Resolution For The Seventh Doctor: An Interview With Big Finish Writers Guy Adams And Matt Fitton

Usually when a show gets canceled unceremoniously, that’s that. There’s no getting answers. Thanks to Big Finish, however, that’s not always the case with Doctor Who. Now writers Guy Addams and Matt Fitton are looking to fill in some of the gaps of one of Doctor Who’s biggest mysteries: what happened to the Seventh Doctor between “Survival” and his final appearance in the Doctor Who TV movie? The result is The Seventh Doctor Adventures: The Last Day Part 1 and you can find out more about it in this interview with Addams and Fitton below:

Rachel Bellwoar: There may be no making up for how Sylvester McCoy’s run as the Doctor was shortchanged on television, but Big Finish are certainly making a go at it on audio. How wild was it to be approached by producer David Richardson about writing a proper send-off for the Seventh Doctor?

Guy Adams: It’s always wild to be approached by David Richardson, he wears soft-soled shoes and springs from the shadows.

Obviously it was an exciting prospect and weirdly personal. The Seventh Doctor is – arguably, ever so arguably – where the taste for original, offscreen Doctor Who took hold. There were exceptions before it, of course, but in those years post “Survival” (an apt title), where Sylvester vanished but his performance infected other stories, pages and pages of the Virgin New Adventures, so many of us grew to see Doctor Who as something that existed beyond the television. That was a hugely important time to me, growing up and dreaming. Those books (and, much, much later audio adventures) were just as much “real” Doctor Who to me as everything else.

The Seventh Doctor’s life was long and wild and contradictory. To step in and bring it to a close feels like therapeutic as well as intimidating!

Matt Fitton: This ending has been brewing for years! David first mentioned covering the Seventh Doctor’s ‘Last Day’ more than half a decade ago, I think. All we knew was where we had to lead up to – that message and the fateful mission to Skaro. Everything that comes before that should be a culmination – and a celebration – of this Doctor’s uniquely splintered timeline and his methods. As Guy says, the Seventh Doctor era is one that truly spans multiple media for the first time, without a televisual continuity. This Doctor lived and breathed in the NAs, where writers took aspects of Sylvester’s performance in his final seasons – and the script editor’s vision – and ran with it through universes. Then Big Finish took up the baton and created a whole new continuing era with Ace [Sophie Aldred] and Hex [Philip Olivier], which hooked me completely. So yes, it’s wild to be writing an ending that can touch on all those disparate strands of his life…

Bellwoar: The very first Big Finish audio drama I ever listened to was Fiesta of the Damned, featuring the Seventh Doctor and written by you, Guy. I’ve been hooked on Big Finish ever since but as two people who have written for multiple Doctors, what makes writing for the Seventh Doctor special?

Addams: Oh! It was one of my first too. So glad it didn’t put you off! I love writing for all the Doctors but the start of my Big Finish career was all about the Seventh (Fiesta of the Damned, The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield, The All-Consuming Fire) so he feels particularly precious. I love writing words for Sylvester, I love trying to feed him the rhythm and richness he wants and deserves.

Fitton: I agree – I always like to try and find a rhythm for Sylvester’s lines. He can be playful, he can be sad, he can be dangerous – a melancholy clown, who is stirred to anger by injustice. I love writing the Seventh – one of my favourites is Afterlife, which has a whole two-hander episode between the Doctor and Ace in the aftermath of grief – and later on, I get to give him a terrifying speech facing down the enemy. In The Last Day, the Doctor is feeling his age – he has a sense of time running out, and that he still has work to do. And it’s about the ends he will go to to achieve his aims…

Bellwoar: While the significance of this story certainly warrants being told in twelve parts, is there a story length you prefer overall?

Addams: Not really, whatever works.

Fitton: Absolutely – the story should fit the form. From a half-hour Short Trip to a 12-part epic – the length dictates the kind of story you can tell, and vice versa – so it’s a question of getting the planning right!

Bellwoar: How did you divide the workload between yourselves? Did you write everything together or did you split-up the parts and then revise together?

Addams: We split things up. For the most part, Matt writes the stuff involving Hex and Sally [Amy Pemberton] and the rest is entirely my fault. We then script edited each other.

Fitton: It was great to have new Guy Adams episodes dropping into my inbox and being able to read them before anyone else in the universe!

Bellwoar: As the person responsible for introducing the world to Garundel (Stuart Milligan) in Black and White, Matt, where did the idea to bring him into this story come from?

Fitton: I will make any excuse to bring Garundel back! He’s one of my first Big Finish creations, and I was so blown away by Stuart Milligan’s performance, how he understood exactly what I wanted to do with him, I’ll always look for a way to let the slippery, ruthless con-man slide back into the Doctor’s life. Garundel popped up at such a pivotal point in this Doctor’s time – the black and white TARDIS era – so it felt fitting that Ace would revisit him here to join her motley crew.

Bellwoar: Until now Mother Finsey (Richenda Carey) has only come up against the Third Doctor (in Guy’s “The Transcendence of Ephros”). What made you think of her for a Seventh Doctor story?

Addams:  I missed her! But, for the most part, it was about the Master. When we were building Ace’s team of unsavoury sods we knew the Master would be at the heart of that and I wanted to make sure that I was able to bring him and Mother together. There’s a lot of thematic stuff about manipulation and control in this story and I wanted to get the two of them in a room together so she could get her revenge.

Bellwoar: As far as I know this is Kane’s first appearance in a Big Finish drama. How cool was it to have Edward Peel reprise the role he played on the serial, “Dragonfire” (and which saw Ace meet the Doctor for the first time)?

Addams: Extremely cool. Positively ice cold in fact.

Fitton: Yes, when David mentioned the idea, and how keen Edward Peel was to come back, I couldn’t wait to see what Guy would do with him…

Bellwoar: While the Doctor has encountered other versions of himself before, this time it’s Ace who has to contend with another version of herself. What was it like getting to write for two different Dorothy McShanes?

Addams: Exploring that sort of thing is always interesting and exciting. Risky too, there were quite a few listeners to the first box set that seemed adamant that the Doctor they were listening to was, somehow, an ‘alternative’ Doctor. He isn’t, he’s the Doctor we’ve always known. The Doctor walking around the Capitol in the third episode of this is absolutely the same Doctor who once serenaded a Chimeron baby with the spoons.  When you’re telling stories about time travel, alternate timelines and clashing continuities (and Doctor Who is always telling those stories, from the very moment it was broadcast, contradicting itself, and the essential histories of its main characters time and time again) you have to embrace the fluidity of that reality. The past is an uncertain as the future and both of those McShanes are real and hurting and horrified and desperate to do what they think is necessary.

Fitton: Ace herself has so many different continuities in so many different media, and it’s something I’ve touched on before (in Signs and Wonders) – but as Guy says, the most important thing is that in the moment, she is always herself and real, and feeling every ounce of emotional pain we put her through! SO yes, my idea with ‘President Ace’ is that she’s a version who completed her Time Lord academy training – influenced by Braxiatel rather than the Doctor, and with a much more military bent. She’s closer to the NA Ace in that way – and I gave her a buzzcut and shades so you can tell them apart on audio!

Bellwoar: Messing with companions’ memories can be a tricky business. Donna (Catherine Tate) only just got hers back on the recent specials. Was that a hard call to make – having some of the companions in this story not remember their travels with the Doctor?

Addams: Not really, as an extension of the answer above, at the point we start this story some of the Doctor’s companions will remember him but some won’t. Time is being manipulated and history is being rewritten, the job of our heroes is to run across that slippery, cracking ice and do their best to save the day.

Bellwoar: Are there any Big Finish dramas you would recommend fans listen to before starting this one?

Addams: From my point of view, just Dark Universe really. That was always written as a prologue to this. I wanted to create a story with huge stakes and scope, the sort of story that feels like it couldn’t be bigger and then, eventually, reveal it was only the beginning of something far, far bigger.

You don’t need to have heard the story in which Ma Finsey first appeared any more than you need to hear every story to have featured Mel [Bonnie Langford], Ace of the Seventh Doctor. If you’ve been listening to Big Finish for years and are heavily embedded into the Seventh Doctor’s stories then, lovely, this is – quite naturally – going to be something you’re invested in. But if you haven’t been following everything then it should still make sense. Obviously, a last big adventure for the Seventh Doctor, featuring a huge cast list of characters from his past is going to be thick with references to old stories, that’s rather baked in to the whole point of it, but most of us pick up the essentials of the things we love, don’t we? I’m sure most listeners will muddle through quite successfully!

What about you Matt? What’s an essential Hex history?

Fitton: I must admit, I was mildly surprised when the DWM previewer said that they felt that they could dive straight into this story without any knowledge of previous adventures. But actually, much of what you need to know about the characters is revealed within the Last Day through their actions. Of course, given this is a culmination of all of the Seventh Big Finish adventures, it will help to have heard more – Guy’s Dark Universe and The Quantum Possibility Engine would certainly be good primers for some of the concepts here.  I’ve already said, I fell in love with the Ace/Hex era of the Seventh Doctor – it felt like emotional storytelling akin to the Buffy-verse – so I would always recommend people go back to The Harvest and start from there!

Bellwoar: Is there anything you can tease about what’s coming up next for the Doctor and his friends in part 2?

Addams: The end of everything. Death, destruction and heartbreak. And The Doctor and Master playing Snap with a Bluey-themed deck of cards.

Fitton: All of the above. Plus a fateful communication from a rather familiar Time Lord…

Bellwoar: Thanks for agreeing to this interview, Guy and Matt!

The Seventh Doctor Adventures: The Last Day Part 1 is available now from Big Finish. Part 2 is scheduled for June 2024.