Doctor Who is normally associated with TV drama (with the possible exception of the excellent Big Finish Series.) However BBC have played episodes on radio – some adapted from existing TV episodes, and these four stories commissioned for radio.

These stories were recorded at different times, generally to fill a gap in programming and keep Doctor Who in the public eye.

Doctor Who and The Pescatons was broadcast in 1976, and features Tom Baker and Sarah Jane. It was very much aimed at children, and the two-part story rather unusually features first-person narration from the Doctors point of view. Subsequent re-releases included interviews with Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane) about her memories of the recording.

Then in 1985, Doctor Who was in hiatus during the Colin Baker Era. Slipback was released on BBC4 . I must confess to having a soft spot for this unpopular story, having first discovered it as a kid. To be honest, had I first discovered Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, I would have been less enamoured with the “homage”… It’s a six part story (episodes were a tiny 10 minutes!) with the Doctor and Peri investigating unauthorised time travel experiments on a spaceship where people are mysteriously disappearing.

After the TV series was cancelled, Jon Pertwee returned for The Paradise of Death (1993) and the Ghosts of N-Space (1996), again featuring Sarah Jane as well as the Brigadier.

The Paradise of Death sees Pertwee’s Doctor investigating a gruesome murder at a theme park, only to uncover an alien conspiracy using “Experienced Reality” to control humans and ultimately seeking to destroy the earth.

The Ghosts of N-Space has the Doctor and Sarah Jane again investigating a mystery – this time the apparent haunting of a castello in Sicily. Soon the Doctor is caught up in a pan-dimensional mystery that takes him back and forward in time trying to prevent Earth from being overrun by beings from N-Space.

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