The Company of Friends (audio anthology)

 was the one hundred and twenty-third release in Big Finish's monthly range. The four stories were written by Lance Parkin, Stephen Cole, Alan Barnes and Jonathan Morris respectively and featured Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor.

The story featured four companions who had never appeared alongside him in audio Doctor Who. Most of these companions were derived from Eighth Doctor stories in print media. Thus, Company contained the first performances of Izzy and Fitz. It also contained the first audio team-up of the Eighth Doctor and Bernice Summerfield (she had previously met him in the novel The Dying Days). Finally, it depicted a meeting Big Finish had long teased in their eighth Doctor audio adventures: that of the Eighth Doctor with Mary Shelley. Notably, it was the first Eighth Doctor audio drama to be released in the Main Range not to feature Charlotte Pollard.

Publisher's summary
Four one-part stories:

1. BENNY'S STORY by Lance Parkin

Deep in the mines of Epsilon Minima, Professor Bernice Summerfield is up to her neck in it - as usual. The Countess Venhella has hired her to recover a lost Time Lord artefact: A TARDIS key, it turns out. Guess whose?

2. FITZ'S STORY by Stephen Cole

On the planet Entusso, the Doctor and Fitz Kreiner investigate Alien Defence Incorporated - your one-stop shop for protection against extraterrestrial invasion! But which is the greatest menace: the hideous Vermin Queens or ADI itself?

3. IZZY'S STORY by Alan Barnes

TARDIS travel opens one's eyes to a universe of possibilities, reckons the Doctor. For geek girl Izzy, it's also a fantastic way to track down ultra-rare back copies of 'Aggrotron!', the most dangerous comic in history...

4. MARY'S STORY by Jonathan Morris

Switzerland, 1816: at the Villa Diodati, Lord Byron's house guests tell each other tales to curdle the blood and quicken the beatings of the heart. With a monster on the loose outside, young Mary Shelley isn't short of inspiration.