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In part 1 of this extensive chat with Nick Briggs, the Big Finish executive producer discussed The Prisoner; part 2 covered the War Doctor. Now in the third and final part, the conversation moves onto Sherlock Holmes, The Omega Factor music, Blake’s 7 – and a look ahead to some treats for 2017 and beyond…

[As this interview may appear in podcast form, please note that it has been edited for print.]

Let’s turn to Sherlock…

We like to call it Holmes here! Everyone called Sherlock Holmes “Holmes” until the BBC series Sherlock, and now everyone calls it Sherlock! And of course in the original Sherlock Holmes, hardly anyone mentioned the name Sherlock apart from Sherlock Holmes saying, “I am Sherlock Holmes…”

Now that Jonathan Barnes’ quadrilogy is over – the 13-parter including the Titanic tale – what’s next for Holmes?

OK, I can give you a scoop here: we’re doing a three disc box set for next year and a Christmas Special. The Christmas Special is going to be really special and slightly outrageous – can’t tell you anything more about that – and the box set is going to be like a Sherlock Holmes novel: it’s going to be one whole story. It’s going to be that structure – [previously] the others have been individual stories.

That was Jonathan’s pitch to us and I don’t think that we’ve ever turned down one of Jonathan’s pitches about Sherlock Holmes. He says, “I’m thinking about this next” and we say, “Yes, get on with it!” That’s more or less what I said to him the other day.

I’m producing it again, so I had to say to him: “You know the terms of the contract, the contract will come, I’m just a bit busy talking to Paul Simpson so can you just get on with writing it? The contracts and the money will come through, don’t you worry.” And he trusts us enough.

For want of a better term, is that in the same “continuity” as the stories that we’ve had so far? That Holmes and Watson, you’ve done some interesting things to, particularly at the end of the third box set which almost wanders towards fantasy territory…

It does a bit doesn’t it? “What are those lights in the sky?”

No – I was thinking of the previous one, where Holmes is “de-aged”.

I think it’s all set in the same continuity in Jonathan’s mind, but this is set earlier. For the last couple of box sets, certainly for the last one I’ve been playing an older Sherlock Holmes, so I’m aware of having to sound slightly older when I speak…

You mean your natural voice?

Hmm. Thanks very much!

And this will be a 45 year old Sherlock Holmes, so I’ll be playing ten years younger. I’ll have to wear short trousers and everything…

Have you been tempted to write a Sherlock Holmes script yourself?

No. I don’t feel qualified. Isn’t it weird? I feel nervous about it. It has been mentioned.

You know the character…

I prefer to delegate. I do! I do! It gives me great relief.

The main thing for me is I want to turn the crazy ideas in my head into some sort of reality – either as an audio play, or whatever. That’s my motivation, telling the story. But then I discovered soon after becoming executive producer of Big Finish that I found it very nearly as exciting to facilitate other people doing that.

Jonathan Barnes, he absolutely flies with Sherlock Holmes. He knows it so well, and he has such a knack for doing it. I find that really exciting and it brings me a lot of joy for him to do it. Why would I do it when he’s so good at it?

Having him doing it is fine by me – there are not enough hours in the day. I shouldn’t be doing all the music for Survivors and Counter-Measures, and The Omega Factor, but I love doing it, and it all comes at the same time of year. I’m just about to be hit by Omega Factor…

I do love doing it but it’s a lot to do, and were I sensible, I would just say, “Let’s get someone else to do it, and I can have more time to write The Prisoner.”

Talking of The Omega Factor, that wasn’t the original theme tune…

I know this is a bugbear of yours.

I expected it, because everything else that you do does…

I know. It’s weird – okay, The Prisoner doesn’t but it’s very similar. To be honest, I thought that’s what we’d do, but David Richardson was very much of the opinion that to him the theme tune was not an essential part of the series’ DNA. He said, “I really want you to do a new theme, with a similar feel.” I can’t impose my view on everything.

I was intrigued – I wondered if it might be a rights issue…

I don’t think it would have been a rights issue; I’m sure we could have done a deal with the composer and we would have paid our MCPS on it and all that malarkey – it wasn’t that sort of issue. As you say, with everything else, we pay our dues to the composer and either use the original recording or get a new version done and pay for the rights. It wasn’t anything to do with saving money, or anything like that. It was a creative decision by David.

It’s a perfectly valid one but it just raised the question…

The estate [of creator Jack Gerson] are perfectly happy with it as well. To me, absolutely, because I used to record The Omega Factor off the telly onto audio, to me that theme [is part of it]… But I think you’re the only person complaining about it, aren’t you? Maybe five other people you whipped up and got standing outside the Big Finish office with placards!

What’s the latest on Blake’s 7?

The latest is that there’s going to be lots more of it. John Ainsworth is working on it and hopefully we’ll make an announcement in the new year. We haven’t found the right time to publicly announce that but I don’t mind it getting out there – there hasn’t been enough done on Blake’s 7 for various dull reasons that I can’t go into, but everything is really fine now and our intention is for Blake’s 7 to have a really long and vital future with us. (I sound like such a po-faced spokesman!) That’s very possible and that’s what we’re starting to do. Lots of exciting plans for next year.

Anything else you can tease for 2017?

Not specifically about new stuff. All sorts of possibilities [but] I don’t want to mention things that may not yet come to fruition.

I just recorded an adaptation of a Doctor Who comic strip, featuring one of the classic Doctors but I won’t say which, so that’s fun.

You’ve probably got wind of the fact that we’re going to do HG Wells dramatizations next year: I’m writing The War of the Worlds – I’ve started that. I think it’s my second go; I abandoned my first go. I’ve just read the most beautiful adaptation of The Time Machine written by Marc Platt – amazing.

That novel, and The War of the Worlds, are so important to me: from them everything flowed. Doctor Who would not be possible without those two novels. I read them in my early teens, wrote my National Insurance number in the War of the Worlds book because they said “put it somewhere that you know that you’ll always have”, and I thought “I will always have that” – and I’ve still got that 1975 edition, with slightly browned pages where it’s aged because it’s not been stored very well.

Let me leap ahead slightly to something I mentioned in [a recent] podcast: we’ve got plans to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Big Finish in 2018 and the 20th anniversary of Doctor Who at Big Finish in 2019. [For that,] we’re going to do a lot of stuff across the main range, across all the Doctor Who ranges to tie into a monster celebration, and there’ll also be a special release

For the 20th anniversary of Big Finish, we’ve got a few completely original things. We’re going for celebrating our innovation and originality. We’re very excited about that and again I’ve started writing my contribution to that as well.

I like to get a lot of things on the launch pad and go between them. They’re antidotes to each other: when you get a creative block with one you can do the other. That’s why I do music and directing and writing – it keeps my brain functioning, rather than just constantly going down the same road… Stop it with the metaphors!

And on that note, thank you Nick.

Click here to read part 1 of this interview

Click here to read part 2 of this interview