I still need to hear more of Noonan. I wasn’t hugely impressed by his turn in Once and Future.
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Oh, that’s a fun topic, let me get some of my two sense on this topic:
When it comes to recasts, I’d say it’s much more important to get the mannerisms right, I doubt any actor could trick me (well besides Dudman with his 11 nowadays, very excited to get around his Performance in his own Range).
So in terms of some big recasts: Noonan from what I heard (which is mainly some short appearances and Fugitive of the Daleks) is really growing on me, I enjoy how he slowly gets some small mannerisms so right!
Michael has been a bit rough for me, his first appearances in Beyond War Games felt very much hard to get around, especially after hearing Hines and even David doing 2, very excited to get around to “Operation Werewolf” seems like he also got much better as the time went on. Maybe it’s my disliked of how they went with the whole Season 6B Concept, and besides one Story (out of the first two Boxsets) not much got me.
Treolar is a weird one, I think when I listen to him, I can see Pertwee, but there are also some moments where this Illusion kinda breaks. I think Tim is great at what he is doing and really gets the soft-spoken side of Pertwee right and overall with this range I think it’s impressive how easy it is to sometimes forget how very few of the Actors are still with us. Which brings me to the point that Culshaw as the Brigadier is easily one if not the very best recast.
Throwing a wild card here too: While I am pretty sure we all love Dudmans 11, I think his 12 while getting some mannerisms right it’s hard to not hear that it’s somebody who does an impression. Don’t get me wrong, any and all of them are Impressions at the end of the day, but it’s really hard to imagine it being Peter’s Doctor. Again I appreciate his effort, and he nails some manners, but it’s probably the weakest recast that I heard of as yet.
And yes that’s a good point, personally speaking I think both of the first Doctors are hard to get right. Especially Hartnell, while he may have not been in the best of wealth, one of the very underappreciated things in his performance was his excellent voice work and range, I think that’s just way too hard to get right. I can see Noonan nailing it over time, but yeah definitely a harder one to get right.
Also agreed, I feel like we will probably not see some certain recasts for Doctors, who has been at BF for years. Feels like with the amount of different new Doctors coming and going, it’s very likely some after their passing will be not touched in full Audio Dramas.
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Interestingly, one of the things Jason Haigh-Ellery said at LIWho was that they are very keen for the recasts to come across as the recast actors playing the character rather than the actor they are, for lack of a better word, replacing. And it’s interesting looking at this thread and seeing that very much that is what the success of the recasts seems to be, when the new actors really embody the spirit of the characters.
As for recasting the Doctors and companions who have been working at BF for years… I don’t know about that. I somehow don’t think they will, or if they do, they’ll have to give it some distance. But that said, they did turn around the War Doctor recast really fast, so who knows
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Also Elisabeth Sladen?
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That’s always how I’ve looked at it however some are better than others at it.
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Those were different circumstances. John Hurt only did the one season with Big Finish, meaning that there was still a lot more story potential with the War Doctor. Doctors 4-8 on the other hand have all had at least a decade’s worth of new adventures, and Big Finish seem to be winding things down when it comes to giving them new companions and story arcs (I mean, 6 lists off most of his companions in order during The Quin Dilemma, which makes it difficult to introduce any pre-Mel companions).
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Well, if they won’t, we will be left with Tenth Doctor sets coming out every ten years, and a bunch of spin-offs around minor supporting characters, because they won’t be able to make new stories without Doctors.
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Keep in mind that they could be going the Tom Baker route and recording a lot in advance.
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They could do that, but there’s no evidence that they have been doing that yet. None of the classic Doctors are particularly young, and we can’t assume they’ll all be as long-lived as Tom (let’s hope, though). So one or several of them might leave us suddenly before they’ve had the opportunity to record stories in advance.
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That was something Colin talked about at LIWho, actually, he said he felt like he had done loads and loads recently so they could have a backlog. And Jason Haigh-Ellery said they had releases planned and ready all the way up to 2030 so I guess they must have bunch of stuff
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Fair enough @MrColdStream. I’m just thinking that that’s really the only the advanced strategy I can see them having. Recasting Hartnell, Troughton and Pertwee is a no brainer because they’ve been dead thirty+ years and haven’t had a relationship with the company and don’t have many original cast members left. I want to say that John Hurt knew about his cancer by the time Big Finish got him and might’ve given his blessing. Companions are a bit more of a grey area than the Doctor I think when it comes to recasting.
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I mean, they’ll have Jodie. And might be able to convince Eccleston to do more.
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I think this is inevitable. & honestly there is no reason for BF to continue indefinitely.
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I mean even if production winds down, as long as they’re continually granted the license to sell, they’ll keep making money off their back catalog as more new fans discover them. I mean I’ve still got a backlog I haven’t purchased, or have purchased and haven’t listened to.
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They have Jodie and potentially other future actors of course. But it’s impossible to tell whether she’ll continue making new audios after her initial run or not. Let’s hope that they sell well and that she enjoys doing them and isn’t too busy with other work.
I’d like to think that Eccleston will be back one day. He seems to have genuinely enjoyed himself.
You’re probably right, but knowing this makes me sad. I love Big Finish and their work, and I don’t want them to disappear. Doctor Who isn’t their only franchise, but it’s their biggest one, so their existence relies on further DW content. I cannot imagine that they’d put everyone out of work in the future simply because they refuse to recast Doctor/companion actors.
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I think the big test will be when we sadly no longer have Tom Baker. The other classic Doctor recasts have never done any BF, & Tom is so fondly thought of by fans it might be tough to do a recast.
I also think BF release too much per month, I know that probably sounds weird to complain about but maybe we will see a drop in the number of releases as time goes by & circumstances change.
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I think with the classic Doctors not all going to pop off at the same time, recasting Doctors that have worked extensively for them will have that distance should they want to eventually do that.
Never a nice conversation this, but say we lost Sylvester and his releases ran out, the others they have will see a few more years of stuff.
Provided the licence is continually granted, I can see them giving us new Doctor Who with actual Doctors for a long time yet.
As for recasting 5-8 I’m more open minded than I used to be. I used to be against recasting incarnations because the magic for me was the actor themselves. People would counter that with James Bond being recast so why not incarnations of the Doctor and I always saw that as very different. The Doctor gets recast all the time as well, like Bond, and it would be like trying to do new Bond with a Connery impressionist.
So I was reluctant when they recast the Third Doctor. The companion chronicles and early adventures were slightly different in that they were framed differently but I still wasn’t keen, despite the TV show having set the precedent with Hurndall.
Then Bradley came along and I was oddly ok. Then I heard some of Treloar and I realised that it really is the only way to bring to life certain stories you may wish to tell, and may wish to hear.
And some of the recasts have provided some of the best Big Finish have to offer. Carley’s War Doctor is astonishing and Dudman’s Eleventh Doctor (recast for different reasons) is absolutely fantastic. So I have been won around by the quality of the stories, which is ultimately the most important thing.
Hartnell, Troughton and Pertwee have all been passed for so long that they do feel separate from the other Doctors. The thought of recasting Tom, Peter, Colin, Sylv or Paul takes some consideration and I’d rather they didn’t, at least not immediately.
But if Big Finish continues for decades to come, I suppose it’s inevitable and, as with the 1-3 recasts, I used to be reluctant but was eventually convinced so maybe it will be the same story again?
Who knows? Either way, I do now trust Big Finish in these matters while having my own reservations about certain intricacies.
Whatever happens, we currently have Tom, Peter, Colin, Sylv and Paul still with us and that is the wonderful thing to be focusing on, even if our minds can’t help but wonder about the future.
Tl;dr - used to be firmly against recasting specific incarnations, now I’m far more open-minded.
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There’s also Big Finish and the Fugitive Doctor, Jo Martin.
And technically we don’t know how many Doctors there were between the Fugitive Doctor and Hartnell. They could do a line of audio only Fugitive Doctors if they wanted to have her regenerate after a while…
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Actually, they can’t. Their current licence forbids them from casting any new Doctors, which is why the latest Unbound releases have featured “alternate” versions of established Doctors.
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Could they then cast someone for these chaps?
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