Doctor Who – The Ninth Doctor Adventures: Travel in Hope released
Three brand-new full-cast audio adventures for Christopher Eccleston’s Ninth Doctor were released today by Big Finish Productions.
An all-star cast, including Jane Asher (Alfie, The Sarah Jane Adventures), Kelly Adams (Hustle, Holby City) and Paul Thornley (The Gold, Les Miserables), board the TARDIS for this spectacular audio drama box set.
Doctor Who – The Ninth Doctor Adventures: Travel in Hope is now available as a collector’s edition 4-disc CD box set (+ download for just £29.99) or as a digital download only (for just £22.99), exclusively here.
The Doctor crosses paths with many travelers – some at the start of their journey, some well on their way.
From the remote nodes of a transmat network, to solving crimes at a spaceship service station, or helping a friend climb the political ladder – sometimes the journey is more interesting, and more dangerous, than the destination…
The three adventures in this box set are:
“Below There” by Lauren Mooney and Stewart Pringle
Vyx works on a teleport relay station in the darkest depths of space – and she’s afraid. Strange voices crackle through comms channels, shapes gather outside the starless viewing ports, and visions of death and destruction plague her dreams.
Then she gets a call from the Doctor, who warns Vyx that her worst nightmares are about to become a reality.
Co-writer Pringle said: It’s a ghost story, really, our tribute to Charles Dickens’s The Signalman, which is maybe the best ghost story of them all. It’s the scariest thing we’ve written. We really went all out to shake up the listener!”
Co-writer Mooney agreed: “I’d also add that I enjoyed writing this one perhaps the most of everything we’ve done for Big Finish so far. The Signalman is one of the most brilliant ghost stories ever written. It is a real privilege to get the chance to pay tribute to it here.”
“The Butler Did It” by James Moran
The Doctor lands at a spaceship repair port on a dusty planet to tune up the TARDIS engines. But someone has poisoned an old friend of his, and now everyone at the station is a suspect.
It’s time to round up the clues, get out the magnifying glass – or sonic screwdriver – and check the butler’s alibi…
Writer Moran said: “I wanted to write a big scary story, full of bombast. And I ended up going with a completely, bizarre, quite madcap romp. The Doctor has some really dramatic moments, but I also wanted do some more light-hearted stuff. Honestly, I want to see the Ninth Doctor being funny.
“Even if it’s a dark story, you want to show how the Doctor comes into people’s lives and hopefully makes things better – and they make him better as well.”
“Run” by Robert Valentine
When heinous demagogue Bellatrix Vega threatens the stability of the Galactic Federation, the Doctor convinces newly elected representative Alpha Centauri to run against her for president.
As Vega’s team mount a campaign of dirty tricks, the Doctor and Alpha must thwart a murderous conspiracy or see the galaxy’s greatest democracy become a brutal dictatorship.
Writer Valentine said: “It’s really exciting to be writing for Chris, and it’s also a lot of fun spending time with the Ninth Doctor. He definitely feels different from the others, and that keeps you on your toes a bit.
“‘Run’, obviously, was one of the Ninth Doctor’s first words spoken on screen, and this is indeed a story about running… but possibly not the kind you are expecting.”
Eccleston, speaking at Awesome Con in Washington, D.C., recently, said: “I can’t believe [that] some of the dramas I’ve recorded for audio have not been used visually in the television series. That’s the thing about Big Finish. Their writers are top-drawer.”
Producer David Richardson added: “This is a box set of contrasting tones – the dark terrors of Below There, the wit and imagination of The Butler Did It and the thrills and political intrigue of Run, as our three writers deliver very different scripts.
“We’re lucky to have such a wonderful cast in this set, giving performances that linger long in the memory long after the closing theme has rolled. When I first joined Big Finish, one of the first things Creative Director Nicholas Briggs said to me was that to some extent we make these productions for ourselves – to aim to make things that excite and entertain us, in the hope it does the same for the wider audience. And Travel in Hope ticked all my boxes.”
