The Doctors face Death and Nazis
Story and cast details are revealed today for Deathworld and Operation: Werewolf, two new adventures in the Doctor Who – The Lost Stories range.
Big Finish Productions’ popular series takes stories and scripts from the classic era of Doctor Who that never made it into production, and revisits them in the form of full-cast audio dramas. July 2024 will see the release of two new Lost Stories.
The first is Deathworld, adapted by John Dorney from Bob Baker and Dave Martin’s original treatment for what later became the tenth anniversary serial, The Three Doctors. The story sees the first three Doctors (played for Big Finish by Stephen Noonan, Michael Troughton and Tim Treloar) face the personification of Death.
The Doctor was dead, to begin with. Killed alongside his beloved Jo Grant in an explosion in the UNIT labs. But Time Lords are notoriously hard to kill.
Because with UNIT under siege, the Brigadier is rescued by two familiar faces... the Doctor he first encountered, fighting the Yeti, and Jamie McCrimmon. With yet one more waiting in the wings.
They are all pawns in a deadly game of chess played by a being more powerful than any they’ve ever encountered before. And when you battle Death himself... can anyone even win?
Deathworld also stars Frazer Hines as Jamie McCrimmon, Katy Manning as Jo Grant, and Jon Culshaw as the Brigadier, as well as Joe Shire as Death, Dianne Pilkington as the President of the Time Lords, and David O’Mahony as the Deadly Sins.
Producer David O’Mahony said: “The Three Doctors ended up completely different to the story that Baker and Martin first conceived, and John Dorney wanted to explore the original Deathworld concept. It’s in keeping with early 1970s films such as Sinbad with its mythical monsters, high stakes adventure, and rollercoaster storylines.”
“With the contribution of Stephen Noonan, Michael Troughton and Tim Treloar as our first three Doctors, and Frazer Hines, Katy Manning, and the brilliant Brigadier played by Jon Culshaw, we have a cast worthy of an anniversary adventure.”
Doctor Who – The Lost Stories: Deathworld is now available to pre-order as a collector’s edition 2-disc CD box set (for just £15.99) or download only (for just £12.99), exclusively here.
The second of July’s Lost Stories releases is Operation: Werewolf, which is based on an original treatment submitted to the BBC in 1967 by Douglas Camfield and Robert Kitts, now adapted for audio by Jonathan Morris.
Operation: Werewolf stars Michael Troughton as the Second Doctor, Frazer Hines as Jamie, and Wendy Padbury as Zoe. Its cast also includes Jordan Loughran (Raised by Wolves), Branko Tomovic (24: Live Another Day), and Michael Higgs (Wizards vs Aliens).
The TARDIS has brought the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe to Normandy in France, not in 1066 as intended, but in 1944, three days before the Allies are due to launch the D-Day landings.
Joining forces with French partisans, they learn that the Germans have been conducting secret experiments at a nearby chateau. These experiments form part of a plan that German high command believes will enable them to win the Second World War. The name of that plan? Operation: Werewolf.
O’Mahony said: “Bringing a new World War Two adventure together with the Doctor Who characters was so much fun. A story with grit, high stakes and a historical twist.
“What made this story interesting was that there is no alien race collaborating with the Nazis, which gave us the opportunity to really focus on the Doctor and the human characters, showing the nuances and brutality of war through the eyes of the French Resistance.”
Big Finish listeners can pre-order Doctor Who – The Lost Stories: Operation: Werewolf as a collector’s edition 3-disc CD box set (for just £22.99) or download only (for just £18.99).
Deathworld and Operation: Werewolf are also available together as a bundle, which can be pre-ordered for just £37 (collector’s edition CDs + downloads) or £31 (downloads only).
All the above prices include the special pre-order discount and are subject to change after general release.
Please note: the collector’s edition CD box sets are strictly limited to 2,000 copies and will not be repressed.
Please note that Big Finish is currently operating a digital-first release schedule. The mail-out of collector’s edition CDs may be delayed due to factors beyond our control, but all purchases of this release unlock a digital copy that can be immediately downloaded or played on the Big Finish app from the release date.