Continuity can be a useful tool.

While Doctor Who seemed to have taken over the world in its TV version in 2006, Big Finish were being more-or-less ignored, but they were still producing regular Doctor Who audio stories, and some of them were very, very good indeed.

In particular, Nev Fountain’s The Kingmaker managed to do the kind of time travel story that had never been done before, or indeed since, in Doctor Who.

Meanwhile, the people at Big Finish had been busy. They’d got the license to create new Doctor Who audio adventures, initially featuring the fifth, sixth and seventh Doctors, and had started with a range that was more-or-less straightforward pastiche of the TV show, although generally with a standard of writing that was much higher than it had been during the time those Doctors were on the TV.

Colin Baker, in particular, had been very well served by his first few stories.