Fast-paced, witty, using lore in an engaging way that serves the story, and above all entertaining: the Thirteenth Doctor has landed on Big Finish with a bang.

While the production company has a history of improving upon and getting fanbases to reassess different Doctors’ eras, it often takes a while for the lead actors to land on their feet in the audio medium. Earlier this year, Jo Martin’s Fugitive Doctor got her own audio series and nailed the role immediately, and now Jodie Whittaker has done the same.

It could be said the former had a harder job with fewer television appearances to go off to inform her character’s traits and a totally new cast to work with on audio, but that also gave her the freedom to take the performance where she wanted it to go.

Jodie Whittaker, meanwhile, has plenty of experience playing the Thirteenth Doctor and knows the role inside out, but that primarily ties her to how she portrayed the Doctor on television. At least when in a flatter team structure with her ‘fam’, in which she was often carrying conversations with multiple people at once, was very fast-talking and not particularly assertive much of the time.

By committing to a series of just the Doctor and Yasmin Khan, played by her very close friend Mandip Gill, Big Finish has instantly given both actors more room in the scripts and their natural rapport transfers straight into the recording booths. Series one of the Thirteenth Doctor Adventures begins this month with Vampire Weekend, and it’s a story that lays very strong foundations.

The setting of the story is a large manor in the Peak District, but it is not really played for spooks since it is the venue of Gina’s hen-do. She’s Yaz’s friend, and it’s a much-needed look into the characters that surround her away from life with the Doctor.

But Gina doesn’t turn up, and instead the Doctor does with her current travelling companions: two hens called Ian and Barbara. Initially played for comedy, these hens are actually key characters who the Doctor talks to and has a history with. Along with other moments of interacting with her environment and the humans present, it asserts that the Doctor is a weird and wacky alien woman.

In fact, the Doctor has had such a good time with her all-female TARDIS crew (yes, Ian is a hen) that it also places some doubt in Yaz’s head on whether the Doctor would still want to travel with her.

This lands really well as an emotional beat, with some great dialogue for Yaz, and begins the character development for this pair that many people buying Vampire Weekend will be seeking. At this point in time, she doesn’t know yet how to navigate being solo with the Doctor.

Aside from the hens, the rest of the cast are well-established and are very much believable individuals for the time period Yaz lives in. There’s an enjoyable continuation of the Thirteenth Doctor not bothering to learn the names of people’s mums, and a scene in which queer representation comes to the fore.

It’s well-written and the performances are pitched in the right area for it to neither feel too big (in that the characters would give it more emotional value than the life-and-death situation going on) nor too small (in that it’s rushed through and not allowed time to breathe as a scene), and shows how outside of her police role, Yaz was seen to be lacking in confidence before meeting the Doctor.

The enemy is an old foe from Doctor Who history, and it’s a brilliantly handled return. There’s just enough dialogue to highlight the Doctor and her people have a long history with the Great Vampires, while also presenting the race as if they’re a foe that has only recently been met.

There is some inspiration from the vampires in teen fiction in the 2010s, but writer Tim Foley goes genre-hopping with elements of slasher films, old-school murder mysteries, romantic comedies, and dare I say modern gameshows such as Taskmaster. I mean, they’re stuck in a manor in the middle of nowhere; the Doctor is giving everyone eggs; exceptionally strange things are happening and being done in a serious manner but making for comedic listening; and the sillier events get, the higher the stakes are.

The threat of the vampire and the compact setting makes it a fast-paced story, which is clearly written to entertain. Joe Kraemer uses in-era inspirations from Segun Akinola for the accompanying music, but also goes for fun to match the narrative, and it feels like Big Finish has put a talented production crew with a new flavour for the Thirteenth Doctor Adventures.

On television, this era struggled with stories that simply weren’t entertaining or that were built around narratives there was no reward in investing in. Stories that were forgettable, built to nothing, and generally lacked potential. The majority of the character development in its larger main cast format went to the middle-aged men too.

Fans filled in the gaps themselves in terms of where they wanted to see the Doctor and companion dynamics going, particularly with Yaz, and that was even acknowledged in the Fifteenth Doctor’s final episode. Vampire Weekend does the same with some easter eggs that big Thirteenth Doctor fans will spot.

Big Finish has already started this series with levels of energy, entertainment, lore, and Doctor-and-companion interactions that many felt missing on screen, and therefore makes episode one a worthwhile purchase. Particularly for newcomers to Doctor Who on audio.

There’s now a two-month wait until The Return of the Doctor, i.e. episode two. It’s penned by Rory Thomas-Howes, a writer new to Doctor Who, and here’s what we know about it so far:

“Having saved the peaceful Zaarians from an evil alien threat, the Doctor and Yaz sail off to their next adventure. Only this time, Yaz wonders if they’re moving on, or running away.

Convincing a grudging Doctor to return to the planet, they are shocked to find the Zaarians in turmoil. What did the Doctor do? Why is the city in ruins? And what’s that voice in Yaz’s head…?”

With Vampire Weekend whetting our appetites so well, we’re looking forward to seeing how the series plays out…

The Thirteenth Doctor Adventures: Vampire Weekend is available now from Big Finish.