Posted in: Audio Dramas, BBC, Doctor Who, TV | Tagged: Audio Drama, bbc, big finish, doctor who, sophie aldred, sylvester mccoy

Doctor Who: The Last Day – The Seventh Doctor's Other Grand Finale

Doctor Who: The Last Day aims to be a more definitive grand finale to the Seventh Doctor's story, one that unites their entire continuity.

The thing about Doctor Who is there are always stories to tell, and fans always think about the stories that could still be told, and Big Finish has certainly filled that gap to become a successful company producing audio dramas featuring past Doctors and companions. Now, apart from the largely forgotten Doctor Who: Death Comes to Time, the company has produced a more definitive final story for the Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) in Doctor Who: The Last Day. This finale wants to be in canon, the Avengers: Endgame of the Seventh Doctor's saga.

Doctor Who: The Last Day is a twelve-episode epic that takes the Seventh Doctor's entire arc to its logical conclusion. In the classic television series, the Doctor was different from his previous incarnations. Starting from his second series, he was a darker, more proactive Timelord who always showed up with an agenda already in mind to manipulate the enemy into destroying themselves. He even manipulated Ace into situations where she was forced to face her own past and personal demons so she would evolve into the best version of herself, ready to save the universe as he does. That was where the television series ended in 1989. The Last Day takes the Doctor's potential megalomania to its logical conclusion, where he comes up with a grand plan to make things right in the universe once and for all. But does he have the right to play God? His companions don't all think so, and Ace (Sophie Aldred) decides to gather them from across different parts of Time and Space to stop him before he does something he can never come back from.

This finale wants to be the Avengers: Endgame of the Seventh Doctor's saga. All the Seventh Doctor's companions are in the story, not only Ace and Mel (Bonnie Langford) from the TV series, but the companions from the Virgin novels of the 1990s who made the transition to Big Finish audio dramas and the new companions created for the Big Finish series. That means you get Lisa Bowerman as Bernice Summerfield (a character created by Paul Cornell and a precursor to River Song), Yasmin Bannerman as Roz Forrester, Travis Oliver as Chris Cwej, and Big Finish companions Philip Olivier as Hex Schofield, Amy Pemberton as Sally Morgan, Maggie O'Neill as Lysandra Aristedes, Chase Masterson as Vienna Salvatori, Wayne Forester as Hob, Geoffrey Beevers as The Master (the Big Finish version), Stuart Milligan as Garundel, Richenda Carey as Mother Finsey, Lin Sagovsky as Dark Citizen and Edward Peel as Kane.

Unlike Death Comes to Time, which veered way off series lore, The Last Day stays in continuity of both the TV series and the Big Finish continuity to feel like it was a natural continuation of the original TV series. it takes an interesting swing: the Doctor becomes the kind of all-powerful Big Bad he always fought, and the companions are the good guys. It all leads to the end of the Seventh Doctor's story, where he's pulled back from the brink and resets him to end up where he does in the 1996 TV movie in time for his regeneration into the Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann).

You could say all non-TV stories are fanfiction, and that's certainly Big Finish's brand. It doesn't contradict the TV series and always finds new side stories to keep up fan hunger for favourite Doctors and Companions. There will still be Seventh Doctor stories set before his "last day", of course, because the fans can never get enough.

Doctor Who: The Last Day Part 1 and Part 2 are available from Big Finish.

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