Doctor Who - Pieces of Eighth

PIECES of Eighth ventures into that multi-platform release from 2020 and 2021 this week, as we uncover some of the secrets of Time Lord Victorious. Over the next two episodes, we'll feature all of the Eighth Doctor's stories from the run, starting this week with Big Finish vinyl release Echoes of Extinction - which featured Paul McGann and David Tennant, and have an exclusive chat with its writer,...

THE Cybermen are back - and we join the Doctor and Mary Shelley as they face his old foes in Vienna. It's a return to the Big Finish full cast audio worlds, as they take a listen to The Silver Turk, which was released in 2011. And Becca informs Kenny of another fascinating real-life fact about Mary - which once again shocks him! - as the pair meet the story's writer Marc Platt, as well as musician...

The award-winning Black Archive is a bi-monthly series of independently-published book-length looks at Doctor Who stories - and they've featured both of the Eighth Doctor's outings on TV. In Doctor Who (1996) Paul Driscoll looks at the Paul McGann TV movie as a functional series pilot, as a reinvention of the Doctor and of the 20th-century Doctor Who formula, and as a ‘bridge’ to the 21st-century...

The miracle has happened! Believe it or not, we've actually spoken with the Eighth Doctor himself in an exclusive chat! We discuss playing the Doctor, whether Paul McGann still regards himself as the George Lazenby of Time Lords, working with Nicola Walker in Scotland, and  Kenny was delighted to chat with Paul, and sadly Becca was detained elsewhere... at her boyfriend's brother's birthday d...

Pieces of Eighth returns to the worlds of the Big Finish Short Trips, those sometimes forgotten little gems, bringing us more Doctor Who adventures. This week, Becca and Kenny talk about The Turn of the Screw, and have a ball as they interview producer Ian Atkins about his thinking in commissioning the adventure-packed story, writer Eddie Robson about the creative process, and Yee Jee Tso tells al...

EATER of Wasps - the title of this Doctor Who adventure alone is enough to make you feel unwell... imagine having not just one wasp in your mouth, but lots of the stingy wee buggers?! This week, Becca and Kenny discuss the 45th novel from the BBC Books range, Eater of Wasps, written by Trevor Baxendale.  The pair discuss their loathing of the titular insects, chat with Trevor, and bring you t...

Over the course of season three, we're going to be meeting the people involved in the making of the Big Finish Mary Shelley Trilogy, a trilogy in four parts. Kenny and Becca kick off their journey with a trip to Switzerland, as we discover how Mary's Story came about, as Jonathan Morris reveals he wasn't intended to be involved as its writer, and sound designer Thea Cochrane (another Scottish pers...

Pieces of Eighth returns for its third season, and we open with someone who was involved in the TV Movie. The movie's soundtrack is one of the most popular things about it, so listen in and hear Becca get jealous of Kenny, as he spoke with John Sponsler, the co-composer on the 1996 score.  Our third run kicks off here - and we've got plenty more exclusive interviews lined up for this season.&...

Join Character Options' Al Dewar and Big Finish's unofficial archivist Kenny Smith, as they take another trip back in time to chat about the origins of some Doctor Who action figurers. This time, the pair discuss the figures related to the audio series - the Sixth Doctor in blue coat, as first seen in Real Time, plus the B&M twin packs featuring the Seventh, Eighth and War Doctors, plus new Da...

It's Christmas time... there's no need to be afraid... apart from from a giant trans-dimensional fish which has escaped inside the TARDIS! Join Kenny and Becca as they discover how Relative Dimensions came into being for the Big Finish Eighth Doctor Adventures range. Christmas is a time for family, they say – which is why the Doctor has invited his granddaughter Susan, and great grandson Alex for...

The second season of Pieces of Eighth comes to a close with the rest of our exclusive chat with the writer and co-producer of the Doctor Who TV Movie, Matthew Jacobs. We chat about his feelings on the film now, how he came to embrace it, and we discover that he knows about Big Finish! Plus, Becca and Kenny reveal when they'll be back, and what's in the next episode!

Pieces of Eighth reaches the climax of its second season, and we welcome another guest who worked on the Doctor Who TV Movie. This week, in the first of a two-part interview, we chat with Matthew Jacobs, the man who wrote the scripts for the film which introduced Paul McGann as the Doctor. Plus, we have more of your TV Movie memories from where you were when it was first screened.

BELIEVE it or not, November 14 marks eight years since The Night of the Doctor first appeared on YouTube and the BBC red button service.  Paul McGann's surprise/triumphant return to the part was a shock for many, and gave proper canonicity to his incarnation, with some having failed to recognise it (for some reason or another). And it also mentioned five Big Finish companions, which was rathe...

THIS week we celebrate the Time Lord who's arguably the Eighth Doctor's most memorable foe to date. Yes, we're talking about The Eleven, that villain who retains his previous personalities when he regenerates, as they burst through at inopportune moments.  Played by Mark Bonnar, he joins us for a chat - and an exclusive introduction - and we also speak with Ken Bentley, who was involved with...

BACK in the early 2000s, Telos Publishing was granted a licence by BBC Worldwide to print authorised Doctor Who novellas. In this week's Pieces of Eighth, Becca and Kenny meet David Howe, the range's publisher and editor, and they speak about the three Eighth Doctor novellas published by the range, Riptide, Fallen Gods and Eye of the Tyger.  We speak with authors Jonathan Blum and Paul McAule...

Back in the noughties, BBC7 broadcast the old Doctor Who audio dramas Slipback, The Paradise of Death and The Ghosts of N-Space to death. This week, with speak with Martin Montague to find out how some Eighth Doctor audios from Big Finish found their way onto the station - and how the Lucie Miller series came to be.  And we've got trailers you've probably not heard before! 

YOU'D never know it from our finished episodes, but Becca and Kenny are good friends who giggle a lot. What you hear in the finished episodes isn't always exactly what gets recorded. Sometimes, just sometimes, they laugh at daft things, and you'd never know from the finished episode that anything every happened... Well, probably not... Today, we present our first outtakes, from our episode about t...

The Eighth Doctor - one of the most joyous, vibrant incarnations of the Doctor, has come face to face with the most vicious of Masters on a couple of occasions. We delve into the universe of the War Master, as Paul McGann faced off against Sir Derek Jacobi, in two Big Finish box sets, Rage of the Time Lords, and Hearts of Darkness. We meet two of the writers, David Llewelyn and Lisa McMullan, to f...

Earlier this year, your Pieces of Eighth co-host Kenny recorded an episode of another podcast he co-presents, The Power of 3, which marked 20 years of the Eighth Doctor at Big Finish. He and co-conspirator David Steel look at Storm Warning, Sword of Orion, The Stones of Venice and Minuet in Hell, as well sharing their excitement at the return of Paul McGann to the part of the Doctor.

Zygons! The Skarasen! Professor Litefoot! Victorian London! It sounds like a checklist for things that appear in some of the greatest Fourth Doctor stories, but they all come together in The Bodysnatchers, the third Eighth Doctor Adventure published by BBC Books, way back in August 1997. Kenny and Becca are joined by the author of The Bodysnatchers, Mark Morris, as they look back on the novel - in...

We continue to bring you rare material, with these trailers for The Stones of Venice, as originally broadcast on BBC Radio 7. Four short, teasers, to get listeners hooked - aren't they great?

Last week, Pieces of Eighth took a step into the Time War... and this week, we're staying there. However, we've gone from a full-cast adventure to a Short Trip, which was written by Eddie Robson, a man who's no stranger to writing Eighth Doctor full cast audios for Big Finish, and produced by Ian Atkins. Join Becca and Kenny as they find out how Susan entered the Time War - and how she got a full-...

Join Character Options' Al Dewar and Kenny Smith as they venture through the worlds of the plastic fantastic, as they look at the making of the Character Options Doctor Who figures. Their journey begins with the first 2021 wave of B&M figures, comprising the First Doctor and two Sensorites, Ian Chesterton and a pair of Voord, plus the latest releases in the History of the Daleks series, from T...

Way back in 2005, several Eighth Doctor adventures starring Paul McGann and India Fisher, which were produced by Big Finish, were broadcast on BBC Radio 7. To promote these, original trailers were produced, and here, for the first time, Pieces of Eighth have compiled the promotional pieces for that second story, Sword of Orion.

We join the Eighth Doctor on his first audio adventure set during the Time War. Andrew Smith, writer of The Sontaran Ordeal, and Dan Starkey, who played Commander Jask in the adventure, join Becca and Kenny to explain how their involvement with this Big Finish release, part of the first series of Classic Doctors, New Monsters, came about.