Revisiting The Ninth Doctor Adventures: Series 1: Old Friends
Feature by Gustaff Behr.
When it comes to Doctor Who, the TV series has always been the franchise’s flagship, the bold front line in the battle against time and taste. It’s where the legend began and where it’s meant to evolve, ideally outshining every other corner of the Whoniverse. But in recent years, that flagship has started to drift.
Look at the landscape in early 2022. On December 31, Big Finish announced a dream crossover: the Brigadier meeting the Ninth Doctor, a thrilling blend of classic and modern eras. Just two weeks later, they one-upped themselves with an even bolder pitch: the Sixth and Tenth Doctors facing the Weeping Angels on a planet without a concept of sight. These stories bristle with imagination that longtime fans crave.
Now contrast that with the TV side. On December 22, 2021, Russell T Davies revealed that auditions for the Fourteenth Doctor had ‘just’ begun. Promising, yes, but still just talk. A week later, on January 1, 2022, we got a teaser for the Sea Devils’ return. Nostalgic? Sure. Game-changing? Not remotely. In hindsight, even the hype feels hollow.
So if Doctor Who is really as lucrative and culturally vital as the BBC claims, why is the TV output so thin? One episode in 2016. One in 2019. Seven in 2021. Three in 2022. Four specials in 2023. And in 2024, nine episodes, two of which barely featured the Doctor. The show should be pushing the envelope, not trailing behind a smaller audio company in both ambition and execution.
The energy gap between Big Finish and the TV series is staggering. As a long-time fan, you can’t help but wonder: where does Doctor Who’s true heartbeat lie these days? Which brings us neatly to the final three episodes of Christopher Eccleston’s second run as the Doctor…
Fond Farewell
In a story as eerie as it is emotionally resonant, “Fond Farewell” offers up a concept that feels like it wandered straight out of Black Mirror and crash-landed in the Whoniverse. The Doctor arrives at the funeral of his old friend, renowned naturalist Flynn Beckett, only to be greeted by the man himself, very much alive and toasting to his own death.
The catch?
Flynn doesn’t remember the Doctor at all. That unsettling detail sets the tone for a story and the sense that something’s wrong beneath the sleek corporate polish of the titular funeral home, Fond Farewell.
There’s no villain to defeat here, no monster to chase, just grief, and the dangerous illusions we build to avoid it. The real threat is emotional: how we memorialize the dead, rewrite memory, and commercialize goodbye. How far would you go to see someone again? And what does it cost? How far would you go to cling to someone you’ve lost? How much would you pay to say goodbye? And who gets to decide what memories are worth keeping?
The supporting cast complements this intimacy. Sasha, Flynn’s colleague, plays the pseudo-companion with just the right mix of skepticism and quiet sorrow. Idara, Flynn’s bitter widow, radiates hostility—especially toward Sasha. Their unresolved tension adds depth. Meanwhile, the smooth-talking AI Thomas (who sounds suspiciously like Mr Smith from The Sarah Jane Adventures) and his handler Winifred inject a bit of levity, without breaking the story’s somber undercurrent.
Flynn himself is the emotional core, seen both in flashbacks as the Doctor’s travel companion and in the present as an artificially reconstructed echo. That dual structure, cutting between the vibrant, curious man he was and the empty caricature attending his own wake, is poignant. It quietly illustrates how a brief encounter with the Doctor can spark something profound. Honestly, Flynn would’ve made a brilliant companion. He’s likable, emotionally open, and bounces off both the Doctor and Sasha beautifully. The chemistry among the three is undeniable, and it’s a shame this is a goodbye, not a beginning.
The story isn’t flawless. A few twists are predictable, not clumsy, just unsurprising, the kind that feel like narrative checkboxes rather than earned revelations. In a story this intimate, that slight formulaic edge can pull you out for a beat.
“Fond Farewell” is more meditative than thrilling, more psychological than action-packed. But that’s exactly its strength. It asks uncomfortable questions about memory, legacy, and the commodification of death, and it does so with surprising grace. The Doctor is angry here, not because a friend is gone, but because the memory of that friendship has been stolen. To add context, the artificial person brought back for the funeral is only alive for a day, so as a listener it’s easy to go ‘that person isn’t really Flynn, they’ll soon be gone for good so just let it be’ but from the Doctor’s perspective, every life matters, even if they only have one day to live it and no one has the right to interfere with it.
Way of the Burryman
As you might have surmised, these final three adventures deal with the Doctor encountering old friends and “Fond Farewell” perfectly sets up the Doctor meeting one of his oldest and dearest friends. It’s something we should have gotten in Series 1, and in Series 4 but didn’t. In ‘Way of the Burryman’ the Brigadier investigates ghostly voices on Inchcolm Island which leads to a reunion with the Doctor during a local festival.
And what a reunion it is. “A Doctor with a buzzcut, now I’ve seen everything,” the Brigadier exclaims, moments after the Doctor hauls him back from the brink of death. It’s arguably the best line in the entire story. The line crackles with warmth and surprise, the Brig’s trademark stiff-upper-lip humour clashing beautifully with this war-torn, battle-weary incarnation of the Doctor. But then things take a darker turn when the Brigadier makes an offhand remark about finally making a soldier out of the Doctor, it cuts deep. The Doctor snaps, and suddenly the easy banter gives way to something rawer. This isn’t the wide-eyed wanderer of old—this is a man fresh off the Time War, simmering with guilt, fury, and a desperate need to not be the thing others now see in him.
It’s such an unlikely pairing on paper. The Third Doctor’s bluster worked with the Brig’s discipline because they clashed charmingly; with the Ninth Doctor, you’d expect friction, not fireworks. And yet, it’s perfect. That old UNIT chemistry is still alive. Beneath the tension, there’s deep trust, forged in battles, banter, and unspoken loyalty. In just a few scenes, the writing and performances sell decades of history—and the heartbreak of all that’s been lost since.
Like all great duos, the story almost doesn’t matter. You could give us an hour of the Doctor and the Brigadier in a pub, trading war stories and insults over pints, and it’d still be gold. That’s how good their chemistry is. But what elevates “Way of the Burryman” is how it ties everything together. Much like how “The Long Game” set up “Bad Wolf”, this finale retroactively enriches earlier episodes, drawing subtle threads into a satisfying, full-circle payoff.
Because yes, the Cybermen are back.
Remember “Monster in Metropolis”? That brilliant little noir-horror hybrid that saw the Doctor tangled in Weimar-era film and body horror? Well, turns out one of the Cyberman from that scout party slipped through the cracks of time and space and arrived in the early 2000s.
The story also features a young Sam Bishop, a main character from the UNIT: The New Series range, who’s paired with the Doctor for the first half of the adventure. While it’s a neat bit of continuity for longtime fans, those unfamiliar with that series might find this portion a little slow-going—especially if you’re impatient for the Doctor and the Brigadier’s inevitable reunion. However, their separation is plot necessary. The Brig is on his own investigative path, uncovering a different side of the mystery than the Doctor. It’s a clever narrative device that allows the story to deliver exposition organically from two fronts without info-dumping, gradually feeding the audience the plot-driven revelations in tandem.
The Forth Generation
Leaving off the cliffhanger of the previous story, the Doctor has set the Cybermen free by using a Memory Arch and an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) to erase the psychic imprints, the lingering memories of the dead, from the Forth Bridge. His intention was to clear the residual mental energies causing the ghostly voices, but in doing so, he inadvertently wiped the psychic anchors that were keeping the Forth Generation Cybermen, Mondasian Cybermen with lingering human identities, asleep and inert within the bridge’s structure. With the memories gone, the Cybermen have now awakened, revealing the Doctor’s well-meaning intervention has backfired catastrophically.
This final episode picks up the pace compared to the previous one, once again splitting up the Doctor and the Brigadier, this time as part of the Doctor’s plan to defeat the enemy. While the Brigadier and Sam Bishop rush off to retrieve a piece of old Cyber-technology from UNIT (a leftover from The Invasion), the Doctor teams up with Sam’s colleague Fiona to stall the newly appointed Cyber-Leader, Kreel.
Dalek and Cybermen stories are notoriously tricky to get right, largely because the villains tend to be one-dimensional, driven by a single, relentless mindset. But here, there’s a clever twist: these Cybermen aren’t entirely logical or emotionless. While they retain their signature cold efficiency for the most part, the episode explores the internal consequences when that logic breaks down. It does a solid job of illustrating why Cybermen strive for pure logic in the first place—because without it, their ability to function effectively is compromised. Kreel learns this the hard way.
There’s at least one casualty, raising the stakes and reminding us that the danger is real. The ending is bittersweet, more bitter than sweet, and it stretches out longer than expected. There’s a moment where it feels like it should be wrapping up, only for the resolution to continue. Personally, it makes the episode feel longer than it is, though that may be because the final solution isn’t a quick or easy one. Whether that’s a strength or a weakness is up to the listener.
Fans of UNIT: The New Series will likely clock this as a sort of origin story for Sam Bishop, showing how he came to join UNIT. It’s not essential, but it’s a welcome addition. Sam and Fiona serve as the emotional core of the story, and several of the twists hit hard because of their involvement; especially in their final scene together.
As for the Doctor and the Brigadier, we get another confrontation, this time with the Brig asking the Doctor if he “likes travelling alone.” True to form, the Doctor dodges the question (as Nine often does) but the moment between them is deeply affecting. The Doctor’s final words to the Brigadier, promising they’ll meet again, land with particular poignancy. We, as the audience, know that Nicholas Courtney never returned to the series before his passing, and that knowledge casts a shadow over the scene that’s hard to shake.
Asides
Now that the first wave of new Ninth Doctor audio adventures has wrapped up, it’s the perfect time to tally the results and see how they stack up against Christopher Eccleston’s original 2005 TV run. To keep things consistent, the scores for the television episodes are taken directly from this site, reflecting the votes and opinions of fans themselves:
25. Cataclysm – 5.56
24. The Long Game – 5.89
23. Aliens of London – 6.30
22. World War Three – 6.34
21. Boom Town – 6.61
20. The End of the World – 6.88
19. The Unquiet Dead – 6.92
18. Way of the Burryman – 7.00
17. Fright Motif – 7.02
16. Sphere of Freedom – 7.12
15. Rose – 7.50
14. Fond Farewell – 7.68
13. Father’s Day – 7.94
12. The Curse of Lady Macbeth – 8.00
11. The Forth Generation – 8.03
10. Food Fight – 8.01
9. Girl, Deconstructed – 8.22
8. The Hunting Season – 8.32
7. Bad Wolf – 8.40
6. Dalek – 8.85
5. Planet of the End – 8.92
4. The Parting of the Ways – 8.96
3. The Doctor Dances – 9.09
2. The Empty Child – 9.15
1. Monsters In Metropolis – 9.20
When comparing the Ninth Doctor’s television adventures to his new run from Big Finish, an interesting pattern emerges, one that may surprise even dedicated fans. Across the 25 stories listed, the audio dramas edge out the TV episodes not just in average score, but also in critical high points. The 13 televised stories average a solid 7.46 out of 10. In contrast, the 12 audio stories boast a higher average of 7.74.
Interestingly, while the lowest-rated story overall is also an audio, the highs in the audio medium are notably higher and more frequent. The median score for audio dramas is also higher, suggesting a more consistent level of quality across the board. The TV episodes cluster heavily in the 6–8 range, with only a few standing out, whereas the audios have more entries that crack the 8+ ceiling. In fact, half of the audio stories received an 8.0 or higher, compared to just four of the TV stories.
