30 Hours of Doctor Who Audio Dramas Now Free to Stream Online

“Yes, this should pro­vide ade­quate sus­te­nance for the Doc­tor Who marathon,” once said The Simp­sons’ Com­ic Book Guy while push­ing a wheel­bar­row full of fast-food tacos down the street. As the embod­i­ment of fan­dom for all things fan­ta­sy and sci-fi, he would cer­tain­ly know that Doc­tor Who, no longer an obscure BBC tele­vi­sion show but an ever-expand­ing fic­tion­al uni­verse with a glob­al fan base, con­sti­tutes the ide­al mate­r­i­al for binge-watch­ing, which he could now do at his con­ve­nience on a ser­vice like Brit­box. But it isn’t just watch­ing: now, on Spo­ti­fy (whose free soft­ware you can down­load here if you don’t have it already), you can binge-lis­ten to thir­ty straight hours of Doc­tor Who audio dra­mas as well.

“An icon of mod­ern British cul­ture and the longest-run­ning sci­ence-fic­tion TV show in his­to­ry, Doc­tor Who has nev­er been more pop­u­lar than it is today,” wrote Christo­pher Bahn in the AV Club’s 2010 primer on the series, which had relaunched five years ear­li­er after ini­tial­ly run­ning from 1963 to 1989. “No mat­ter who’s play­ing the lead, the basic premise has been essen­tial­ly the same since the show’s debut: A mys­te­ri­ous, eccen­tric alien known only as The Doc­tor (not ‘Doc­tor Who,’ in spite of the title) trav­els through time and space hav­ing adven­tures and fight­ing evil. He’s usu­al­ly accom­pa­nied by one or two humans picked up along the way. They jour­ney with him in a time machine called a TARDIS, which looks like a blue phone booth.”

This for­mat “allowed the show to lit­er­al­ly go any­where in the uni­verse and some­times out­side it, with vir­tu­al­ly lim­it­less sto­ry­telling pos­si­bil­i­ties.” At its best, “Doc­tor Who relied on sol­id, imag­i­na­tive scripts to cre­ate smart sci­ence-fic­tion thrillers with a human­is­tic, anti-author­i­tar­i­an heart. Con­sis­tent­ly pop­u­lar through the 1960s and 1970s, the show began to fal­ter in the fol­low­ing decade as tight bud­gets and ques­tion­able artis­tic choic­es took their toll.” After its can­cel­la­tion in 1989, Doc­tor Who “lived on through the ’90s, as sci­ence-fic­tion shows often do, in the wilder­ness gen­res of semi-offi­cial nov­els and radio plays.”

The best known of these Doc­tor Who radio plays, which you can hear on this playlist, come pro­duced by a com­pa­ny called Big Fin­ish. Hav­ing acquired a license from the BBC in 1999 (and recent­ly renewed it into 2025), they’ve put out a range of audio dra­mas, both one-offs and series of var­i­ous lengths, using not just the char­ac­ters but many of the actu­al actors from the tele­vi­sion show, includ­ing six of those who have tak­en on the icon­ic Doc­tor role onscreen. Owing to the fact that Doc­tor Who offi­cial­ly has no canon and thus no need for con­ti­nu­ity, rig­or­ous or oth­er­wise, they can get even more imag­i­na­tive than their source mate­r­i­al, going so far as to explore coun­ter­fac­tu­al sto­ry­lines such as one where the Doc­tor nev­er leaves his home plan­et in the first place.

Below you’ll find a com­plete list, assem­bled by a fan on Red­dit, of the series and episodes of Big Fin­ish’s Doc­tor Who audio dra­mas now avail­able on Spo­ti­fy and are now housed to our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books. The mate­r­i­al comes to thir­ty hours in total, but the ques­tion of when to lis­ten to it falls sec­ond to a more impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tion: what sort of sus­te­nance will best ensure that you can keep up with all of the Doc­tor’s audio adven­tures?

Main Range:

  1. The Sirens of Time
  2. Phan­tas­mago­ria
  3. Whis­pers of Ter­ror
  4. The Land of the Dead
  5. The Fear­mon­ger
  6. The Mar­i­an Con­spir­a­cy
  7. The Geno­cide Machine
  8. Red Dawn
  9. The Spec­tre of Lany­on Moor
  10. Win­ter for the Adept
  11. The Apoc­a­lypse Ele­ment
  12. The Fires of Vul­can
  13. The Shad­ow of the Scourge
  14. The Holy Ter­ror
  15. The Mutant Phase
  16. Storm Warn­ing
  17. Sword of Ori­on
  18. The Stones of Venice
  19. Min­uet in Hell
  20. Loups-Garoux
  21. Dust Breed­ing
  22. Blood­tide
  23. Project: Twi­light
  24. The Eye of the Scor­pi­on
  25. Colditz
  26. Primeval
  27. The One Doc­tor
  28. Invaders from Mars
  29. The Chimes of Mid­night
  30. Sea­sons of Fear
  31. Embrace the Dark­ness
  32. The Time of the Daleks
  33. Nev­er­land
  34. Spare Parts
  35. …ish
  36. The Rap­ture
  37. The Sand­man
  38. The Church and the Crown
  39. Bang-Bang-a-Boom!
  40. Jubilee
  41. Nekro­man­teia
  42. The Dark Flame
  43. Doc­tor Who and the Pirates
  44. Crea­tures of Beau­ty
  45. Project: Lazarus
  46. Flip-Flop
  47. Omega
  48. Davros
  49. Mas­ter
  50. Zagreus

Spe­cial Releas­es:

UNIT: Domin­ion

The Davros Mis­sion

Fourth Doc­tor Adven­tures:

1.01 Des­ti­na­tion: Ner­va

1.02 The Renais­sance Man

1.03 The Wrath of the Iceni

1.04 Ener­gy of the Daleks

1.05 Trail of the White Worm

1.06 The Osei­don Adven­ture

Eighth Doc­tor Adven­tures:

1.1 Blood of the Daleks, Part 1

1.2 Blood of the Daleks, Part 2

1.3 Hor­ror of Glam Rock

1.4 Immor­tal Beloved

1.5 Pho­bos

1.6 No More Lies

1.7 Human Resources, Part 1

1.8 Human Resources, Part 2

The Lost Sto­ries:

1.01 The Night­mare Fair

1.02 Mis­sion to Mag­nus

1.03 Leviathan

1.04 The Hol­lows of Time

1.05 Par­adise 5

1.06 Point of Entry

1.07 The Song of Megaptera

1.08 The Macros

Box 1. The Fourth Doc­tor Box Set

The Com­pan­ion Chron­i­cles:

2.1 Moth­er Rus­sia

2.2 Heli­con Prime

2.3 Old Sol­diers

2.4 The Cat­a­lyst

Des­tiny of the Doc­tor:

  1. Hunters of Earth
  2. Shad­ow of Death
  3. Vengeance of the Stones
  4. Bab­ble­sphere
  5. Smoke and Mir­rors
  6. Trou­ble in Par­adise
  7. Shock­wave
  8. Ene­my Aliens
  9. Night of the Whis­per
  10. Death’s Deal
  11. The Time Machine

Short Trips:

Vol­ume 1

Vol­ume 2

The Stage­plays:

  1. The Ulti­mate Adven­ture
  2. Sev­en Keys to Dooms­day
  3. The Curse of the Daleks

Ber­nice Sum­mer­field:

Box 2. Road Trip

Box 3. Legion

Box 4. New Fron­tiers

Box 5. Miss­ing Per­sons

Grace­less:

Series 1

Series 2

Series 3

Dalek Empire:

  1. Inva­sion of the Daleks
  2. The Human Fac­tor
  3. “Death to the Daleks!”
  4. Project Infin­i­ty
  5. Dalek War: Chap­ter One
  6. Dalek War: Chap­ter Two
  7. Dalek War: Chap­ter Three
  8. Dalek War: Chap­ter Four

Jago & Lite­foot:

Series 1

Series 2

Series 3

Series 4

Series 5

Counter-Mea­sures:

Series 1

Series 2

Iris Wildthyme:

2.1 The Sound of Fear

2.2 The Land of Won­der

2.3 The Two Iris­es

2.4 The Pan­da Inva­sion

2.5 The Claws of San­ta

Series 3

Series 4

UNIT:

  1. Time Heals
  2. Snake Head
  3. The Longest Night
  4. The Wast­ing

I, Davros:

  1. Inno­cence
  2. Puri­ty
  3. Cor­rup­tion
  4. Guilt

Cyber­man:

1.1 Scor­pius

1.2 Fear

1.3 Con­ver­sion

1.4 Telos

2.0 Cyber­man 2

Char­lotte Pol­lard:

Series 1

 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Brit­Box Now Stream­ing Now Stream­ing 550 Episodes of Doc­tor Who and Many Oth­er British TV Shows

The BBC Cre­ates Step-by-Step Instruc­tions for Knit­ting the Icon­ic Doc­tor Who Scarf: A Doc­u­ment from the Ear­ly 1980s

Vin­cent van Gogh Vis­its a Mod­ern Muse­um & Gets to See His Artis­tic Lega­cy: A Touch­ing Scene from Doc­tor Who

42 Hours of Ambi­ent Sounds from Blade Run­ner, Alien, Star Trek and Doc­tor Who Will Help You Relax & Sleep

The Fas­ci­nat­ing Sto­ry of How Delia Der­byshire Cre­at­ed the Orig­i­nal Doc­tor Who Theme

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.


by | Permalink | Comments (14) |

Sup­port Open Cul­ture

We’re hop­ing to rely on our loy­al read­ers rather than errat­ic ads. To sup­port Open Cul­ture’s edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion, please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion. We accept Pay­Pal, Ven­mo (@openculture), Patre­on and Cryp­to! Please find all options here. We thank you!


Comments (14)
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
  • KevinESIN says:

    That’s WAY more than 30 hours. The 50 Main Range releas­es alone would be more like 75 hours giv­en that they’re about 90 min­utes each.

  • Nickpheas says:

    As Kevin says, way, way more than 30 hours there if they’re while sto­ries.
    Big Fin­ish quite often release the first episode as a teas­er, per­haps there’s aren’t the whole thing?

  • Brennan Young says:

    Is it real­ly ‘open­cul­ture’ if it’s on spo­ti­fy?

  • Lymis says:

    They are the com­plete sto­ries, not edit­ed down as teasers. And a heck of a lot more than 30 hours in total. Most of them are around 2 hours each,

  • Blair says:

    Hi, + don’t for­get BigFin­ish’s bril­liant non Dr. Who sto­ries — Dark Shad­ows (50 episodes), Sher­lock Holmes & Blake’s 7 (34 Ep.) to name a few. Just search for my user­name: Blair Job­son. I’ve got ALL of their titles in ready to use playlists!! Super Easy.

  • Mark Denison says:

    I have spot­ted some oth­er big fin­ish con­tent too.

    Dan dare, Sur­vivors series 1, The avengers , Varous Sher­lock Holmes, Franken­stein, Drac­u­la, night of the trif­fids, trea­sure island , I Davros, phan­tom of the opera Blake’s 7 and lib­er­a­tor cron­i­cals and the axe­man cometh Mervyn stone. I sus­pect there’s more too.

  • Kassandra says:

    Hey, Blair! Searched for you to no avail: “No results found…” I was real­ly hop­ing to lis­ten to some of your Dark Shad­ows and Doc­tor Who audio dra­mas. Real­ly hop­ing you have the new adven­tures fea­tur­ing David Ten­nant and Cather­ine Tate whom I sim­ply adore!

  • Kiapandora01 says:

    Where is the sec­tion for this for down­load on the open cul­ture free audio books site? Im too poor to pay for spo­ti­fy pre­mi­um so I can lis­ten to the sto­ries in order.

  • alan farnworth says:

    for real fun, try the “one doc­tor”. gen­uine­ly laugh out loud at times.

    ( the straight sto­ries are real­ly well done too )

  • Liedindewei says:

    All those DW audios­to­ries/-books on Spo­ti­fy are so fun to lis­ten, but:

    They are all playlists with small ‘parts’ of about 3 to 4 min­utes. So if you do not have a pre­mi­um account you can’t lis­ten to them, because it only plays the playlist on shuf­fle.

  • Callista says:

    You have to have a PREMIUM account to lis­ten to them in order. A FREE account will only allow you to lis­ten in Shuf­fle Only!

  • Martin Fennell says:

    No, you don’t need a pre­mi­um account to lis­ten to them.
    Use the search but­ton and type “Sirens of time “for instance.
    Then click “Album” a list of the tracks should appear in order. Then click the green play icon beside the heart.
    Tracks will play in order that way.

  • Kim says:

    MANY of the these are not avail­able even with pre­mi­um which is a shame. Maybe the licens­ing or what ever expired?

  • alan says:

    All of the ones I have tried are avail­able (in the uk at least) and I’ve lis­tened to most of them (and I don’t have pre­mi­um). Don’t be dis­cour­aged.

Leave a Reply

Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.