Short Trips (series)

Short Trips was initially a series of short story anthologies published by BBC Books in the late 1990s, following on from Virgin Publishing's Decalog anthology series. These first three books were published in conjunction with the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures and BBC Past Doctor Adventures book series, with each book containing stories featuring each of the first eight incarnations of the Doctor. After publishing ST: Short Trips and Side Steps in March 2000, BBC Books abandoned this format and focused only on full-length novels thereafter (until the publication of NSA: The Story of Martha years later).

In 2002, Big Finish Productions expanded its production of Doctor Who audio dramas to include publishing, and obtained the rights to the Short Trips series. The Big Finish Short Trips books, like the Decalog series, are built around themes, including an annual volume dedicated to Christmas-related tales, and one volume dedicated to Dalek stories. A total of 28 volumes of new material -- featuring several hundred stories featuring the first eight Doctors -- were published up to March 2009.

On 17 April 2009, Big Finish announced it was ending the Short Trips line, due to the BBC not renewing the company's licence to publish prose stories featuring the Doctor (although its licence to produce audio dramas was renewed). A final Short Trips volume, a "best-of" collection, subsequently appeared in May 2009, coinciding with Big Finish briefly making its back stock of earlier Short Trips books available at a discounted rate.

In less than a year, however, Big Finish revived the Short Trips format, this time as exclusive-to-audio readings of short stories, most performed by veteran cast members. It began by soliciting stories from fans, though seasoned writers have also contributed stories (along with one short story from Colin Baker). To date four CD sets of readings have been released, along with a handful of readings of stories from the print editions that have been made available from time to time as special downloads for subscribers.

Big Finish Short Trips
From 2002 onwards, Big Finish Productions obtained the rights to continue the series.

Big Finish Short Trips Audiobooks
In 2009, Big Finish Productions lost the rights to publish prose fiction based on Doctor Who. The following year, they revived the Short Trip concept as a series of short story readings by Doctor Who cast members. Unlike almost every thing else produced by Big Finish, they feature only one actor reading a story. Thus, they are really audiobooks. All in the regular series are original to audio, and have not previously appeared in print.

In addition to the above, at least three stories taken from the Short Trips books have had readings recorded and made available for special subscriber-only downloads:


 * Lepidoptery for Beginners (uploaded 21 October 2010)
 * The Switching (uploaded 28 November 2010)
 * The Little Drummer Boy (uploaded 30 December 2010)