Looks like River Song is coming back to Doctor Who in 2016 – but this time, she’s teaming up with a different Doctor.


A new radio drama from Big Finish will see Alex Kingston’s time-travelling archaeologist team up with Paul McGann’s Eighth Doctor (as well as his companions, played by Hattie Morahan and Nicola Walker) in Doctor Who: Doom Coalition 2 – but there’s a complication.

You see, the Time Lord’s a few years away from meeting River for the first time in his Tenth incarnation (as seen in TV episode Silence in the Library back in 2008), so she must try to help her oblivious husband without him realising it – or even seeing her. We can’t help but imagine there’s going to be some problems…

“The idea of River meeting previous Doctors was actually proposed by Steven Moffat,” says producer David Richardson, “and it’s just irresistible, isn’t it? Alex embraced the idea of returning to the role, and so she will be starring in no less than two box sets next year. And yes, we are still pinching ourselves!”

River will later return for a second Big Finish drama in 2016 called The Diary of River Song, which will once again see her join with McGann’s Doctor (so much for keeping her distance, eh?) as she crosses space and time to seek the secretive rulers of the universe. Bet she’ll be sending lovely postcards to the Eleventh Doctor – and maybe we’ll get more insight into this earlier version of her character before her final death in 2013’s The Name of the Doctor.

And Kingston’s not the only NuWho actor returning for future radio adventures, with Ian McNeice (who played Winston Churchill in several episodes of the new series) also making a comeback for Doctor Who: The Churchill years.

“Ian has played Churchill in just four episode on TV, and yet it feels like it was many more,” says executive producer Nicholas Briggs, who also voices the Daleks and Cybermen in the TV series. “It was such a brilliant, definitive performance, and how wonderful that we will be continuing Churchill’s adventures with the Doctor on audio.”

These adventures will take the form of Churchill’s memoirs, as the former Prime Minister recounts various (offscreen) adventures with the Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh incarnations of the Doctor including “battling alien incursions, metamorphosing creatures… and a Dalek!”

The drama will also apparently cross over with 2010 special A Christmas Carol, with the younger version of Michael Gambon’s Kazran Sardick (again played by Danny Horn) making an appearance.

And if that wasn’t enough (to be honest, we’re feeling a bit woozy with it all), another drama will face four classic Doctors against NuWho’s best monsters. So it’ll be Peter Davison against the Weeping Angels, Colin Baker taking on the Judoon, Sylvester McCoy trying his luck with the Sycorax and Paul McGann (again) facing the newer version of the Sontarans on the edge of the Time War. We can’t wait to see how they fit all this into the Doctor’s personal timeline…

“It’s the ultimate mash-up,” summed up executive producer Jason Haigh-Ellery, “and we have some great scripts lined up for these landmark stories. There is no doubt that 2016 is going to be a brilliant year for Big Finish!”


All four boxsets will be released across 2016, and are available to pre-order today from the Big Finish website