A Special Big Finish 15 Announcement: Series 2 and 3 of Vienna!
 

Following the success of Vienna: Series One, Big Finish is pleased to announce that our impossibly glamorous assassin is set to return in three brand new adventures in February 2015, and another three in February 2016, with both Vienna Series 2 and Vienna Series 3 now available to pre-order.

Smart and sassy bounty hunter Vienna Salvatori is once again played by Chase Masterson, best known for her role as Leeta in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. First introduced in the full cast Doctor Who audio drama, The Shadow Heart, Vienna is a one-woman justice machine who never lets her target out of her sights.

However, in Series Two Vienna finds herself somewhere she’s never been before - on the right side of the law.

“This is a new start for Vienna,” says incoming series producer Cavan Scott. “After years of wandering the galaxy with only her ship’s computer for company, she’s returned to Earth. She has a home, she has a job and, most surprisingly, she has a partner.”

That partner is jaded cop Jexie Reagan, played by Samantha Béart (Doctor Who 1963: The Space Race, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Quintessential Phase).

“Lieutenant Reagan is a law-enforcer haunted by the ghosts of her past,” says Cavan. “Together, Vienna and Jexie make a formidable duo.”

Of course, Vienna being Vienna, the bodies soon start piling up as Cavan explains: “Over the course of the three adventures Vienna faces psychotic shape-changers, homicidal nurses and strange masked killers,” Cavan explains. “And that’s just for starters.

“While we were recording the first episode of the new season, word came through that we could start work on Series Three! The universe hasn’t seen the last of Salvatori and Reagan!”  
 

VIENNA - SERIES TWO BOX SET
 

Three brand new adventures for glamorous bounty hunter Vienna Salvatori.

Tabula Rasa by James Goss

Ever woken up and can’t remember where you are? What if you couldn’t remember who you are? Or why there’s a dead body outside your door?

Vienna Salvatori is hunting for a killer – but can she be sure it’s not herself?

Underworld by Cavan Scott

Something bad is lurking down in the Undercity. Innocent citizens are turning on each other, baying for blood.

Vienna must team up with jaded cop Lieutenant Jexie Reagan. She’s never had a partner – but will either of them make through the night alive?

The Vienna Experience by Jonathan Morris

Ever wanted to experience the life of an assassin? Longed to feel the thrill of the hunt? Now is your chance to get beneath the skin of Vienna Salvatori. See what she sees. Hear what she hears.

And pray she never finds out.


With stories by James Goss, Cavan Scott and Jonathan Morris and original music by Hollywood composer Joseph Kraemer (Jack Reacher, The Way of the Gun) Vienna Series Two is available to pre-order as a triple-CD set for £20 and digital download for £15, with Series Three similarly priced. Keep watching the Big Finish site for news, and see below for a Big Finish 15 offer on the assassin's first series...

As part of the Big Finish 15 celebration, we're pleased to announce:

Dark Eyes 3: The Trailer

To mark 2012's debut of Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor meeting Molly O'sullivan in the award-winning Dark Eyes stories, we're putting the trailer live for the third in this series, Dark Eyes 3: both trailer and a pre-order price for the November title can be found here. See below for special offers on the first two series!

Big Finish's Doctor Who at 15 - Offer 14

Vienna's back for more - see where it all started with both Doctor Who - The Shadow Heart on CD or Download for £5, and Vienna: Series 1, a three-disc set on CD for £20 or Download for £15.

As Nick mentions below, 2012 was the year when the Fourth Doctor arrived at Big Finish to do a full range of stories. To mark that, for the next forty-eight hours we're changing the price on all six of the Fourth Doctor season ones tales to £8.99 on CD or £6.99 on Download each, or all six bundled at £50 for CD and £40 for Download.

The Dark Eyes series marked a new level of popularity for the Eighth Doctor, and today we're putting both Dark Eyes 1 and Dark Eyes 2 down to £20 each for Download or CD. November's Dark Eyes 3 can still be pre-ordered too.

Finally, help us mark the arrival of the Counter-Measures team (as seen in Doctor Who's TV adventure Remembrance of the Daleks) as both series 1 and series 2 are each made available at £25 for Download and £30 CD.

We'll see you tomorrow for offer 15, the last in this epic Big Finish 15 celebration!

A Few Words About 2012

"There had been ‘smoke signals’ from all around about Tom perhaps being ready to return to the role of the Doctor. A number of people contacted me about it and various avenues were pursued. Lou Jameson had spoken to Tom and told us how great we were to work with. Lis Sladen told me she sensed that Tom’s attitude was changing and that all I had to do was name the day and she’d be there. And in 2010, I started a long email correspondence with Tom. Eventually, he suggested we met. So David Richardson and I went to visit him and luckily it all went swimmingly well. I remember that Tom was full of outlandish suggestions, which he appeared to be reading from a note pad. When I looked at the pad, it was blank. To this day, Tom can offer no explanation as to what he was doing. ‘It must have been nerves,’ he said to me recently."

Nick Briggs, Big Finish Executive Producer

"Fifteen years goes past so quickly. And there again, it seems a lifetime ago that so many of the people still associated with Big Finish met in London to hear the Big Plans about Doctor Who audios.  For some reason (you'll have to ask someone else what it was) I got to write the third of the Doctor Who audios, following Nick Briggs and Mark Gatiss. No pressure then.  To say I had no idea what I was doing when I wrote 'Whispers of Terror' is an exagerration. I knew about Doctor Who - of course - and was writing the Sixth Doctor novel 'Grave Matter' at about the same time. I knew about audio drama, having studied several of the best examples as part of my degree course. But of course I'd never written any before.

We spent a long time on the outline, Gary Russell helping me hammer it into shape and remove extraneous plot threads he assured me I wouldn't have time to include.  He was right.  Having got about two thirds of the way through the first episode, I decided to time it and see if I was on track.  I read it out loud, keeping an eye on the clock. And when I got to 48 minutes and still had some pages left to go I decided that maybe I should think about chopping it back. Drastically.

I still over-write for Big Finish. My first draft is always far longer than it should be.  But cutting it down helps to focus on the story, to concentrate the dialogue and character interaction.  The most drastic cutting, I think, has to be the first Fourth Doctor script I wrote - 'The Renaissance Man'. But that wasn't my fault, or at least only in the sense that I finished it ahead of schedule. So I already had all four episodes proudly in my possession, ready to edit down, when David Richardson called me - a little sheepishly - to ask (a) how I was getting on and (b) if I could actually write the story in two episodes instead of four.  I hope my answer was polite.

But that's what working for Big Finish is like - always fun, always challenging, sometimes surprising, and often far too long. Maybe I'm just trying to make it last. And last it certainly has. Here's to the next 15 years, and then the 15 after that!"

Justin Richard, Big Finish Writer, Creative Consultant to BBC Books Doctor Who range and author of 'The Never War' series (among other things!)

"Dark Eyes was the result of a lot of conversations between script editor Alan Barnes and me. Alan has been the driving force behind the Eighth Doctor stories since Paul McGann joined us, and we’d had a sort of hiatus, where we went back in time with the Eighth Doctor and Mary Shelley. Throughout this time, Alan and I were discussing what would happen next. And then, I think, I suddenly got the bit between my teeth and started to pose myself a fantastical question, ‘What would I do if I were producing a new TV series of Doctor Who starring Paul McGann?’ And from that, completely fictional standpoint, I set out to represent an ‘entire era’ of Doctor Who in a box set. My aim was to do 23 episodes’ worth of Doctor Who in four hours, by concentrating mainly on the Doctor and his new companion. It would be mainly their scenes, their journey and not too much cutting around to other situations. That’s not entirely what happened, but it was so rewarding getting close to it."

Nick Briggs, Writer & Director of Dark Eyes.