Posted in: Audio Dramas, BBC, Doctor Who, TV | Tagged: big finish, doctor who

Doctor Who: Big Finish Introduces Jon Culshaw, The Twelfth Doctor

Jon Culshaw voices Peter Capaldi's Twelfth Doctor in Big Finish's audio drama collection Doctor Who – Halloween: Sea Smoke and Other Stories.

Big Finish audio dramas are going to be the only source of new and proper Doctor Who stories for a while, and they're finally going to produce a fully-voiced Twelfth Doctor story, only Peter Capaldi won't be back. It's comedian and impressionist Jon Culshaw who will voice the irascible Twelfth incarnation in Doctor Who – Halloween: Sea Smoke and Other Stories, a box set of full-cast audio adventures, due for release in October 2025. Peter Capaldi's portrayal between 2013 and 2017 encapsulates all of the time traveller's past selves – he's acerbic and irritable, but has a vast lifetime of experience that's left him bursting with compassion and a determination to put things right across time and space. This iconic incarnation will return for a new adventure this Halloween, voiced for the first time by Culshaw, in a full-cast audio drama as part of the horror-themed anthology box set Halloween: Sea Smoke and Other Stories.

Best known as an impressionist in TV series including Spitting Image and BBC Radio 4 sketch comedy series Dead Ringers (where he spent years impersonating Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor prank-calling people in shops and the service economy and acting like The Doctor), Culshaw is also recognisable to Big Finish listeners as the voice of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, among many other audio roles from Big Finish. 

Jon Culshaw on Voicing The Twelfth Doctor Who

Culshaw shared, "I remember Nicholas Briggs asking me, 'Do you do a Peter Capaldi? How would you fancy being the Twelfth Doctor for us?' And before I'd even thought about it, I grabbed it, and I thought, Wow, delicious! What a blessed and treasured era of Doctor Who that really is. It has the best of everything. There are so many different facets to Capaldi's Doctor. A great, moral character, a beautiful, supremely witty sense of impatience at times, but desperately, desperately caring. The Twelfth Doctor has such mystery and so many aspects of the earlier Doctors. The irascibility but lovability of the First. The wit and merriment of the Second and the Fourth. The warmth and charm of the Third and Tenth. Every little aspect is like a beautifully cut diamond, and it catches the light in its own way. "And to watch that era over and over to prepare for playing the Twelfth Doctor with Big Finish – you couldn't wish for better homework than that!"

Doctor Who – Halloween: Sea Smoke and Other Stories

Dare you step into the shadows? Terror awaits across time and space. Silent assassins, primordial evils and horrors that defy imagination – the Doctor's universe has never been more terrifying.

1. Sea Smoke by Jonathan Sims – A First Doctor and Dodo adventure: The First Doctor and Dodo arrive on the Scottish isle of Ulfsay during the height of the 19th-century boom in kelp burning. They quickly realise something is wrong as the smoke from the latest batch of 'kelp' begins to cause horrific transformations on the island.

2. Party Favours by Georgia Cook – A Kate Stewart and Osgood adventure: All Bev wants to do is host her yearly Halloween party and heal her fractured relationship with her girlfriend, Annika. Unfortunately, her reclusive upstairs neighbours have been invited to the festivities, and all they want to do is feast.

3. Bramble King by Noga Flaishon – An Eighth Doctor and Audacity adventure: The Doctor and Audacity encounter a strange vision which leads them to Walpurgis-9, a cargo ship drifting powerless through space. In their attempt to assist the ship's crew, they become entangled in their secrets and encounter the malevolent entity known as 'The Bramble King'.

4. Merlin's Trap by Hannah Kennedy – A Twelfth Doctor adventure: When Lainey leads an expedition into the ancient Merlin's Cave System, the group is warned by Merlin's ghostly voice to explore no further. As Lainey and her team push deeper into the mysterious cave, they encounter things far beyond their comprehension, including Merlin himself.

Doctor Who – Halloween: Sea Smoke and Other Stories also stars Stephen Noonan as the First Doctor, Lauren Cornelius as Dodo, Jemma Redgrave as Kate Stewart, Ingrid Oliver as Osgood, Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor, and Jaye Griffiths as Audacity. This box set will be followed in December by a second set of festive specials, Doctor Who – Christmas: It's a Wonderful War and Other Stories. 

Doctor Who – Halloween: Sea Smoke and Other Stories is coming out in October from Big Finish. The Halloween and Christmas box sets can be pre-ordered together in a multi-buy bundle, for just £48 (download to own) or £58 (download to own + collector's edition CD box set).

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