Big Finish Short Trips

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.

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 owned by Universal Television. As with their various Doctor Who Audios, Big Finish cannot produce any material using the Ninth, Tenth or Eleventh Doctor's or make any other references to the new Russell T Davies or Steven Moffat-headed series in their works.

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.

Read more about Big Finish Short Trips:  The Books

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