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PREVIOUSLY ON DOCTOR WHO...

TRIP OF A LIFETIME

Our ongoing series.

MISSING PIECES

Short, silly bits that don't fit above

THE VAULTS

The older episodes, kept only for historical interest

Frequently Asked Questions

Ahh! Help! What is this place!

Ok, calm down and take deep breaths. Better? Good. Now, this place you're at is the website for the Doctor Who Crossover Adventures.

Which is what?

Don't you know what the Crossover Adventures are? Ok, the Doctor Who Crossover Adventures are a series of audio plays that a couple of fans decided to produce and join the multitude of other fan audio Doctor Who productions that's available.

Crossovers? Is that what I think it is?

Probably. Crossovers mean stories that cross-over into other worlds. Umm, the best example is stories such as Doctor Who meets Xena: Warrior Princess or Doctor Who meets Star Trek. You know, familiar characters from one TV series that meet characters from another.

Oh? I can see how that would work in a written story, but how could you do it in audio? Do you get actors to imitate the other characters, like Xena and Captain Kirk?

Well, that's the trick. What we do is use the original sounds.

What? As in you actually hire Lucy Lawless and William Shatner to record the sounds?

Are you kidding? That is way beyond our budgets for this sort of thing (and most of them are in different countries to us anyway). Nah, we use the original sounds from their respective TV series or movies.

Huh? I don't understand

Well. Let's see if we can explain it. Think of a scene with, say, Xena and Gabrielle. They're chatting and Xena says something like "Gabrielle! I've found out that Ares is taking Callisto and her army to Thebes! We have to stop them!" to which Gabrielle replies "Just a moment! I'm writing one of my stories. You'll have to wait!"

Oh, I saw that episode!

Oh dear, we hope not - we made it up. Anyway, if it were real, I'd get that recorded onto the computer and then cut and paste the sound. Then add my own. For example, I'd record the Doctor saying "Xena! There you are, I've been looking everywhere for you. Have you got any news?" then I'd add in Xena's line "I've found out that Ares is taking Callisto and her army to Thebes! We have to stop them!" To which the Doctor could reply "Yes, quite". And this would go on for an entire episode. We mix sounds and things together to make a story and then upload it.

Isn't that illegal?

Umm. No comment.

What's the difference between the Trip Of A Lifetime series, the Missing Pieces and that crap in the Vaults?

Over the years, we've put together quite a number of productions, each one improving on the last in writing, acting and technical ability.  So much so that we felt that anybody who started with our original episodes, they wouldn't really get an idea of what we can do now.  In fact, you might even give up before you get to the good stuff.  After much agonising, we decided to separate all our mainstream plays into two sections - The Vaults, which houses all our earlier work which is fun to listen to in a "oh, look how they've improved" sense but not much other than that, and The Trip Of A Lifetime for all the better, more recent ones that we're more proud to call our own.  The Missing Pieces is the everything else category, all those little short skits and songs and silliness which don't fit in elsewhere.

What's this about an original cast?

Oh? I suppose we should go into more detail. At the beginning of the first Crossover Dimensions of the Doctors, we were introduced to this new version of the Doctor who was asked to rescue his past selves from the Master. This Doctor was unidentified (as in, he wasn't given a number) so we will refer to him as the Nth Doctor, although you could easily say he's the Ninth Doctor due to the fact the White Guardian says all his other selves were kidnapped by the Master, and that only went up the eighth.  Except he doesn't sound remotely like Christopher Eccleston).

For the first few stories, the Doctor traveled alone until he arrived on the Titanic running from Callisto (The Warrior Goddess). Whilst there, he met a girl called Astra who also travels about time and space in a trans-dimensional telephone box called the Telstra, shaped like a modern Australian telephone box. She immediately asked the Doctor to join him on his travels and have been traveling together ever since.  

More recently, in Toil & Trouble Astra's Computer from Pendor (who was last seen in a cameo in Illusia) integrated herself into the TARDIS's memory banks.  She too will be traveling along with the Doctor and Astra.  

Even more recently we've introduced yet another addition to the TARDIS crew - Frobisher the Whifferdill (who had previously appeared in the DWM comic series as well as a few Big Finish and BBC Books adventures) will return in Faithful Unto Death. 

And to confuse matters further, due to some problems with health on the behalf of Coren, Astra has been temporarily written out of the series and her part has been replaced with that of Destina, a trainee Time Lady of Gallifrey who will play a major part in the story arc that will frame Season Three.  She will be introduced in A Cause For Carolling.

And if that wasn't enough, after the potential he showed in his appearance in Faithful Unto Death, we plan to have the Grimm Reaper himself play a key role on the entirety of Season 3, only played by a real person and not Christopher Lee as before.  The new Death's debut is in A Time Lord In Prince Henry's Court.

So, who plays Death, Destina, Frobisher, Astra, the Doctor and the Computer?

Well, the Doctor is played by Aron Toman, a student in Victoria, Australia. He's the one that created the idea of the Crossover Adventures and handles most of the scripting and post production. Astra is played by Corén Idle, from Washington State in USA and she keeps Aron in check when the scripts go too weird and adds ideas and things.  She also wrote The Woodsboro Murders.  Frobisher is played by Corey Klemow, who does rather the same thing as Corén.  The actress for Destina is Jennifer Alyx, a voice actress from the USA (is everyone from there these days?).   With Christopher Lee being unavailable (some Lord Of The Rings film or something) our version of Death will be played by Andy McQuade, experienced stage actor from the UK.  The Computer is played by Jane Karr, and the less said about her the better ;-)

So why do you have pictures of Ewan McGregor, Melissa Joan Hart, Alyssa Milano, etc as your cast members?  Do you think you look like them or something?

Goodness me, no, sadly we don't possess quite the dashing good looks as the likes of Alyssa Milano or Ewan McGregor.  However, the good thing about audio drama is that it doesn't matter what you look like, since you only get to hear what we're doing anyway, so we figured we may as well push our fantasies and give ourselves famous actors we like to imagine our characters look like.  Though just to emphasize, we are in no way affiliated with Ewan McGregor, Melissa Joan Hart, Alyssa Milano or anyone we have representing our regular characters, and they do not appear in our plays.  Unless we happen to do a Charmed crossover one day...

Isn't that a bit cowardly?  Hiding behind the faces of others, why not show your true faces?

Well why should we?  This isn't a site to show off us as people, it's showing off the characters and the way we portray them, so why should our real appearance be involved in that?  We're not hiding behind pseudonyms, we're listed as our own official names and for many of us there are other places where you can find out more about us personally.  Really, we don't see using these images any different than BBCi using a depressed vampire instead of Richard E Grant or Big Finish using pictures of the Doctors that now look nothing like who they have in their recording studios.  And frankly, anybody that concerned about this issue really needs to get their perspectives in order.

I just heard some of these - they sound cool! How long does it take you to finish an episode?

This usually varies between story to story. Dimensions of the Doctors - Part 1 was finished in an afternoon, yet Illusia took up to about 3 months to finish. It really depends on the nature of the episode - Dimensions of the Doctors Part 1 only had the Doctor and sounds for Susan and the Dalek. Illusia involved lots of singing, sound effects and general difficulties, so naturally took longer.  In recent times, as our abilities to do high quality productions increase, so does the time it takes to complete an episode, especially as we've made the move to using original music instead of stock music, which adds on to the time.

Why does it take so long to get your next episode out?

Its a combination of lack of time and increasing complexities of stories.  Where in the past episodes were written and produced on the spur of the moment (and the quality shows), now we put a lot more thought into our work.  Scripts have to be written, then edited, after which we have to audition for and cast our actors, give them time to record their lines, ask for retakes, go through the post-production process and then get original music composed.  All of this takes time, especially when we all live busy lives and only manage to work on these when we have a free moment.  We wish we could get these episodes out quicker (and we're always open to offers to help), but we are doing the best we can with what we've got.

Hey, I've got a neat suggestion for a Crossover!  Why don't you do a Spiderman/Dangermouse/Scooby Doo crossover?

While they are, erm, nice ideas, the problem with doing most crossovers is the need to have access to the relevant sounds.  After all, lets face it, if we can't get sound-bytes for a story there's no way we can record it.  If we can get them, then we might consider suggestions like that.  However, it would also depend on having enough knowledge of the series to write it, have a good reason to cross them with our TARDIS team, etc.  Of course, if you're desperate to hear your favourite characters in a crossover, you could submit your own script to us for a crossover and we could discuss it (just be sure to thoroughly read the Writer's Guidelines first).

This sounds like fun! Can I join in?

Why not? That's how Coren got involved. Of course, it rather depends on how you want to help.  We're always looking for people who are able to lend their voices to play a role, so if you'd like to audition have a look at our Auditions Page to see what we have available.  If you'd like to take the plunge and write a Crossover for yourself, well have a peak at the Writer's Guidelines.  We're also interested in those who can do post production and music composition.  Still have more ways in which you could help?   Then e-mail away to timelord23@hotmail.com

Oh. Well, what about…

Uh-uh! No more questions for this FAQ. If there's any questions on here that you want answered, write to timelord23@hotmail.com and we'll be glad to answer you.

DISCLAIMER

Most of the images and sounds on this Website were found in many places around the Internet, too many to mention.  If anyone finds something of theirs here and objects to us using it, let us know and we will remove it immediately.  Although Doctor Who and the TARDIS are owned by the BBC and we don't intend any copyright infringements, please don't use these Crossovers on other Websites or anything else without out permission.  We're just having fun :-)