Big Finish Short Trips

The Big Finish Short Trips are a collection of short story anthologies published by Big Finish Productions based on the BBC Television series Doctor Who, beginning with the collection Short Trips: Zodiac in December 2002 and ending with the loss of their license in 2009. The Short Trips name was inherited from similar collections published by the BBC, who decided in March 2000 that it was no longer financially viable to produce collections of short stories. Big Finish Productions negotiated a licence to continue producing these collections, publishing them in smaller runs and in hardback, thus allowing for a higher cover price and increased profit margins than on the BBC collections.

In May 2009 and after 28 collections, Big Finish announced that they were ending the Short Trips series as the BBC had not renewed it for a second licence, eventually halting sales of the books on the Big Finish Website in December 2009. Even so, the books are still available via off-site retailers and a final 29th volume collected the editor's favourite story of each of the previous volumes.

The Big Finish Short Trips volumes are produced in a slightly different manner from their BBC predecessors: instead of being centrally produced, Big Finish commissions editors for the volumes, who in turn commission stories from writers for the themed collections. Because of this, each volume is produced depending on the working methods of its editor – some editors commission stories on invitation from writers, whilst others welcome unsolicited submission of stories. How The Doctor Changed My Life featured stories all written by previously unpublished authors. This was as a result of a competition, run by Big Finish in 2007, to seek out new talent.

Each collection is conceived around a single theme, with the individual stories exploring that theme:

The collections have mixed established Doctor Who writers from the television series, such as Ben Aaronovitch, Ian Briggs, Andrew Cartmel, Terrance Dicks, Glen McCoy, James Moran, Marc Platt, Helen Raynor and Eric Saward with writers who made their name in other Doctor Who spin-off ranges, such as Paul Cornell, Joseph Lidster, Kate Orman, Lance Parkin, Philip Purser-Hallard, Gareth Roberts, Gary Russell and Robert Shearman, and writers from other literary spheres, including Dan Abnett, Lou Anders, Scott Andrews, Jonathan Clements, Peter David, Richard Dinnick, Keith R.A. DeCandido, Brian Dooley, Diane Duane, Nev Fountain, Lizzie Hopley, Todd McCaffrey, Juliet E. McKenna, Paul Magrs, James Moran, Gary Owen, Stel Pavlou, Steven Savile, James Swallow and Matthew Sweet.

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