Sci-Fi Bulletin: Exploring the Universes of SF, Fantasy, Horror and Spy-fi!

Big Finish will be wrapping up the Circuit Breaker story featuring Jo Martin’s Fugitive Doctor with two releases in September.

The contributions comprise the two-hour series finale, Circuit Breaker: Full Circuit (a full-cast audio drama) and two Short Trips-style audiobook stories released together as Short Circuits.

In Full Circuit, the Doctor, Osgood and Andrew are joined by Kate Lethbridge Stewart. A final mysterious object is manifesting, this one at the pinnacle of UNIT Tower itself. A Time Bomb! Which threatens a dark future for all of the Doctor’s incarnations. Only this Doctor can save herself – and her other selves – from this intricately woven scheme.

The cast of Full Circuit includes Jo Martin as the Fugitive Doctor, Ingrid Oliver as Osgood, Jemma Redgrave as Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, Omari Douglas as Andrew, and Dan Starkey, plus further names to be announced.

The two 30-minute adventures in Short Circuits are:

Battleships by Alex Hewitt

Meet the Conductor. This cadaverous specimen is a peerless tactical genius. But life is hard for a man who stands out from his fellows, and this formidable mastermind must outwit certain rivals before setting his sights on his true enemy.

Get Rich or Die Trying by Alex Hewitt, from a story by Natasha Siegel

Meet Andrew – a young man with a good job and a mysterious benefactor. Following a coded message to the Jurassic Coast, where a team of palaeontologists are digging up a dinosaur skeleton, Andrew encounters a stranger who gives him a so-called time-travel device. Before he knows what’s happened, Andrew is plunged back through history, all the way to the Jurassic Period itself. Why has he been sent here? Who is his anonymous benefactor? And is he the victim of a sinister experiment? Only time will tell…

Both stories are read by Dan Starkey.

Robert Valentine, writer of Full Circuit, said: “I was thrilled to write the climactic episode of the Circuit Breaker saga, and it was quite the responsibility. The Doctor, Osgood and Andrew have been on this perilous journey together, and it all pays off at UNIT Tower, where Kate Lethbridge-Stewart is facing a massive threat to the safety of the planet, and only they can stop it.

“It was also huge fun pairing the Fugitive Doctor with Osgood and Kate, because Jo Martin’s Doctor is an irreverent, no-nonsense incarnation with no sentimental baggage about her UNIT allies, so her Doctor can say things to them that no other version of the Doctor could. And that was a blast to write!”

Valentine also script edited Short Circuits, about which he said: “What I love about the two Short Circuits stories is the sidelights they cast on the two main Circuit Breaker characters brand-new to Doctor Who – the formidable villain known as the Conductor, and Osgood’s gifted assistant, Andrew Turner – and the extra depths they give them.”

Both are now available to pre-order from Big Finish.

This is likely to be the last Big Finish news story we post on Sci-Fi Bulletin, as the site becomes a (Black) Archive on Monday 3rd. The exception will be reviews of the last three Torchwood audios. Thank you to everyone for the support.