback being, I’d actually have to read Frankenstein first...