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VORTEX Magazine - Issue 87
May 2016)
Download for FREE on the Big Finish website
Time For Ten
Kenny Smith goes behind the scenes on Big Finish’s most high-profile release yet.
[Above: David Tennant. Text reads Time For Ten - Kenny Smith goes behind the scenes on Big Finish’s most high-profile release yet.]
Let’s be honest – we’ve all been wanting David Tennant to play the Doctor for Big Finish since, well, the first day he got the job. Newspapers at the time of his casting as the Tenth Doctor made mention of the fact he’d already worked on the Doctor Who audios alongside Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy.
(Full Article Under Cut)
Of course, Big Finish have wanted him to return to the part and bring the Tenth Doctor back to life on audio.
And executive producer Nicholas Briggs – a friend of David’s for years – reveals the man himself has been just as keen as everyone else to get back into the studio with Big Finish.
Nick says: “David and I had a conversation about his doing Big Finish long, long before we got a licence to do plays based in his era. He actually, light-heartedly, encouraged me to go out and get the licence. At one stage, Michael Stevens and I had plans for Big Finish and Audiogo to do a coproduction of audio drama featuring the Tenth Doctor. But David’s schedule and Audiogo’s demise meant that plan didn’t materialise. But when we finally got the licence, I did chat to David on the phone. He eventually came up with the idea of a special, three-CD release.”
Line producer David Richardson adds: “The pitch for the Big Finish/ AudioGO co-production still exists – although none of the stories made it into this collection. The plan back then was to have episodes with a running theme, one that would climax with a big reveal and the return of a character from the Tenth Doctor era – but when we came to do this set of the Doctor and Donna stories, it was felt that it was best to go down the route of individual, unconnected episodes.”
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves a little.
This month sees the eagerly anticipated return of David, alongside Catherine Tate as everyone’s favourite temp from Chiswick, Donna Noble.
However, the process of getting them back together hasn’t been an easy one.
Big Finish executive producer and company chairman Jason Haigh-Ellery says: “We’ve had a lot of support in getting series based around the New Legacy Doctors. When the time was right, the BBC gave us the rights and helped us to get these productions up and running as soon as possible.
“We’re really pleased to have got David and Catherine back together.
“I first did Big Finish with Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred many years ago, certainly before Doctor Who was as central a part of my life as it has become since.”
– David Tennant
“Someone said to me, ‘Why did you announce John Hurt and David Tennant just a few weeks apart?’ The thing is, it took about two weeks to sort John out and get him into studio. With David and Catherine, it took a year – and you don’t want to announce anything until you have it recorded.
“It wasn’t in any way planned to announce them as closely together as we did, it just took us a year to sort out dates when we could get David and Catherine in studio together again.
“It was very important to both of them that they were there, acting together, so they could get that old feeling going again.
“A lot of people have said that David and Catherine’s relationship on-screen was some of the best stuff in 21st century Doctor Who, as a favourite combination of Doctor and companion. Seeing them work together, you can tell it’s obvious the two of them love working together and enjoy it.
“It was well worth waiting a year for, to have them together.”
Nick continues: “Once the BBC accepted the proposal, David Richardson and script editor Matt Fitton started working on story ideas, and kept me informed all along the way. It looked like we might get David and Catherine into studio fairly imminently then, so the scripts were worked on quite quickly. Then, when they were ready and tentative studio bookings made, David and Catherine – very busy people! – suddenly became unavailable. So we had to wait quite a while. So it’s true to say those scripts were then waiting for the final bookings to be made. So that’s why, when the information was leaked on the internet, we couldn’t comment, because we weren’t one hundred per cent sure it was actually going to happen. We had everything crossed!
David Richardson adds: “We certainly began story lining back in the summer of 2014, and the scripts were all signed off by May 2015. So they sat on the shelf for several months before we were able to get David and Catherine together in October.”
[Above David Tennant and Catherine Tate.]
When it was revealed in October last year that David Tennant was to play the Doctor for Big Finish, it marked his return to the Moat Studios after an absence of a decade.
Speaking to producer David Richardson, David Tennant recalls: “I first did Big Finish with Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred many years ago, certainly before Doctor Who was as central a part of my life as it has become since.
“I was always keen to come and play. I did a few different characters, one with Colin Baker, one with David Warner and some Dalek stuff with Nick Briggs. It was always something I really enjoyed.
“It was a lovely little job when it came along, so it’s nice to return to that because doing audio stuff is always really good fun.
“There’s an immediacy to it – you turn up and haven’t learned the lines – you prepare a little but basically you are flying by the seat of your pants, to a certain extent, and if you have got lots of good actors who inspire you and make it good fun, it’s really not a bad way to spend a day.
“It’s quite tiring and it’s quite intensive because you do a story in a day, faster than you work on Radio 4, but there’s such an energy to this stuff, you can’t help but be barrelled along by it. It took about two weeks to do a show on TV!”
Jason Haigh-Ellery was particularly delighted to welcome David back into the Big Finish family.
He says: “You know what, it didn’t feel like David had been away for a decade. That’s just unbelievable. When David came back it felt he’d only been away for a year or so, it really didn’t feel like it had been 10 years.
“As ever, David was lovely to everybody, and he slotted right back in. “David has an amazing memory and he remembers everyone’s name. He just walked in and went around, saying hello to everybody. He was wonderful.
“It’s great having him back, and I hope we will do more with him.”
Being back as the Doctor has been a joy for David, but he admits it was a bit of a worry to start with.
He says: “It’s been really good fun. I was a bit nervous about whether I would slip into it with ease, or would it be a bit of a stretch, but it really felt like returning to a comfy pair of trousers, rather than a scratchy vest.
“It’s all quite high energy, the character, but once you key into it, it always makes sense.
“That was always the key to it, it was very tiring to do, but they’ve also been invigorating. It has its own momentum, I think.
“I’d always used the script as my springboard, really, from what Russell T Davies and the other writers wrote and that’s what I’ve continued to do here. You take what’s on the page and use it as your starting point.
“If you come at a character like this with pre-conceived notions, that you might play him like this or that, the danger is you can be fighting the actual story and the script – the whole thing has got to evolve as one piece.”
David was particularly pleased to be reunited with Catherine Tate – with whom he has also worked on Comic Relief, Much Ado About Nothing and Never Mind The Buzzcocks and the recent Shakespeare Live – as they have a firm established friendship.
He says: “I think Catherine and I always got on, right from the moment she came to do the tiny bit at the end of Doomsday. She came down and shot the cliffhanger for series two. It took all of half-an-hour and from that moment, we got on – and always have done. That’s something we can hopefully bring to the characters.
“We’ve worked together in various places and in various ways and it’s something we enjoy doing. It’s just always nice to see her and it’s nice to play.”
“I think Catherine and I always got on, right from the moment she came to do the tiny bit at the end of Doomsday.”
– David Tennant
For the Big Finish production team, there was a huge sense of relief when they finally got their leading man and woman into studio after months of planning.
Nick says: “There was a great sense of occasion. And it was wonderful to hear David and Catherine working together. I actually thought Catherine’s performance was slightly different to her performance on TV. She seemed far more restrained than I expected her to be.
“But she’s a very shrewd actress, and she knew just how to pitch it when acting so close to a microphone.
“The camaraderie existed the moment people arrived at the studio, that people were familiar with each other.”
– David Richardson
[Above Left to right: Beth Chalmers, Blake Ritson, Alice Krige, and Alan Cox]
“I think what she’s done for us is rather beautiful and often very moving in all sorts of unexpected ways.
“I’ve run out of words to describe how brilliant David is. He’s a lovely chap. Very easygoing and fun to work with and… well, he just delivers! It’s such a joy to behold.”
David Richardson adds: “In the months running up to the recording, I’d got myself in a terrible state of stress. “It was clear every step of the way how momentous these episodes would be, and I felt the pressure that they had to be as good as they possibly could be, and that David and Catherine should have as great a time as they possibly could recording it.
“Of course, I needn’t have worried. For two huge, international stars they are very laid back and approachable people. It was lovely to sit and chat with David in the green room, and to hear him say he had bought our Blake’s 7 audios and enjoyed them!
“Nick let me cast all the plays, and I was very careful to hire people that we knew were accomplished actors and fun to be around, but also to have some people who David and Catherine would know and feel comfortable working with. So it was great to have Niky Wardley, who was one of the mainstays of The Catherine Tate Show. Alex Lowe and Alan Cox knew both David and Catherine. Dan Starkey had worked with them on the TV series… It meant the cameraderie existed the moment people arrived at the studio, that people were familiar with each other.
“Oh, and I cast Alice Krige because she really is one of my favourite actors, and one of my favourite people to be with at the studio. I’ve worked with Alice three times now, and we just sit and have the most extraordinary conversations about life. She’s wonderful.”
The pair found there to be so many highlights over the three studio days.
Nick pauses, before saying: “There are so many. But I think my personal highlight was when Catherine found so many poignant moments in Death and The Queen. I had, rather unfairly, pigeon-holed it as pure knockabout comedy. But Catherine saw past that and at one point brought a tear to my eye.”
David admits: “The moment I’ll always remember is recording the very first scene. David and Catherine threw themselves into it like they’d never been away. I was in the control room, and Matt Fitton was sitting on the sofa and we just turned to each other and grinned the biggest grins… I love all three scripts – Technophobia is just right for a Tenth Doctor opening story. Time Reaver is wildly imaginative but also quite personal and dramatic too. And Death and the Queen is bonkers and touching and brilliant.”
David Tennant adds: “I think the three scripts, like the TV show, are very individual in themselves.
“They are very different types of stories and they each had quite unique concepts to them, whether it’s the tone or the entire story.
“The first one is a much more recognisable world, with the conceit of it. You expect it to be one type of story but it’s another. It’s very clever. I think the third is quite an unusual world. Like the TV show at its best, they are fun, new ways of telling the same type of stories.”
[Above Cover for “Technophobia” by Matt Fitton, featuring a banner that reads “BBC Doctor Who - David Tennant and Catherine Tate in Technophobia by Matt Fitton, featuring Rachael Stirling and Niky Wardley”, and a photo of David Tennant. Background features the Big Finish logo, text that reads “Brand New Adventures - Full Cast Audio Drama” and photos of mobile phones, a Koggnossenti (the story’s antagonists), Catherine Tate, and David Tennant.]
Technophobia is very much a story in the mould of a Doctor Who television episode from the Russell T Davies era.
Set in the present day, it features a menace from an area where people wouldn’t expect it to come.
David Tennant says: “What I love about the first story is it’s quite a recognisable, traditional Doctor Who set-up, where it would seem that the machines are taking over – and that’s the kind of thing we’ve seen before – and there’s a brilliant twist.
“It’s a wonderful and rather chilling idea. It’s not an idea I’ve come across in Doctor Who before.”
Joining the cast is Niky Wardley playing Bex. Niky is no stranger to Big Finish, after appearing as the Eighth Doctor’s companion Tamsin Drew.
She tells Vortex: “What a treat to work with Catherine and David on Big Finish. David Richardson had asked me to be in it but I had no idea who else was in it until I saw the cast list a few days before so it was the best surprise!
“I was lucky enough to be recording with them on their first day, so to see them walk into their booths and then voice the Doctor and Donna again, after such a hiatus, was incredible.
“They bounced back to life straight away such is their amazing chemistry. David’s energy as the Doctor is so affecting, he sweeps you along with him and Catherine’s genius with comedy makes it just the perfect partnership. It was thrilling to be a part of it.”
[Above Cover for “Time Reaver” by Jenny T Colgan, featuring a banner that reads “BBC Doctor Who - David Tennant and Catherine Tate in Time Reaver by Jenny T Colgan, featuring Sabrina Bartlett, Terry Molloy, and Dan Starkey”, and a photo of David Tennant. Background features the Big Finish logo, text that reads “Brand New Adventures - Full Cast Audio Drama” and photos of lasers, the story’s antagonist, Gully, Catherine Tate, and David Tennant.]
[Above Left to right: John Banks, Dan Starkey, Alex Lowe, Sabrina Bartlett, and Terry Malloy.]
Time Reaver takes the Doctor and Donna back out into space.
David Tennant enjoyed the story, saying: “It’s nice to have a big, proper sci-fi story on a big alien world, but as with the other stories we’ve done, we kind of think it’s going to be one type of story, about gun runners or this terrible weapon that’s going to destroy everything, and actually it’s even more interesting than that.
“It’s about a civilisation that doesn’t quite operate on the same moral framework as everyone else and how that can be confused when they move out into the stars, and there’s some lovely character stuff going on there as well.”
In the guest cast is Dan Starkey, playing Dorn. These days he’s best known to Doctor Who fans as Strax from the Paternoster Gang, alongside the Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors, but he was delighted to work with the leading pair – for a very nostalgic reason.
He reveals: “It was a great day. David and Catherine were there at the very start of my ‘professional’ Doctor Who career, when I joined them in series four for The Sontaran Stratagem and The Poison Sky, so it was nice to come back to them again, now Big Finish are doing new series Who.
“Most actors enjoy radio because it’s just good fun. We get the work done, and we can have a laugh with it. It’s always good being in the green room at the Moat then having a great lunch – and with David and Catherine around, it was great fun. You can tell they really get on.
“I very much enjoyed that period of the show, with the Tenth Doctor and Donna. It’s very strange now, thinking back to how much time has passed since then.
“I loved the way the Doctor and Donna were just great mates, going around, solving problems, and at that point, it felt like Doctor Who was really back and had taken over television. It was a great time to be involved in it and get on the bandwagon!
“Not having to sit in the make-up chair for three hours is something I always appreciate!
“It’s a great script by Jenny Colgan, that really captures that breathless rush that was there in the series four stories. You can really picture the bright colours, and there’s lots of pathos as well. It’s got that tension, which is really familiar as well.”
Another guest star in Time Reaver is another man who has spent most of his TV Doctor Who career behind a mask. Terry Molloy plays Rone in this story, but is best remembered for playing Davros against Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy’s Time Lords.
Terry recalls: “It was lovely to be at the microphone with David again, as we had previously worked together back in the 90s on a radio version of Edward Bond’s play The Sea. In Time Reaver, the studio fizzed with the energy and pace he always brings to the Doctor, and of course the interplay between him and Catherine Tate was fast, furious and very funny!”
“It was a great day. David and Catherine were there at the very start of my ‘Professional’ Doctor Who career.”
– Dan Starkey
[Above Cover for “Death and the Queen” by James Goss, featuring a banner that reads “BBC Doctor Who - David Tennant and Catherine Tate in Death And The Queen by James Goss, featuring Alice Krige, Alan Cox, and Blake Ritson”, and a photo of David Tennant. Background features the Big Finish logo, text that reads “Brand New Adventures - Full Cast Audio Drama” and photos of strom clouds, a skull wearing a black hood, Catherine Tate, and David Tennant.]
Rounding off this first trilogy is Death and the Queen.
David Tennant was delighted with the script: “Death and the Queen is kind of like a twisted fairytale. It’s got some slightly deconstructed elements which make it the most broadly funny, the most broadly comic, of the three. That always works for the Doctor and Donna as a pairing.
“It also goes to some quite dark, quite unusual places and you also get to see Donna at her best. She struggles with finally getting her fairytale wedding, and nothing quite works out as she would imagine.”
Joining the guest cast is Beth Chalmers as Hortense.
She grins: “I’ve now worked with every single one of the Big Finish Doctors – I’ve worked with the others to a greater or lesser degree over the years, and in the last year, I’ve now added John Hurt and David Tennant – which is pretty cool.
“It was a bit cloak and dagger being in this one, as I was only told about it a couple of weeks before we went into the studio. I think I was doing one of the John Hurt episodes, when David Richardson asked me what I had coming up, and I asked him, ‘Why?’ He told me it was something they were keeping very, very quiet and told me it was these two, David and Catherine.
“Catherine Tate is a real treat to work with, but David Tennant is just so classy – he’s amazing. It’s fantastic to work with great actors and he’s such a brilliant guy too. I’ve worked with his wife Georgia before and you hear such lovely things about him from other people who have worked with him – and it’s all true. David’s got a kind of left-field, zany madness to him – he’s brilliant.
“I was really thrilled and knew there weren’t that many being made, so it was amazing to be one of the few actors to be asked.”
Beth found herself having to work hard on her character. “This story is a bit like a period drama, with a medieval castle. I did most of my scenes with Catherine Tate, who was speaking in her modern way with her modern rhythms, but I had to use a period voice. It’s hard to keep that going when she’s being funny, quippy, cool and modern, while I had to stick with the medieval voice.
“But when you compare the two voices, it makes her even more funny.
“It was a great story to do – it was fun, and almost cartoony, but I don’t mean that in any way to sound disrespectful.
“There weren’t too many vortexes and galaxies to worry about, so I could understand it!
“I also loved working with Blake Ritson – I was bowled over when I heard him doing his stuff.
“It was a great day, and it felt really special in the studio. I’m really looking forward to hearing how it all sounds in the finished version.”
Responsible for the music and sound design on the trio of tales is Howard Carter.
Having worked on the War Doctor box sets, The Diary of River Song and UNIT, he’s loving the chance to get the Tenth Doctor onto his CV.
When first asked to work on this series, Howard admits he was: “Very excited! I’ve been working on the new series releases for the past seven months and knew these were coming up so it’s great to finally get stuck in. I read all of the scripts in one sitting and was thrilled at how brilliant they were and how much scope there was for me to be creative with the sound design and the music.”
How did he approach the plays – did he try to evoke Murray Gold’s style, as well as doing his own?
Howard explains: “With the Big Finish audios I’ve always felt that we should be moving the world of Doctor Who forward rather than creating pastiches of what’s been before. While it’s important to retain a certain level of stylistic familiarity I was keen to make sure the musical language was fresh and not too restricted by Murray’s style. His sound has been so integral to the characterisation and general atmosphere of the show that it would be foolish to ignore, but at the same time I feel the plays are best served by taking a step forward.
“As such, I wanted to create a score that wouldn’t sound out of place in the world that people are familiar with, while letting my own influences and style filter through. The music is still very thematic with certain motifs running through the boxset, but my main aim was to write scores that best serve these plays and the overall atmosphere of the set.”
He adds: “It’s a great privilege to be working on these stories. The scripts are so fantastic it’s both humbling and exciting to be bringing them to life knowing that so many people will get the chance to hear the Doctor and Donna back together. I can only hope people have as much fun listening to them as much as I’ve had working on them.”
The final element that really seals the deal for these audios are the covers, which have been created by Tom Webster.
As with the rest of the Big Finish team, Tom was delighted to be working on these releases.
He adds: “I was so excited to work with the David and Catherine images. I think the moment where I started to cut the images out was where it really hit me, the Tenth Doctor and Donna in Big Finish. Amazing!
“I found it quite easy to create a feel for the era on the special deluxe edition, I set out to emulate the style of the series box sets and particularly the vanilla DVDs. I wanted to go with very bright, vibrant colours and the most dynamic photos that I could use.
“I decided from an early stage that I wanted to play with a TARDIS interior motif - so I created something inspired by the coral structures, which provided a nice framework. The vanilla covers were lots of fun, as I was tasked with making each one distinctly different. Technophobia really feels like a Russell T Davies episode one, so I really wanted to go for a bright and brash impactful image.
“I’m actually extremely happy with them all, I spent lots of time getting them just the way I’d imagined when reading the scripts. I’m so grateful for the opportunity to be doing such huge releases for Big Finish and I didn’t want to let anyone down. I hope people enjoy them!”
Since the Big Finish Tenth Doctor audios were first announced, they have received plenty of coverage in the media, from publications as diverse as Jenny Colgan’s local newspaper the Ayrshire Post, to national papers like the Daily Mirror, whilst they’ve also had numerous mentions on TV, including a big plug on The Jonathan Ross Show on ITV.
David Richardson says: “We knew the reaction was going to be huge. And it was probably bigger than that! So it was brilliant, and such a relief to have the secret out there having kept it to ourselves for so long. We’d had a year of whispering in locked rooms and sending coded emails – and suddenly all the world knew!”
Nick adds: “Can I just say too how delighted I was? It was one of those things. We’d been living with these plays for so long. It seemed almost surreal that we were actually doing them. And when our listeners and other Doctor Who fans loved the idea too… It was simply amazing.”
Jason was particularly pleased that Big Finish received so many mentions when David was doing the media rounds to promote his Netflix series Jessica Jones.
He laughs: “I feel like sending the publicist for Jessica Jones a bunch of roses!
“They did a great job to get David on a lot of programmes to talk about Jessica Jones, and we kind of hijacked their promotional tour!
“Of all the things we’ve done over the years, that definitely got us the most media attention.
“David, I’m sure, knows how much he was loved as Doctor Who. If he ever had any doubts, I think going round and doing publicity for Jessica Jones, where everyone asked him about doing the Big Finish audios, has shown how much people are still interested in him and love him as the Doctor.”
– VORTEX Magazine, Issue 87, Pages 6-15
[Above Cover of “The Tenth Doctor Adventures: Volume 1″. Text reads: “David Tennant - Catherine Tate BBC Doctor Who The Tenth Doctor Adventures Three Full Cast Audio Adventures Technophobia - Time Reaver - Death And The Queen” Background features the Big Finish logo, Catherine Tate, David Tennant, the TARDIS, Time Reaver’s antagonist, Gully, a black hooded figure, and a castle.]
The Tenth Doctor Adventures: Volume 01
Technophobia
London’s Technology Museum faces a revolution. Is it all down to simple human stupidity, or is something more sinister going on?
Time Reaver
An illegal weapon is loose on the streets of spaceport planet Calibris - and the Vacintians are closing in…
Death and the Queen
The Wedding of all Weddings comes under attack by a skeleton army. Can Queen Donna save her people from Death itself?
Written By: Matt Fitton, Jenny T Colgan, James Goss
Directed By: Nicholas Briggs
Cast: David Tennant (The Doctor), Catherine Tate (Donna Noble), Niky Wardley (Bex), Rachael Stirling (Jill Meadows), Chook Sibtain (Brian), Rory Keenan (Kevin), Jot Davies (Lukas), Alex Lowe (Soren), Sabrina Bartlett (Cora), Terry Molloy (Rone), John Banks (Gully), Dan Starkey (Dorn), Blake Ritson (Rudolph), Alice Krige (Queen Mum), Beth Chalmers (Hortense), Alan Cox (Death)
Available as deluxe five-disc box set, limited edition of 5,000, and as individual vanilla releases.
For full details visit www.bigfinish.com .
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