How did you discover Big Finish?

I'd known about the existence of BF for what seems like a long time, I may have even have visited their website. It must have been around 2002/3 and my yearning for more Doctor Who eventually overcame my retisence in trying something unknown, and I purchased the first 12 from the main range, I've been coming back ever since.

During the hype and lead up to the 50th. I was a fan of the New Series and wanted to start watching some Classic, but I had no idea where to start. I then saw the TV Movie on BBC America and knew that I needed to hear more Eight. I had no idea where to find them. And then I saw Night Of The Doctor and it just doubled my need for more Eighth Doctor. So I did a search on-line for Eighth Doctor audios, and BF popped up. I was completely overwhelmed when I first found the website and it took about 2 months of checking out the site before I bit the bullet and ordered my first story. I've been hooked ever since.

I'm honestly not sure when or how I first heard of Big Finish, although I do know that at one time I did not understand the distinctness of BF from BBC Audio.

I can say that a combination of three factors pushed me to actually purchase and listen:

(1) Discovering that Nick Briggs, whom I knew did the Dalek voices, was also the author / director of the Auton series (I watched them again recently, and spotted his name this time because I'm a person who watches credits), and learned that he was also one of the leading forces at Big Finish.

(2) A desire to hear more 8th Doctor stories performed by Paul McGann. I'd read many novels, but didn't really hear his voice in my head like I did with other Doctors.

(3) The enthusiastic plugs in the Special Edition DVD extras for the McGann movie as given by Russell T. Davies and Colin Baker.

Someone I know from another website kept posting about Big Finish, and when he posted links to some free stories, I decided to give it a go.

When I heard Tim Burton was making a Dark Shadows movie and it was going to be a comedy (blasphemy!) :-), even though it wasn't out yet I indignantly decided the original series was way better and since it was, it was about time I made an earnest effort to see the OS in entirety instead of occasionally seeing a few random episodes via the sketchy collections of video rental outfits. I also got very curious whether anything else had happened for DS or the cast after the show was cancelled (other than the 1992 DS Revival series), and as it turns out, one of them was the incredible Big Finish Dark Shadows range. I started sampling a few and ended up with the lot, usually saving them for a quiet (or dark and stormy) moment if I could, and often wasn't getting to the latest releases until they'd been out a month. (In the brief Dorian/DS crossover I ended up a Dorian fan too).

Then they did Bloodlust, which is very in the moment with the serialized releases, so I was listening to things immediately upon release at The Designated Hour (as when Dark Shadows was on TV and everyone would race to watch it, instead listening a month later like I'd been doing), and I decided that I had so much fun with the anticipation and excitement and fantastic storytelling and just getting in on the stories on the Big Day they come out, that I'd really enjoy getting in on the latest DW releases too although I really hadn't gotten near Who since Sylvester went off the air. (Matthew Waterhouse working on Dark Shadows certainly didn't hurt any as I have such fond memories of the 4th and 5th Doctors and their companions, that meant a lot to me and certainly drew my attention to the Fifth Doctor boxset which was one of my first DW purchases).

I'd seen so many BF Doctor Who announcements while checking for Dark Shadows news that I think I was chomping at the bit but just didn't want to get started at the time, although it was probably inevitable. My wife likes Graham Norton so I'd seen a number of BBC New Series promos, almost dove into Torchwood on reputation on at least three occasions, and watched the first 5 minutes of The Snowmen when it came out - but at the time I couldn't figure out how I was going to keep things straight being as if new to the whole Whoniverse, if Strax couldn't either, lol. Very glad I finally managed to keep my appointment with The Doctor. :-)

I first heard of Big Finish in probably 2005, when I started watching the Classic Series. In 2008 I downloaded my first BF story (The Chimes of Midnight).

I had a copy of Cuddlesome as a DWM freebie. I tried listening to it out of interest but I didn't really get into it. Fast forward a couple of years and I had the Davros Collection, which came with a disc of BF audios. I listened to Terror Firma, which I really enjoyed (though, some of the C'rizz stuff threw me, but I went along with it). Pretty sure I listened to I, Davros too.

Not long later, there was something in our local newspaper about a Doctor Who being set in our town - I initially thought it was an episode of New Who, but then found out it was actually an audio drama. I was a little disappointed but I looked it up anyway, and it ended up being Human Resources from the EDAs. So I listened to series 1 so I had a sense of what was going on given that HR was the finale. I ended up listening to series 2 when it came out.

Slowly, I moved to the Main Range and bought the first few Eight stories along with The Genocide Machine and The Apocalypse Element, and the rest, they say, is history...

I was aware of Big Finish for a very long time (probably around 2005/6) before I became a 'real' listener. When I was a kid, we borrowed a few stories from the library (I distinctly remember The Creed of the Kromon and Terror Firma, as well as Dalek Empire - Series 2, as they had the first three chapters and never obtained the fourth, which drove me mad as kid... and still sort of does to this day), but I never thought much of them as I was too young to really understand what was going on. I'd continue to see them on the library shelf from time to time, but I never really had any compulsion to borrow them as I grew older.

Fast forward to 2014 and I'm seeing articles on Doctor Who websites about these Big Finish Doctor Who audios that I vaguely remembered. "Okay," I'm thinking, "I'll check them out at some point."

Moving into January 2015, I decide to check out the website. Oooooooohhhhhhh boy! After much searching and consideration, I decided, as a test run, to buy The Light at the End: Limited Edition and a Main Range sub from 39. Bang-Bang-a-Boom to 50. Zagreus, as (going by the covers) it had TWO multi-Doctor stories, the Villains trilogy, a story a vaguely remembered from 2005 (Creatures of Beauty), AND a Dalek story. To top it off, I chose The Four Doctors, another multi-Doctor and Dalek story, as my free gift.

...it wasn't long before I made many, many, more purchases

A friend of mine from a different forum kept posting about Big Finish in our Doctor Who thread. I finally succumbed to a free episode offer.