A number of officially licensed audio productions based upon the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who have been produced over the years.
The canonicity of the various audio adventures has not been confirmed. While it is a question that has vexed fans, it appears that, broadly, the BBC care little about the matter, as Doctor Who has no official canon. The first season of the new television series made no explicit references to the audio adventures, partly to keep the programme accessible to a wide audience, and partly in obedience to BBC guidelines about the relationship between public broadcasting and commercially licensed material. However, by 2013, the BBC Red Button minisode "The Night of the Doctor" referenced the Eighth Doctor's companions from the audio plays — namely Charley Pollard, C'rizz, Lucie Miller, Tamsin Drew and Molly O'Sullivan.
The first Doctor Who audio production, released on LP record in 1976, was a children's adventure entitled Doctor Who and the Pescatons by Victor Pemberton. Around this time an audio version of the televised serial Genesis of the Daleks was released on record, with specially recorded narration by Tom Baker. Both of these early releases have since been reissued on CD. The same year, Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen reprised their roles in an episode of the BBC Schools radio play Exploration Earth: The Time Machine.
In 1985, during a period when the series was on a sabbatical at the BBC, BBC Radio hired Colin Baker and his TV companion Nicola Bryant to reprise their TV roles for a new production called Slipback, broadcast as part of the Radio 4 children's magazine Pirate Radio Four, which received quite a bit of press fanfare, though it did not receive good reviews. It too was later released on audio tape and CD.