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 "" in December 2002. The "Short Trips" name was inherited from similar collections published by the BBC, who decided in March 2000 that is 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 on the BBC collections.

Big Finish's licence with BBC Enterprises only allows them to use copyrighted material from the "classic" "Doctor Who" series (1963– 1989 and 1996), which means that their stories can only feature the first eight Doctors and their companions. There are also difficulties in using the Eighth Doctor's companions Grace Holloway and Chang Lee as the copyright to these is own by Universal Television. At present, Big Finish cannot produce any material using the Ninth or Tenth Doctors or make any other references to the new Russell T Davies-headed series in their works.

The books

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. "" featured stories all written by previously unpublished authors.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. [cite web|url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/news/cult/news/drwho/2007/06/19/46091.shtml|title=Short Story Comp|Publisher=BBC|date=2007]

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, 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, Philip Purser-Hallard, Gareth Roberts, Gary Russell, Robert Shearman, Lance Parkin and Kate Orman, and writers from other literary spheres, including Dan Abnett, Lou Anders, Jonathan Clements, Peter David, 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.

ee also

External links

* [http://www.bigfinish.com/Doctor-Who-Books Big Finish's Short Trips page]

* [http://www.gallifreyone.com/reviews.php Outpost Gallifrey's reviews page]

* [http://www.sfx.co.uk/page/sfx?entry=big_finish_interview Interview with range editor, Ian Farrington]

References