Since his first audio adventures arrives in May 2016, David Tennant's Tenth Doctor has featured in a steady stream of stories. Let’s get on with it and pick out a handful of the best offerings Big Finish have recorded with him...
Kicking off the list is this delightful instalment from Vol 3 of the Tenth Doctor Adventures. One Mile Down features the Doctor and Donna visiting an underwater city where the locals are forced to adapt to tourists (instead of the other way round) and Judoon are on patrol. And then the dome protecting the place starts to crack. It’s a terrific setting for a story that plays out initially as a Davies-era style runaround but then quickly escalates into a brilliant adventure which demonstrates the strengths of this Doctor/companion pair so well and makes a perfect use of the Judoon in service.
This is cheating slightly as David Tennant is nowhere to be seen, but this obscure box-set is still a good showing for the character. Tales From New Earth tells a story about some of the New Humans after the events of Gridlock, as normal life begins to resume for them, and the Doctor’s efforts to save them from another disaster. It’s an excellent experience and a shame we haven’t got to spend more time with these characters since then. Along the way it features the Doctor flying through the clouds carried by a jet-pack polar bear, which I mention just in case you weren’t sold on it yet.
The opening instalment of the Tenth Doctor Adventures Vol 2 starts off with Jackie Tyler inviting a friend round for tea only for them to witness an alien invasion going on outside the window, and it spirals off from there. As the Doctor and Rose investigate the aliens and discover the true nature of the invasion, it quickly becomes a commentary on Doctor Who as a series with the Doctor discovering that he’s a star in a TV show about aliens invading the Earth! Although taking that clever meta approach feels like it should get in the way of the experience, that never happens as the focus remains on being a solid story first and commentary second. It does both of those things really well though, managing to be a load of fun as a result.
The Tenth Doctor meets the Fourth Doctor and also there are Daleks.
That should be enough to sell you on this one already. The fact that the story itself is really good is honestly a bonus. Both Doctors get loads of great moments and plenty to do, the Daleks are at their absolute best, and the setting outside of time is a terrific concept enabling the multi-Doctor interactions to happen. It may be easy to dismiss Out of Time as being just competent fanservice, but the result is a compelling experience that holds up as essential listening.
I’m not sure who thought the Tenth Doctor and Donna being put into a surrealist story about a wedding being invaded by death incarnate would be a good idea, but Big Finish regular James Goss apparently did. And as a fandom we should be forever grateful to him for it, because the result is a stand-out release in the Big Finish back-catalogue and one of the best stories for this Doctor and companion pair. It doesn’t just use the surrealist set-up for the sake of it, it uses it as the backdrop for a fantastic character piece for both of them. There is lots to like within Death and the Queen, and if you only need one story to prove Big Finish are worthy of the post-2005 Doctors then this is probably it.
And there you have it, five of the best Big Finish audio adventures featuring the Tenth Doctor. Which ones are your favourites?
“Moo” is the pseudonym used by this Doctor Who fan. He can usually be found procrastinating by thinking about Doctor Who. Follow him on Twitter @z_p_moo for more of his unusual takes, but do so at your own risk.
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