BBV

BBV is a video and audio production company specialising in science fiction drama, known for its links with the British science fiction television series Doctor Who (founder Bill Baggs is a fan, and BBV productions often feature characters and/or actors from the series). The name of the company is short for Bill & Ben Video, "Ben" being the nickname of Bill Baggs's wife, Helen.

Audio

After a few earlier experiments, BBV began regularly releasing audio dramas on CD in 1998, under the umbrella title Audio Adventures in Time & Space. The mainstay of the CD line to begin with was a series starring Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred (the Doctor/companion team from the 1987, 1988 and 1989 seasons of Doctor Who) as a pair of wanderers in time and space named "The Professor" (McCoy) and "Ace" (Aldred) who so closely resembled the characters McCoy and Aldred had played on Doctor Who - even addressing each other by the same nicknames - that the BBC stepped in and their seventh outing, Ghosts, consequently introduced a number of changes to the characters that made the resemblance somewhat less close, the main one being that the adventures now featured "The Dominie" (McCoy) and "Alice" (Aldred).

Related Topics:
1998 - Sylvester McCoy - Sophie Aldred

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The first of the Audio Adventures in Time & Space not to feature the McCoy/Aldred double act was Cyber-Hunt, the first BBV production to feature the Cyberons. A further Who-ish note was added by the introduction of an amnesic space traveller (who one of the other characters dubs "Fred" after her pet goldfish) played by Nicholas Briggs, who some years earlier had played the Doctor in the Audio Visuals series of unlicensed fan audios.

Related Topics:
Goldfish - Nicholas Briggs - Audio Visuals

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More recently, BBV have moved away from characters-who-might-be-the-Doctor (a field that, in any case, lost some of its appeal for fan audiences once Big Finish Productions began producing official licensed Doctor Who audio dramas featuring characters who were definitely the Doctor) and, following the success of the Auton trilogy, focussed more on stand-alone dramas featuring various Doctor Who alien races, licensed directly from the writers who created them. For some of those writers, the BBV audios have offered a chance to revisit their creations: for instance, the range includes a story by Pip & Jane Baker explaining what happened to the Rani (last seen in Doctor Who being abducted by a group of aliens that, conveniently, were also created by Pip & Jane Baker), and a series of stories by Lawrence Miles about his history-spanning terrorist organisation Faction Paradox.

Related Topics:
Big Finish Productions - Rani - Faction Paradox

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