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BBV is a video and audio production company specialising in Science Fiction drama, known for its links with the British Science Fiction Television series '' Doctor Who '' (founder Bill Baggs is a fan, and BBV productions often feature characters and/or actors from the series). The name of the company is short for '''Bill & Ben Video''', "Ben" being the nickname of Bill Baggs's wife, Helen. VIDEO BBV's first production, in 1991 , was ''Summoned by Shadows'', co-produced with the BBC Film Club . Partly as a homage to ''Doctor Who'', of which Baggs was a fan, and partly in a pragmatic attempt to take advantage of a pre-existing audience, ''Summoned by Shadows'' was a ''Who''-style tale of strange doings on a distant planet featuring Colin Baker as the nameless protagonist (listed in the credits as "The Stranger"). Nicola Bryant co-starred as "Miss Brown". The adventures of The Stranger ran to six videos (and two audio dramas, the second, confusingly, remade as the sixth video). (For more information, see The Stranger (video Series) .) BBV's next effort was '' The AirZone Solution? '', an ecologically-themed thriller about a near future conspiracy. Released in 1993 , ''Doctor Who'' ''The Zero Imperative'' ('s Dr Elizabeth Shaw , the Doctor's companion in the seventh season of ''Doctor Who'', now depicted as an investigator for PROBE (the "Preternatural Research Bureau"). The PROBE series ran for an additional three stories; all four were written by Mark Gatiss , who later found more widespread fame as a member of The League Of Gentlemen . The potentially-confusing mixture of Caroline John reprising her ''Doctor Who'' role with other recognisable ''Who'' stars playing different characters worked against the series, as did the way that Liz Shaw often seemed to be herself a different character from the ''Doctor Who'' original. (The latter problem may have been exacerbated by the fact that, although BBV had obtained permission to use Liz Shaw, they had no rights relating to ''Doctor Who'' itself - which meant that no explicit reference could be made to any other aspect of ''Doctor Who'', including the events of the stories in which Liz had appeared.) BBV's next series was a spin-off from two ''Doctor Who'' stories in the 1970s in which the Doctor assisted the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce (UNIT) in defeating the Auton s, robotic invaders sent to conquer Earth on behalf of the alien Nestenes. The trilogy, beginning with ''Auton'' in 1997 , recounted UNIT's battle against another Auton invasion, this time without the Doctor's aid (since BBV had obtained permission to use UNIT and the Autons, but permission to use the Doctor himself was as always unavailable). ''Auton'' was also the first BBV production to have no ''Doctor Who'' guest stars at all, after Nicholas Courtney (who would have reprised his ''Doctor Who'' role as UNIT commander Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart ) was forced by ill health to withdraw from the project. With Courtney out, the focus of the series was the original character of Lockwood, an enigmatic UNIT agent played by Michael Wade . Other BBV video productions include ''Cyberon'' (featuring a race of alien Cyborg s reminiscent of the Cybermen ) and ''"Do you Have a Licence to Save this Planet?"'' (a ''Doctor Who'' parody featuring Sylvester McCoy as the Chiropodist, meaning Foot Doctor). AUDIO After a few earlier experiments, BBV began regularly releasing audio dramas on CD in 1998 , under the umbrella title ''Audio Adventures in Time & Space''. The mainstay of the CD line to begin with was a series starring Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred (the Doctor/companion team from the 1987, 1988 and 1989 seasons of ''Doctor Who'') as a pair of wanderers in time and space named "The Professor" (McCoy) and "Ace" (Aldred) who so closely resembled the characters McCoy and Aldred had played on ''Doctor Who'' - even addressing each other by the same nicknames - that the BBC stepped in and their seventh outing, ''Ghosts'', consequently introduced a number of changes to the characters that made the resemblance somewhat less close, the main one being that the adventures now featured "The Dominie" (McCoy) and "Alice" (Aldred). The first of the ''Audio Adventures in Time & Space'' not to feature the McCoy/Aldred double act was ''Cyber-Hunt'', the first BBV production to feature the Cyberons. A further ''Who''-ish note was added by the introduction of an amnesic space traveller (who one of the other characters dubs "Fred" after her pet Goldfish ) played by Nicholas Briggs , who some years earlier had played the Doctor in the Audio Visuals series of unlicensed fan audios. More recently, BBV have moved away from characters-who-might-be-the-Doctor (a field that, in any case, lost some of its appeal for fan audiences once (last seen in ''Doctor Who'' being abducted by a group of aliens that, conveniently, were also created by Pip & Jane Baker), and a series of stories by Lawrence Miles about his history-spanning terrorist organisation Faction Paradox . PRODUCTIONS Video
Audio Licensed ''Doctor Who'' spin-offs
Unofficial/Apocryphal ''Doctor Who'' spin-offs
Stand-alone
SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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