My personal favourite First Doctor story takes us to a rather unique Big Finish series that in actuality has a stronger tie-in with Classic Who than any other audio series. The Lost Stories is a series of audio adaptations of scripts that were considered for production in Classic Who before ultimately being shelved for various reasons. I don’t exactly view The Lost Stories as canon so to speak, but more of a glimpse into an alternate history of what could’ve been had things worked out differently. Which brings us to their special edition of the First Doctor’s lost stories and the main one of this box set being the near four-hour epic Farewell Great Macedon, which was a story originally planned for the first season so to experience this story brought to life feels like stumbling across ancient, buried treasure.

The story sees the Doctor, Susan, Ian & Barbara land in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon as they’re just in time to meet Alexander the Great as he prepares to enter the city of Babylon. But as they grow to become close friends with Alexander over time, Barbara begins to despair at her foreknowledge of events; for Alexander visited Babylon twice in his life and if this were his second visit then it would mean only one thing, Alexander the Great was about to die.

This was scripted by Moris Farhi, one of only two written contributions he made to Doctor Who and neither of which was used in the show. He started off by being given a test script to write, a single part episode called The Fragile Yellow Arc of Fragrance, the second story of the box set. After that he was commissioned to write Farewell Great Macedon, according to his book it was never approved as the show was moving more towards science fiction than historical stories. Which seems a bit of an odd reason as Season 1 had a perfect balance between historical and sci-fi stories. If you ask me, I think the reason they rejected it is because producing it probably would’ve bankrupted the BBC! Farewell Great Macedon is basically Doctor Who’s version of a biblical epic, the scale and scope of this is incredible going by the descriptions from the narration, which is one of the best narrated works I’ve heard in any Big Finish narrated audio. A dual effort from William Russell and Carole Ann Ford in their first work together since The Dalek Invasion of Earth, both of them do a wonderful job seamlessly switching roles in narrating and voicing the various characters while making each character stand out and be easily distinguished. Accompanying them is one of Big Finish’s main writers and occasional actor John Dorney who delivers an outstanding performance as Alexander the Great. The writing, the narration and Dorney’s performance all lend beautifully to capturing the tragedy of Alexander the Great’s final days, or at least in a heavily romanticised way. I can’t claim to know much about Alexander’s life and granted this was written in the early 60s so I think it’s safe to say that there are probably a lot of inaccuracies or at least things that aren’t considered true today as they may have been at the time it was written.

The real heart of this story comes from our leads growing attached to a huge historical figure and futilely struggling against the weight of history as they contemplate trying to save the life of their newfound friend. Which is delivered beautifully in the final part which nearly brought me to tears.

It’s such a shame that this never made it to TV, whatever the reason you might believe for its rejection. There’re about three six-part stories in Season 1 I’d have swapped for this in a heartbeat. Had this been made it would hands-down have been William Hartnell’s best outing as the Doctor. If you’re a fan of the First Doctor, then this is a must listen.