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Post by slithe on Oct 26, 2019 8:40:41 GMT
Through DWM in 1999. I'd read some of the promotional material (and listened to the CD - 'Talking about my Regeneration') and decided that I wanted to give these a try. By this point, I'd watched most of the VHS releases (and bought them all) and read a fair few of the books (mostly MA/PDA and some EDA). If I'm honest, I thought that the BBC Books were a bit stale and repetitive (some of the early EDA are ok - Vampire Science and Alien Bodies, but not really going anywhere) and wanted something different.
After much pestering of parents (BF was quite niche then and kids did not have debit cards in the late 1990s), I managed to get a copy of the Sirens of Time and enjoyed it. The Genocide Machine quickly followed (who would not want Daleks?), then Apocalypse Element (same reason). A kind relative eventually bought me a subscription, so got most of late 2000/early 2001 releases and I stayed with BF for a while. Dropped out a bit when I was a student (money and lack of time), came back to the range in 2014 - I'd had a massive health scare and was too exhausted to do anything, found the 'old' BF CDs and listened to them and was transported back again. Subscribed again to the MR and began filling the gaps since I'd stopped getting the stories. Also got to experience some of the 'new' ranges I'd missed - i.e. the Early Adventures. Never looked back since.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 26, 2019 8:40:56 GMT
"It was the summer of 2014 when the dame you call 'El Finito Grande' knocked on the door of my Internet browser, strolled onto my phone and before I had a chance to react proceeded to turn my reading life upside down like some poor schmuck hit full force by a category 5 hurricane. My interest in new Who was waning at the time and my memories of classic Who were tainted by the events known as 'season 24'. I was looking for something new yet something familiar and she offered both to me on a plate...for a price.
My god...even back then she was hot. A svelt, trim website topped by an amazing set of...ranges and downloadable lists as long as your arm. And the sales..god, the sales..you could lose yourself looking into those sales. She was alluring and she was cheap and I was putty in her hands...
...and she knew it.
Before I could stop myself I was handing over £8 and hungrily sampling her wares. I relished every minute that she gave to me of the original UNIT mini series and every minute of the I, Davros mini series and when I'd finished I wanted MORE. I was addicted. I had sold my soul to the audio devil herself that day and I simply didn't care. I had to have more of her.
And all these years later I still do. Sure, I've spent way, way too much on her in recent years and sometimes the experience has been less than pleasurable (looking at you Nekromanteia), but as Steve Tyler sang... ..I don't want to miss a thing."
😊
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Post by Deleted on Oct 26, 2019 8:57:05 GMT
I was in Forbidden Planet in Glasgow. there was a Lone CD NIGHT THOUGHTS on sale for 4.99. I thought why not? I had no internet at time so knew very little abou BF and had come back from workin abroad. Listened and thought wow love this...and the love affair began
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Post by sherlock on Oct 26, 2019 9:00:27 GMT
Heard about Big Finish from DWM, I think. Back when it originally aired on BBC 7, I caught Brave New Town. After that I occasionally heard Big Finish on iPlayer when I could but didn’t buy any until 2016.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 26, 2019 9:05:21 GMT
After the Dark Shadows movie with Depp came out, I went to see it and said "Comedy? Bah! The original series was a hundred times better" and decided it was finally time to get serious about revisiting the original series in entirety, and ended up buying Dark Shadows DVDs and Googling up all kinds of things - novels, fanfic, convention clips on YouTube, blogs, forums, and finally "Big Finish? What's that?" On June 10, 2012, I ordered Dark Shadows The Night Whispers and The Crimson Pearl because the first had Jonathan Frid Himself and John Karlen, and the second had the most of amazing cast of characters. I was skeptical at first that anything else Big Finish did could have turned out so good, but slowly my curiosity got the better of me and I'm glad it did. Yes thanks to BF I got Back to Dark Shadows after not seeing anything of it apart from a brief internet based surf where I discovered the original show and thought ‘Hey I love this show”-and as I always say one of BFs best consistently excellent ranges
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Post by axelotl38 on Oct 26, 2019 10:38:31 GMT
I had heard of Big Finish on and off through r/doctorwho and r/gallifrey (specifically the 8th Doctor stuff I think. I remember Dark Eyed and Lucie). Plus some Tumblr's I followed mentioned them sometimes. And obviously Night of the Doctor's reaction helped inform me. But there were two significant events:
1. The announcement of The Last Adventure. I had never seen Classic (outside of the movie, primarily a New Who fan) but I was certainly aware of the circumstances surrounding Classic and thought it was cool they were doing this.
2. New UNIT. That definitely put it on my radar. I loved Jemma Redgrave and so I was sold from that announcement on. Definitely the first CD I ordered (though I can't recall off the top of my head if it was the first purchase I did). I didn't think much of it at the time. I just figured "Well this is cool so I'll get these on CD no big deal." Two bookshelves stacked later...
Anyway it was on my 19th birthday, 2015, there was a big EDA/DE sale. And I was away at the beach. So I bought it. I'm 95% certain that was my first purchase. And Bob's your uncle. I listened to Blood of the Daleks whilst walking on the beach. The rest is history.
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Post by project37 on Oct 26, 2019 15:56:54 GMT
I was going through a particularly rough time in 1999 and my old off-air VHS recordings of Doctor Who were a great source of escapist comfort. Only so many times I could go through them before feeling a need to look for more. I'd jumped on my dial-up connection to see if there was anything to read about those old episodes and stumbled across the Big Finish website previewing The Sirens of Time. My mind was blown to see that Peter Davison, Colin Baker, and Sylvester McCoy were all going to be in the same story! I listened to the little preview clips over and over again and placed an order through the then-exclusive US distributor. It was such a joy to have them back! I was only able to keep up with the first several releases in real time ("Fearmonger" was the first one that felt it truly could have been a television episode), but I've since drifted in and out many times since. The stories have kept me company while running, commuting, working in the kitchen, recovering from illness, even doing late-night bottle feedings when my kids were infants.
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Post by Digi on Oct 26, 2019 16:34:26 GMT
For me it was Storm Warning. I'd been aware of Big Finish for quite some time, but had been consciously avoiding/dismissing it because I tend to take a very narrow view of canon (regardless of what franchise we're talking about). I had spent a couple of years watching my way through all of classic Doctor Who, and finally done the McGann film. I decided, still somewhat skeptical, okay, let's give this a try--but only the Eighth Doctor, because of all the Doctors, he's the only one who never really got a shot. Everyone else got at least a season, all he got was a so-so 90 minute movie. And (surprise) I really liked it, so I kept going. And going and going and going, until I finished everything with McGann that was available at that point. And then I thought, well.....Sylvester McCoy might've gotten a few seasons on TV, but really he was canceled and didn't get to play out the Cartmel thing or anything else they might've been thinking about doing, so I guess it'd be fair to give his a shot too. And....yeah I really liked it, so I listened to it all. And then I thought, well.....Colin Baker was fired, so he really didn't get a fair shake either, so maybe him too.... And so on and so on and so on. Now my BF library is ludicrously large, and I am exponentially poorer
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Post by vivdunstan on Oct 26, 2019 16:59:08 GMT
I fell away from Who fandom completely in the 1990s, even somehow missing the TV movie! I was drawn back when the return to TV was announced in 2003. For the first time in many years I picked up Doctor Who Magazine. And I read about Big Finish. And they had Paul McGann audios. I’d never seen or heard his Doctor! So wackily I plumped for Chimes of Midnight as my first Big Finish. It sounded fun. Then I listened to it on my own in a brand new house in Spring 2004. Terrifying! But brill. And I took out my first subscription soon after. Magic.
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Post by anothermanicmondas on Oct 26, 2019 19:44:06 GMT
I was to some extent aware from seeing them in shops (London Forbidden Planet, Sheffield Space Centre) But I didn't try until 2013 - Doctor Who was very much on my mind that year - and I started seeing Tom Baker looking down at me from the shelves of Waterstones ... while I tried to resist I was unable to do so... I did not see any copies of Destination Nerva so I gave the Rennaisance Man a try ... my life has not been the same since...
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Post by Deleted on Oct 26, 2019 19:46:40 GMT
Well for me it was a case of purchasing 'Storm Warning' & 'Chimes of Midnight' from Forbidden Planet & Newcastle Upon Tyne in 2003/4. Listening to Storm Warning in the traffic on the A1, I was impressed by the cinematic sound design & thrilled to hear Paul McGann in the role again. I bought 'Spare Parts' from the BF website a year o r so later and was blown away at how they could create a 5th Doctor tale with so much more than the TV series, yet without any visuals. These were bought on the strength of reading a 30th anniversary issue of DWM, where they were top recommendations of the BF range. I've said it before on this forum though, keeping up with the DVD releases and the ever increasing backlog of monthly releases meant that (bar half a dozen CD purchases from Waterstones & Amazon) it was not until the DVD range effectively completed the classic run that I returned to their website and discovered the £2.99 DL offers. Since 2014 therefore, I must have spent £2,000 on their Doctor Who releases. 'Bliddy hell' I would be minded to think, if they weren't such good value!
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Post by Superium on Oct 26, 2019 23:34:51 GMT
Summer of 2014. I just stumbled across it, really. No one introduced it to me, no recommendations, I just found it. It was a snippet from one of the Unbound stories (one of the Geoffrey Bayldon ones). Listened to it, enjoyed it, and went on with my life. One whole year later, I finally picked up some for myself: Loups-Garoux and Jubilee. Despite those being the first that I picked up, the first one I listened to in its entirety was Sirens of Time.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 27, 2019 1:17:54 GMT
The Apocalypse Element, trailing an off-the-cuff remark about the Dalek invasion of Gallifrey, known as the "Etra Prime incident" in the 2006 Doctor Who Annual. Still remains one of my favourite stories for whizbangery and that "Part One" cliffhanger in the gravity well. If anyone were to do "telesnaps" of a Big Finish story, I don't think you could do better. There are enough explosions in there to merrily shake the hand of a Gerry Anderson production.
I remember a while back listeners mentioning that they heard some incarnations on audio before they saw them on television. The more I think about it, the more I think that my first ever experience of the Eighth Doctor, in any medium, was the adaptation of Shada. Specifically, through the webcast version that existed on the BBC Classic website for a time. *places hat on chest in remembrance* That got me into Storm Warning and the comics, starting with Endgame, and quite a few of the novels. I didn't see the TV Movie until... Zagreus(?), I want to say.
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Post by Whovitt on Oct 27, 2019 2:33:11 GMT
Bump.
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Post by constonks on Oct 27, 2019 5:16:01 GMT
The draw for me was definitely the Eighth Doctor. I'd seen and liked the TV Movie and wanted more of him so it was Storm Warning for me.
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ljwilson
Chancellery Guard
It's tangerine....not orange
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Post by ljwilson on Oct 27, 2019 16:06:05 GMT
Whispers of Terror...on cassette about 5 years ago. I had just bought a lovely all-metal bodied Sony cassettecorder and for some reason I bought about 7 of the early Main Range on cassette, more to try out the Sony than anything else.
Loved Whispers of Terror and Phantasmagoria....still do and listen to them often.
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mbt66
Chancellery Guard
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Post by mbt66 on Oct 30, 2019 17:08:13 GMT
And this is where my memory must be playing tricks, because I remember discovering the cassette version of Sirens of Time for sale in a Motorway services and then listening to it on my three hour commute to Reading... but the problem is I finished going there in 1997...
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Post by number13 on Oct 31, 2019 1:15:11 GMT
I missed that one. Which Doctor is it?
EDIT: Oh OK yes I see...
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