Short Trips (series)

"Short Trips" is a label that has been applied to several distinct things, variously published by both BBC Books and Big Finish Productions. Except for a few special cases, all things released under the "Short Trips" banner have been short story anthologies. The majority of these anthologies have been collections of prose issued from 1998 to 2009, but Big Finish resurrected the name as a label for audio anthologies beginning in 2010.

In print
Short Trips print anthologies were published by both BBC Books and Big Finish Productions.

BBC Books
"Short Trips" was a name initially given to a trio of short story anthologies published by BBC Books, starting in 1999. The notion was very similar to Virgin Books' 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 short stories for full length prose.

Big Finish Productions
In 2002, Big Finish Productions 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, since the BBC had failed to renew the company's license to issue Doctor Who stories in the print medium. 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 audio
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). 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)