Sleep No More star, Reece Shearsmith, is set to lead an audio Doctor Who spin-off series, Planet Krynoid, from Big Finish. The story kicks off with a three-episode boxset called Nightfall.
Shearsmith is best known for starring in the brilliant Inside No 9 and The League of Gentlemen, but he was also in the (underrated) Twelfth Doctor tale, Sleep No More. He’s going to be in a series focused around the invasive vegetative alien species, the Krynoid, originally seen in the Fourth Doctor classic, The Seeds of Doom.
And Paul McGann will be in the second episode of Nightfall as the Eighth Doctor!
The boxset’s three episodes are Sunlight by Jonathan Morris, Sunset by Jonathan S Powell, and Darkness by Chris Chapman.
Here’s the synopsis:
For a hundred years, Sunlight has been a beacon of hope shining across a troubled galaxy, an artificial paradise on a frozen world offering safe haven for the super-rich, and employment for even the poorest of labourers. At least, that’s what the adverts say.
Unfortunately for Governor Robert Hodan, one of his engineers has just discovered a pair of strange-looking pods lodged in a satellite. So Sunlight, that glittering verdant oasis, will never be the same again.
Because, as the Doctor knows only too well, on planets where the Krynoid gets established, the vegetation eats the animals…
Reece says:
“I know a lot of actors on Big Finish’s roster – David Warner was a great friend, and he used to love doing them and would tell me about them: ‘Why haven’t you done one?’ So I was thrilled to be asked to be in this. It’s a really huge drama, it feels a proper disaster movie of the 1970s, like The Poseidon Adventure – things just get worse and worse.”
Producer and Sunset writer, Jonathan S Powell, enthuses:
“Planet Krynoid is Doctor Who’s answer to The Last of Us and The Walking Dead, a heart-stopping vision of society’s collapse under the weight of one of television’s most terrifying creations: the Krynoid.
“The Krynoids themselves are terrifying because they do that great sci-fi thing of inverting the ordinary and making you petrified of pot plants. More than that though, they’re a sentient infection utterly antithetical to our existence, for which we are woefully unprepared, which makes them the perfect monster to explore today, half a century on from their debut.
“I adore The Seeds of Doom – not just for its B-movie brilliance, but for the creeping feeling it evokes that this time, for the first time, the Doctor really might lose. That’s what we’ve tried to convey in this set, that the gloves are off and nobody is safe.”
Planet Krynoid: Nightfall, due for release in April 2025, is available to pre-order on CD (and download) for £24.99, or download only for £19.99,
