Fifth Doctor audio adventures

[susanreads]

BBC Radio 4 Extra (formerly BBC Radio 7), in their Seventh Dimension slot, are running some Big Finish audio adventures of the Fifth Doctor. The continuity announcements describe them as new, which seems unlikely (if the Nick Briggs doing them is the Nick Briggs, how far in advance did he record the continuity links?). They're online, not region-locked as far as I know, and available for 7 days after broadcast. They started on Monday, so you have three days left to catch the first episode.

The first four-part story is Cobwebs, with Five, Tegan, Turlough, Nyssa and a robot that sounds to me as if it's channeling C3PO. They've just started another story, which I'm recording off Freeview to listen to after the imminent Eleven two-parter. index for the episodes available online

Comments

[tree_and_leaf]

New to radio, perhaps?

[sir_guinglain]

'New to radio' is indeed what's meant, I'm sure. While these stories have been commercially available for a little while, they haven't been broadcast before.

I'm not sure when Nick records his links other than in-between the demands of the ring modulator...

[evilawyer]

Is there some trick to playing these? Nothing happens when I get to the BBC iPlayer window. (To be fair, I am a techno-Luddite and impatient with gadgets.)

[matgb]

It's possible they're not available outside the UK for legal/technical reasons, apparently it's possible to proxy around that but I've never needed to find out how.

Or it may be your computer hates you, no idea ;-)

[evilawyer]

Neither possibility would surprise me one bit.

[brewsternorth]

The radio iPlayer should be internationally available; I've certainly been able to listen to assorted radio-plays before now on a streaming basis, including some of the previous adventures on The Channel Formerly Known As BBC7. Suspect it's computer difficulties.

[evilawyer]

Could also be the wireless connection wasn't up to snuff. Or it could be that technology hates me as much as I hate it. 21st Century. Pah!

[susanreads]

If you get the iPlayer popup window, does it have a Play button? It should autoplay, at which point it turns into a Pause button, but I often find there's a noticeable delay before it starts. It might depend on the quality of your internet connection or how busy the site is.

If there's text saying "Low bandwidth version", it's actually a link to the low bandwidth version; the default is what they call Normal version, which probably requires broadband. My broadband sometimes goes up and down like a yoyo but without the predictability, and I find the low bandwidth version is less likely to suddenly stop and fail to reconnect.

[evilawyer]

I got the popup window, but no Play button as far as I could see. No autoplay, either, and I waited quite a long while. Well, quite a long while for me, at any rate. Still, I think it was enough time for something to happen.

I was indeed on a wireless connection, and I did see the low bandwidth link and clicked on it. Also with the "big nothing". I'll give it another shot when next I've got my laptop at my office so I can hook it into the cable. Desktops for work, laptops for work with occasional fun is my general rule of thumb, and it's avoided all but one crippling computer meltdown.