Camille Coduri returns next year as Jackie Tyler for Big Finish’s Short Trips range – but she’s paired with a pretty unfamiliar Doctor.
In case you’re not up to speed with Short Trips, it’s a series of download-only tales, under an hour long each, typically told by one narrator; but if the lack of an all-star cast makes you uncertain, rest assured that the range is one of the strongest of the audio company’s output. And Jackie will be back in March and May 2018, in The Siege of Big Ben and Flight into Hull!
Although it’s the Jackie we all know and love, the setting brings us into contact with someone who’s almost a stranger: the Meta-Crisis Doctor…
Producer Ian Atkins explains:
“The Short Trips range always offers a nice chance to nip about and look at eras and people it’s harder to visit with other ranges. As soon as I’d heard Camille was happy to return to the role with Big Finish, I started talking to Joe Lidster about whether we could visit Pete’s World and see how things are going after Journey’s End. We got permission from Russell T Davies, and then Joe’s imagination took flight – as indeed do the Doctor and Jackie at one point – and came up with two exciting, funny and sad tales which Camille just knocked out of the park.
“In the first, The Siege of Big Ben, we find how Jackie is settling into a life that’s nearly, but not quite, her own – and when danger comes calling, can she rely on this new Doctor as she would have done the old?
“The second story Flight into Hull! takes place some time after, when Jackie and the Doctor seek to resolve some unfinished business between them – but a luxury Zeppelin ride isn’t going to be as smooth as it should be… As with Joe’s last Short Trip – A Full Life [starring Matthew Waterhouse as Adric] – it balances character and action beautifully, and although this is very much Camille’s show, the take on this broken, ‘born in battle’ Doctor couldn’t be more perceptive.”
Both are written by Joe Lidster and directed by Lisa Bowerman.
Oh, and that’s not all! In April, Yee Jee Tso, who played Chang Lee in the 1996 TV Movie, plays Warrant Officer Charlie Sato in a solo Eighth Doctor story, The Turn of the Screw by Eddie Robson.
Ian goes on:
“Yee Jee got in touch last year to say he’d be in the UK for a convention and would love to work with us again. I still had a Short Trips slot, and we thought it would be fun to have his Warrant Officer Charlie Sato encounter the Eighth Doctor in a hectic, high-stakes adventure tale. It’s Yee Jee’s first Short Trip, and he really went for it. He’s got a lovely dry sense of humour, and Eddie’s script finds Charlie on his own, chased by bad guys, with his only chance of help being someone claiming to be UNIT’s scientific adviser…”
You can pre-order all three downloads for just £2.99 now, and keep an eye on the DWC for our ongoing reviews!
