Tell me something about the effect Doctor Who had on your formative years. Which was your favourite medium to enjoy the show; the Target novels, the comic strips or the TV show itself? Do you have any favourite stories in the classic series that really made you want to work on this show when you were older?
Nick: Doctor Who was a huge thing in my childhood. Although I went through phases of loving Tarzan, Stingray, Thunderbirds, Joe 90, The Champions and Randall and Hopkirk Deceased, oh, and Star Trek… I always returned to Doctor Who. It always seemed to be there. That was the one programme that my parents would not dare to deny me, no matter how much they wanted to. I believe I deserted it once – round about the time of The Space Pirates – because Joe 90 started in our region, and it had been heavily plugged in a school magazine that I’d read, but I was back in time to watch, aghast, as Patrick Troughton’s Doctor spiralled off into the Vortex. By far, my favourite medium was the TV show, naturally.
But I would say that the comic strips were almost as important to me. I certainly regarded them as proper Doctor Who, which seems daft looking back at the format deviations in TV Comic, Countdown and TV Action – but I loved those stories. I’m not sure there were any favourite stories that made me actually want to work on the show; but there were loads that made me interested in telling stories, creating stories… and I would do that by writing or getting out my super 8mm camera and filming Dalek toys and spaceship models or recording audio drama in which, rather sadly, I played all the parts!
Can you tell us something about the formation of Big Finish and its enduring legacy and continuation to produce high quality audio dramas for over a decade?
Nick: Jason Haigh-Ellery had formed Big Finish some years before we started doing the Doctor Who audios. It’s named after Jason’s favourite episode of that Steve Moffatt kids’ series Press Gang. But when he and Gary started talking about getting a licence to do Doctor Who audios for the BBC, I think Jason thought that Big Finish would be the natural home of such productions. Gary and I had always talked about how we wanted to do Doctor Who audio drama professionally, after we’d both spent years doing it for fun with Audio Visuals – a group of fans producing top quality Doctor Who audios for no profit. After a false start in 1996, when the BBC turned us down, we got underway in 1999, and I was involved right from the start. As the years passed, I think we developed a great expertise at what we do, and my aim, when I took over as exec producer, was and is to continue learning. We listen hard to our audience and we listen hard to our hearts too. And between the input of both those sources, we hope we provide great entertainment for our audience. My ambition for Big Finish is for it to expand into other areas and one day for it to become a major entertainment platform. I’m just starting to figure out how to do that. But Doctor Who is unique for us and we have a hugely loyal following, which we hope will stay with us and cement our popularity, even long after I’ve moved on from Doctor Who… which I don’t anticipate doing any time soon, by the way!
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