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.


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Comments (13)
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  • 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?

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