When the TARDIS picks up a distress call, the Doctor and Nyssa materialise on board a primitive and fragile spaceship with a solo crewmember... 
 
Sarah Sutton, who originally played the Doctor's aristocratic companion on TV from 1981, narrates this brand new psychological short story by Alan Flanagan.  
 
“It can be a hard thing, hanging on to your sanity. When you’re on your own. When you're millions of kilometres from home. When you're in zero gravity. 
  
“Everything becomes... unmoored.” 
 
Doctor Who – Short Trips are short stories, many written by some of Doctor Who’s most popular authors from the worlds of television, print, comics and audio, and read by a host of favourite Big Finish actors. 
 
Doctor Who – Short Trips: Downward Spiral is now available to download exclusively HERE for just £2.99. 
 
Travelling through space on your own can be lonely. It's why Siobhan Matthews' ship has been installed with COMPANY, an AI that has stored personalities of Siobhan's nearest and dearest. Someone to talk to when the silence is overwhelming. 
  
Siobhan has other guests today, which is impressive considering she didn't let them onboard. They're called the Doctor and Nyssa, but they've arrived at the worst possible time. Siobhan's ship is spiralling towards something in the dark, and it's hungry. 
 
Writer Alan Flanagan said: “I originally came up with the idea when reading interviews with astronauts preparing for the isolation of space travel. While the TARDIS is infinite swimming pools all the way down, I thought it'd be interesting to explore what it's like to spend months on end in a glorified tin can, completely alone.  
  
“It seemed like the perfect way to present a battle that's more psychological than just deep-space monsters (though there is one of those!), seeing how Siobhan deals with being a solo astronaut millions of miles from home. And indeed how the Doctor and Nyssa can pull her back from the edge.  
  
“Writing monologues is always fun, and putting it in the hands of Sarah Sutton just made the whole process even sweeter.” 
 
Producer Alfie Shaw added: “Alan's story is a showcase for the immense acting talent of Sarah Sutton. Watching Sarah flit between the many distinct voices required was mesmerizing, and everyone in the studio was in awe.  
 
“It's an oddly prescient tale, about how people cope with being cut off from contact with anyone else. Little did we know when we recorded that it was something we would all experience so soon!” 
 
Doctor Who – Short Trips: Downward Spiral is now available to download exclusively HERE for just £2.99.

Big Finish listeners can save money with a bundle of the Short Trips range and get the 12 stories from series 10 for just £30 – that’s a whole year’s worth of adventures, including the already-released stories, Decline of the Ancient Mariner (read by Mark Reynolds), The Infinite Today (read by Katy Manning), Deleted Scenes (read by Frazer Hines), Dead Woman Walking (read by Sophie Aldred), Regeneration Impossible (read by Jacob Dudman) and  Out of the Deep (read by Peter Purves,). 

Get the bundle HERE!