Already established as one of the UK’s most popular novelists, and an exciting voice in the world of Doctor Who prose, Jenny T Colgan made her audio début earlier this year with episodes of Short Trips and The Diary of River Song. But her first venture into the medium was a script for the Tenth Doctor and Donna: Time Reaver.
“We’d wanted to involve her at Big Finish for some time,” recalls David Richardson, the story’s producer, “and this was an opportunity to bring her in. She seemed the perfect match for a Tenth Doctor and Donna story.”
Script editor Matt Fitton provided Jenny with “quite a blunt style sheet”, she says, which she found “very helpful” in transitioning to audio. “Matt was brilliantly helpful,” Jenny adds. “He reminded me that there are no limits. The two massive advantages are that you have no budget [restrictions], practically, beyond how many people you can use, and also that the actors are going to make anything you type sound about a hundred times better. The challenge is to stop people describing stuff to one another, but that’s writing in general.”