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.

Video

BBV's first production, in 1991, was Summoned by Shadows, co-produced with the BBC Film Club. Partly as a homage to Doctor Who, of which Baggs was a fan, and partly in a pragmatic attempt to take advantage of a pre-existing audience, Summoned by Shadows was a Who-style tale of strange doings on a distant planet featuring Colin Baker as the nameless protagonist (listed in the credits as "The Stranger"). Nicola Bryant co-starred as "Miss Brown". The adventures of The Stranger ran to six videos (and two audio dramas, the second, confusingly, remade as the sixth video). (For more information, see The Stranger (video series).)

Related Topics:
1991 - BBC Film Club - Colin Baker - Nicola Bryant - The Stranger (video series)

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BBV's next effort was The AirZone Solution?, an ecologically-themed thriller about a near future conspiracy. Released in 1993, Doctor Who's thirtieth anniversary year, it featured four ex-Doctors. Baker and Bryant starred. Successor Sylvester McCoy and predecessors Peter Davison and Jon Pertwee also appeared as members of a small group joined against a sinister conspiracy.

Related Topics:
1993 - Sylvester McCoy - Peter Davison - Jon Pertwee

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The Zero Imperative (1994) marked a new departure for BBV. Although stuffed to the gills with ex-Doctor Who guest stars, one of them was actually playing the same character: the story was built around Caroline John's Dr Elizabeth Shaw, the Doctor's companion in the seventh season of Doctor Who, now depicted as an investigator for PROBE (the "Preternatural Research Bureau"). The PROBE series ran for an additional three stories; all four were written by Mark Gatiss, who later found more widespread fame as a member of the League of Gentlemen. The potentially-confusing mixture of Caroline John reprising her Doctor Who role with other recognisable Who stars playing different characters worked against the series, as did the way that Liz Shaw often seemed to be herself a different character from the Doctor Who original. (The latter problem may have been exacerbated by the fact that, although BBV had obtained permission to use Liz Shaw, they had no rights relating to Doctor Who itself - which meant that no explicit reference could be made to any other aspect of Doctor Who, including the events of the stories in which Liz had appeared.)

Related Topics:
1994 - Caroline John - Elizabeth Shaw - Mark Gatiss - The League of Gentlemen

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BBV's next series was a spin-off from two Doctor Who stories in the 1970s in which the Doctor assisted the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce (UNIT) in defeating the Autons, robotic invaders sent to conquer Earth on behalf of the alien Nestenes. The trilogy, beginning with Auton in 1997, recounted UNIT's battle against another Auton invasion, this time without the Doctor's aid (since BBV had obtained permission to use UNIT and the Autons, but permission to use the Doctor himself was as always unavailable). Auton was also the first BBV production to have no Doctor Who guest stars at all, after Nicholas Courtney (who would have reprised his Doctor Who role as UNIT commander Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart) was forced by ill health to withdraw from the project. With Courtney out, the focus of the series was the original character of Lockwood, an enigmatic UNIT agent played by Michael Wade.

Related Topics:
United Nations Intelligence Taskforce - Auton - 1997 - Nicholas Courtney - Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart - Michael Wade

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Other BBV video productions include Cyberon (featuring a race of alien cyborgs almost but not quite entirely unlike the Cybermen) and "Do you Have a Licence to Save this Planet?" (a Doctor Who parody featuring Sylvester McCoy as the Chiropodist, meaning Foot Doctor).

Related Topics:
Cyborg - Cybermen - Sylvester McCoy

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