I know very little about the whole history of Doctor Who on radio but have been enjoying the Eighth Doctor Big Finish audios a lot. Big Finish is particularly interesting in the case of the older Doctors because those actors have a chance to modify their performances. We could even explore the dubious canonical value of Richard E Grant.

And in general, how well do you think the programme suits radio?

McCoy gives a better performance than on TV. However it's a fact that BF usually get him to do upto seven takes for his lines before they are "derivable"

Colin Baker's my favourite BF Doctor by a long stretch. You really get the 6th Doctor we should have gotten in TV, and its lovely to see the likes of Peri and Mel fleshed out much more as companions. The 'lost stories' season was superb because we actually got to hear the season 23 we were supposed to get before the 18 month hiatus (with all the episodes binned and replaced with Trial of a Timelord).

I enjoy Paul McGann's stories too and I particularly enjoyed his adventures with Lucie Miller and his re-union with Susan. The only down-side with McGann is that I often find there are a lot of loose end.

I enjoy Peter and (now) Tom too but I've never really been able to get into the 7th Doctor adventures. If I'm honest, I think the audio format really shows the limit of McCoy and Aldred's acting abilities. Sorry, not trying to start a row, I promise. Just a point of view.

Agreed about CB, he's got a great voice for audio. Although he gets a lot of praise I personally am not too keen on PM's voice.

I think the general consensus is Colin Baker is consistently the best.

I like Paul McGann too - McCoy can be a bit over enunciated and OTT for me sometimes

Colin Baker is very good in terms of delivery. In "The Sirens of Time" the first BFA story, Davison and McCoy were very rough in their performances, but Baker was easily the best, and hasn't seems to slow down very much.

Paul McGann's voice is easily the best of any Doctor. I think I could listen to him dramatically read the phone book if possible.

Oooh, I love his voice! Very seductive.

So is it fair to say that radio gave CB and PM another chance to show what they could do with the role?

Absolutely fair - in CB's case, in particular, I believe this was the Doctor he was always intending to play, eventually.

They're all good but Colin Baker and Paul McGann the most though.

I would like to think so.

Performance wise, I think Colin is the best, but I really like Paul as well. Peter is ok and I can't get into Sylvester, though in some stories I thought he did really well.

So the audios provide a second chance for unsuccessful doctors but what about the ones that didn't have a problem first time round? Do they expand on their performances at all or just repeat what they did on TV?

I find it ironic that CB is considered most successful on audio as his doctor was criticised for not having charm- and on radio, charm is pretty much all you've got. TV can get away with it because you have distracting visuals but on audio, all you've got is yourself.

well I think Colin Baker was 'recently' the best doctor as opposed to normally being voted the worst (by people who are also aware of the audios obviously).

EDIT: actually that isn't true,I just checked - he was voted the best in audio (in fact he got more votes than the rest combined)

You're right. What happened is, on tv his Doctor didn't get the time to develop into a more charming Doctor, but in audio he did get that chance and took it. Beside that, Colin himself is a very charming person and a fantastic performer. Without all the distractions of visuals, his performance shines even more. I say 'even more', because his performance on Tv was top notch too. People only confused his performance with the character he was portraying. He did it a little too well.