Big Finish has announced that they will be adding two new audio adaptations of never-produced Doctor Who adventures to the Doctor Who – The Lost Stories collection this July. These two adventures were originally submitted to the BBC back in the Doctor’s classic era but never saw the light of day… until now.
Big Finish have given these two adventures all the full-cast audio treatment that they deserve, giving fans of the First, Second and Third Doctors action, adventure and suspense with Deathworld and Operation Werewolf.
Deathworld, originally written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin, later became the tenth anniversary special ‘The Three Doctors’ but the actual script submitted was a very different story. Unlike the screen version, there is no Omega and instead the three Doctors become caught in a temporal game of chess against the President of Gallifrey and Death itself.
This audio adaptation features the First, Second and Third Doctors voiced by Stephen Noonan, Michael Troughton and Tim Treloar, respectively.
Producer David O’Mahony said: “After Baker and Martin submitted the idea for Deathworld in 1972, the story had many challenges and went through multiple rounds of re-writes and changes to characters, locations and actors, to the point that The Three Doctors was now completely different to the story first conceived. John Dorney and script editor Simon Guerrier wanted to go back to the original concept and explore what that idea could have been. Deathworld is the epitome of a Lost Story – taking a great idea and being able to fulfil it without the time and budget constraints of when it was pitched for television.”
Doctor Who – The Lost Stories: Deathworld is now available to pre-order as a collector’s edition 2-disc CD box set for £15.99 or digital download only for £12.99.
The second lost story to release is Operation Werewolf, which is based on a storyline submitted by Douglas Camfield and Robert Kitts in 1967. Set in 1944 Normandy, just three days before the D-Day landings, the Doctor and his companions discover a secret Nazi experiment that could alter the outcome of the eventful days to come.
This script has been written by Jonathan Morris and stars Michael Troughton as the Second Doctor, Frazer Hines as Jamie, and Wendy Padbury as Zoe.
David O’Mahony explained: “A combination of story elements, budget constraints, and some sensitivity about the recent World War 2 meant that Operation Werewolf was shelved. The story caught Jonathan Morris’s brilliant imagination and we ran with the original outline. As with all our Lost Story productions, I hope the original teams would be proud of what we have created.”
Doctor Who – The Lost Stories: Operation Werewolf is available to pre-order from the Big Finish website as a 3-disc collector’s edition CD box set for £22.99 or as a digital download for £18.99.