Discovered the radio dramas via an Audible trial and this year's Big Finish freebie.
Haven't jumped in to listen yet, but this is my starter collection. I wasn't sure where to start, so I used the audible credits to go for collections and maximize the number of stories I could get.
Doctor Who - The Lost Stories - The Fourth Doctor Box Set
Contains:
The Foe from the Future - Written by Robert Banks Stewart, adapted by John Dorney. The Grange is haunted, so they say. This stately home in the depths of Devon has been the site of many an apparition. And now people are turning up dead. The ghosts are wild in the forest. But the Doctor doesn't believe in ghosts.
The Valley of Death - Written by Philip Hinchcliffe, adapted by Jonathan Morris. A century after his great-grandfather, Cornelius, vanished in the Amazon rainforest, Edward Perkins is journeying to the depths of the jungle to find out what became of his ancestor's lost expedition. Intrigued by what appears to be a description of a crashed spacecraft in the diaries of that first voyage, the Doctor and Leela join him on his quest. But when their plane runs into trouble and ends up crash-landing, everyone gets more than they bargained for.
Doctor Who: 10th Doctor Tales: 10th Doctor Audio Originals
Contains:
Dead Air - Hot on the heels of a creature that exists through sound, the Doctor lands on a pirate radio station boat in the late 1960s. The creature has already killed some of the DJs, and the Doctor befriends the survivors. But then the lights go out, and a desperate race for survival begins. Who can the Doctor trust in the dark?
Pest Control - The TARDIS is lost in battle on a distant planet. When the Doctor sets off in pursuit, Donna is left behind, and finds herself accepting a commission in the Pioneer Corps. Something is transforming soldiers into monstrous beetles, and she could be the next victim.
The Day of the Troll - Karl Baring, the owner of research facility The Grange, has been snatched away in the middle of the night. His sister Katy was with him when he vanished, but is now in catatonic shock - so it is up to the Doctor, with the help of the scientists at The Grange, to investigate. What is lurking under the old bridge, and why is it preying on people? The Doctor must find out, before it strikes again....
The Forever Trap - When the TARDIS is invaded by a holographic marketing scam, the Doctor and Donna find themselves trapped on the Edifice, a purpose-built complex of luxury apartments in space. Their new environs leave much to be desired: millions of beings from across the Universe have been gathered to live side by side in similar apartments.
[Fake Edit: The description for this one makes it sound like the 7th Doctor story
Paradise Towers.]
The Last Voyage - The TARDIS materialises on board the maiden voyage of a pioneering space cruiser, travelling from Earth to the planet Eternity. The Doctor has just started exploring the huge, hi-tech Interstitial Transposition Vehicle when there is a loud bang, a massive jolt, and a flash of light. Shortly afterwards, he discovers that nearly all the passengers and crew have disappeared. Unless the Doctor and flight attendant Sugar MacAuley can take control and steer the ship, they could crash-land or keep slipping through space forever. And as if that wasn't enough, something awful awaits them on Eternity.
The Nemonite Invasion - The Doctor and Donna are rescued and taken to a secret command centre in the Dover cliffs. It's May 1940, and Vice-Admiral Ramsey is about to finalise one of the most daring plans of the Second World War: Operation Dynamo. But something else has got inside the War Tunnels, a parasitic Nemonite from the crashed sphere. Its aim is to possess all humans and spawn millions of young.
The Rising Night - The TARDIS arrives in the 18th-century village of Thornton Rising in the Yorkshire Moors - a village cut off from the world by an all-consuming darkness, where the sun has not risen for three weeks. Farm animals have been attacked, people have gone missing, and strange lights have been seen in the sky.
Doctor Who: Eleventh Doctor Tales: Eleventh Doctor Audio Originals
Contains:
Blackout - November 9th, 1965. New York City is plunged into darkness, a taxi driver has bad dreams, and an invisible spacecraft hovers ominously above the skyline. As an extra-terrestrial disease sweeps the populace, Amy and Rory must sabotage the citys water supply to slow the spread of infection, and a dying Doctor holds another mans life in his hands. With the death toll rising, and his companions stalked through the streets by alien businessmen, the Doctor is forced to make a terrible decision. How far must he go to save his friends?
Darkstar Academy - When the TARDIS is buffeted by "time slippage", the Doctor experiences a terrible vision of the end of everything. Tracking the source of the disruption, he takes Rory and Amy to what appears to be an English public school in the 1950s. But the friends discover that there are some very unusual things about Darkstar Academy.
Day of the Cockroach - The TARDIS materialises in a pitch-dark tunnel, where the Doctor, Amy, and Rory stumble on the dead body of a soldier. Questioned by his superior officer, Colonel Bowe, they learn that they're inside a British nuclear bunker, in the middle of an atomic war - in 1982. Amy and Rory weren't even born then, but they know the bomb didn't drop that year, and so does the Doctor. The friends also know they had nothing to do with the death of Sergeant Trott - so who, or what, was the killer? And why does the Doctor's psychic paper not work on the Colonel?
Eye of the Jungle - The Amazon rainforest, 1827. The Doctor, Amy and Rory arrive in the jungle near a hurriedly abandoned campsite, where they are surrounded by hungry black caiman - huge lizards. Only the arrival of a man with a rifle sees off the giant beasts. Oliver Blazington has come to the forest to bag big game, and his companion Garrett is a naturalist, collecting exotic creatures for London Zoo. But the Doctor soon discovers that another very different hunter is stalking the Amazon. Animals and people have been disappearing without trace, and local villagers speak darkly of The Eye of the Jungle. Amy senses that the all-seeing Eye is watching them - but she and Rory are powerless to intervene when it sets its sights on the Doctor...
Sleepers in the Dust - The TARDIS touches down on Nadurniss, a planet under quarantine. A joint Nadurni/human mission has recently landed on the planet to survey it for possible re-colonisation. Two millennia have passed since the Nadurni Empire fell at the end of the Prokarian War, and Nadurniss seems to be a lifeless, barren world - but a mysterious illness is infecting the Nadurni, and now the whole team is in danger.
Snake Bite - Doctor Elehri Mussurana has spent a lifetime on her work. She's guarded her pet project close to her chest, letting only one person share her secret - her husband and lab partner Ernst Wharner. As their experiment reaches its final, glorious fruition, they watch in awe as sparks fly in a sealed chamber and specks of sapphire light begin to join together into a shining haze. A wormhole in time and space is being created....
The Art of Death - But its no ordinary art gallery, because this one has the best view of the most impossible wonder of the universe - the Paradox. Tour parties are eager to see this stunning, hypnotic portion of sky thats beyond description, and its Penelopes job to stop people staring up at it for too long. For the Paradoxs beauty drives people mad. The Doctor, Amy and Rory are about to discover that the Paradox also contains a giant and frightening creature with a taste for death
The Empty House - Thrown off course by a howling storm, the TARDIS lands in a bleak, desolate stretch of countryside. The Doctor deduces that it has arrived in Hampshire in the 1920s and, sniffing the air, he smells a distinct odour of sulphur - indicating that a spaceship has crashed in the area. While Rory goes to fetch an umbrella, Amy and the Doctor brave the rain to find the stricken craft. It is huge, shiny, silvery-blue - and completely empty. A set of footprints leads to a cosy-looking, old-fashioned cottage: but the house, too, is deserted. However, the Doctor and Amy can distinctly hear people talking - and one of the voices sounds like Rory's.
The Gemini Contagion - The ice-planet Vinsk, in the year 2112. The all-new anti-viral hand wash, Gemini, has been laced with Meme-Spawn: a sentient micro-organism which makes the user fluent in every language in the universe. However, manufacturer Zalnex made one crucial mistake. They didnt test Gemini on humans, who are seized by the violent urge to communicate but speak every language all at once - with a manic, garbled shriek - and pass on the virus by touch.
The Hounds of Artemis - The Doctor and Amy have come to Smyrna in 1929 to investigate a mystery. The Doctor knows that something very bad happened there: something that caused a lot of people to die and an entire, magnificent Temple to be found and then immediately lost again. But he doesn't know what is picking off the archaeologists one by one, or how it is connected to the terrifying howling in the night. And as he and Amy get closer to the terrible truth behind an ancient evil, he begins to wish he'd never found out.
The Jade Pyramid - Intercepting a distress call, the TARDIS is drawn to a Shinto shrine in medieval Japan, where the Doctor and Amy are met by village elder Shijô Sada. He explains that the ogre-like mannequins surrounding the holy site are harmless guardians, called Otoroshi.
The Nu-Humans - The Doctor, Amy, and Rory are awe-struck by their first sight of Hope Eternal, a super-earth bigger than Earth itself with heavy gravity, volcanoes, and a crust loaded with mineral deposits. But their wonder is cut short when they discover a body dumped on the ground - a huge figure with extraordinarily long arms covered in thick, purple scales. Yet the corpse is not alien: he's human, albeit unlike any human Amy and Rory have ever seen.
The Ring of Steel - When the TARDIS lands on Orkney in the near future, the Doctor and Amy arrive to find a large demonstration in progress over the construction of new electricity pylons. The Doctor tries to break things up peacefully but suddenly the road splits open without warning and swallows police, security guards, and protestors alike.
The Runaway Train - The Doctor and Amy have come to Smyrna in 1929 to investigate a mystery. The Doctor knows that something very bad happened there: something that caused a lot of people to die and an entire, magnificent Temple to be found and then immediately lost again. But he doesn't know what is picking off the archaeologists one by one, or how it is connected to the terrifying howling in the night. And as he and Amy get closer to the terrible truth behind an ancient evil, he begins to wish he'd never found out.
Those are the ones I snagged from Audible, and then there is the
Big Finish Christmas freebie:
Flip-Flop - Christmas Eve in the year 3060, and the planet Puxatornee is home to a prosperous human colony. A spacecraft has arrived in orbit carrying the Slithergees, a race of obsequious alien slugs. Their home world has been destroyed, and they are humbly requesting permission to settle on the first moon. And if they don't get permission, then they are humbly threatening to declare all-out war.
Christmas Eve in the year 3090, and the planet Puxatornee has changed beyond all recognition. The Doctor and Mel arrive on a completely unrelated mission to defeat a race of terrible monsters and soon discover that something rather confusing has been happening to history.
So, with all of that:
1) Where should I start?
2) Anything really good that I missed?
Other titles that I've had my eye on (based on summaries) are:
Doctor Who: Engines of War
and
Doctor Who - UNIT Dominion
Either of those two worth it?
