Side Step (audio series)

Side Step was a short-lived audio series within the Main Range. The term was used on the spine of four early Big Finish Doctor Who audio stories.

The conceit of the term was that the stories, borrowing lore and characters from DWM comic stories or the Virgin New Adventures, constituted "side-steps" into the continuities of other branches of the Doctor Who expanded universe relative to Big Finish's usual "timeline". The term "side-step" was also used in the the short story anthology Short Trips and Side Steps in the same way: as described in its introduction, the book was intended to "explore alternate takes on [Doctor Who's] central concepts", such as Dr. Who and the Daleks, the TV Comic Third Doctor adventures or the Sixth Doctor's The Ultimate Adventure companions.

This was because, at this early stage in its history, Big Finish tried to maintain the concept that the various offscreen continuations of Doctor Who were best thought of as branching timelines or universes, rather than occasionally-contradictory accounts describing a single ongoing universe. This idea was hinted at most explicitly in AUDIO: Zagreus. The idea later fell out of favour, and later Big Finish stories building on existing continuities would not be given the "side-step" tag line. (e.g. The Company of Friends, The Eternal Summer, The Quantum Possibility Engine, The Comic Strip Adaptations, The New Adventures: Volume One)