Big Finish’s Doctor Who Short Trips Will Return Every Month in 2027

Doctor Who News · Edition of Wednesday 11 November 2026 · covering 4–11 November

Big Finish’s Short Trips are going monthly. From January 2027 there will be a new half-hour Doctor Who audiobook every month, starting with the Third Doctor and Jo Grant at Charles Dickens’s home. Elsewhere this week, a full biography of the great Terrance Dicks is out at the end of the month, the Wirrn finally become an action figure, a very silly new guide to six decades of the show is on pre-order, and our classic pick is the Fourth Doctor’s first great space horror.

The Doctor Who News That Matters

Big Finish’s Short Trips go monthly in 2027, starting with the Third Doctor and Charles Dickens

• New development: Big Finish announced on Tuesday 10 November that its range of original Doctor Who audiobooks will return in 2027 with a new release every month. Eleven stories arrive from January to November, each about 30 minutes long
• The first three: Who the Dickens…? by Juliet E. McKenna (January), in which the Doctor takes Jo Grant to find out what inspired A Christmas Carol; Piccadilly Circus by Joseph Lidster (February), with Susan cut off from the TARDIS in the Blitz; and The Cat with Two Lives by Luke Hollands (March), with the Doctor and Yaz protecting an English village from the Vloor
• Who is reading: January’s story is an enhanced reading by Tim Treloar, who plays the Third Doctor for Big Finish. Every release comes with a behind-the-scenes track
• Where to listen in the UK: Available to pre-order now, exclusively from Big Finish, at £3.99 each as a download, or £40 for all eleven in a bundle. December 2027’s story will be the winner of next year’s Paul Spragg new writer’s competition, free to download

Range producer Peter Anghelides says Big Finish is “currently commissioning and recording new stories for the whole of 2027”, from authors new to Doctor Who, familiar Big Finish names and “brand-new voices taking their first chance to write for us”. It is McKenna’s Big Finish debut, and an award-winning fantasy novelist is a good way to open the year.

A short story a month is a smart way to keep the Doctor in people’s ears while the TV series waits for its new makers. It also builds on this year’s winner of the new writer’s competition, Daniel Tout’s The Underwater Prison, and sits alongside the full-cast sets already lined up, including the Eleventh Doctor’s Into the Shadows in January.

Written by Terrance Dicks: Simon Guerrier’s biography of the Doctor Who legend is out on 30 November

• New development: Ten Acre Publishing has confirmed the release of Written by Terrance Dicks, Simon Guerrier’s biography of the writer, for Monday 30 November. It was first mentioned last year and was formally announced this week
• The book: 420 pages, plus a 12-page photo section, drawing on Dicks’s own archive of paperwork and new interviews with people who knew and worked with him. Guerrier also wrote the publisher’s biography of David Whitaker, the show’s first story editor
• Launch events: Guerrier will be in conversation at The Portico Library in Manchester on Wednesday 25 November, with proceeds going to the Portico Reunited initiative, and signing a shop-exclusive hardback at The Who Shop in London on Saturday 28 November
• Where to buy and watch in the UK: Available to pre-order from Ten Acre Publishing. His Doctor Who stories, from The War Games to The Five Doctors, stream on BBC iPlayer in the Doctor Who (1963–1996) collection

Few people shaped Doctor Who more. Terrance Dicks was the show’s script editor through the Jon Pertwee years, co-wrote Patrick Troughton’s final story and wrote the twentieth anniversary special, but for a generation of children he was above all the author of the Target novelisations, in the days before home video. The publisher calls him the bestselling author of 235 books for children, widely credited with teaching generations to read. His credits ran from The Avengers and Crossroads to Space: 1999 and the BBC’s classic serials of the 1980s.

A full, archive-based life of Dicks is long overdue, and Guerrier is the right writer for it. If it sends you back to the stories, every era is in our Doctor Who watch order.

The Wirrn from The Ark in Space finally become an action figure, as Character Options completes its Yeti

• New development: Character Options has confirmed the fifth and final set in this year’s Doctor Who Collect & Build range: the Wirrn, the insect monsters from Tom Baker’s 1975 story The Ark in Space
• What is in the box: A ‘Vortex Edition’ three-piece set with an adult Wirrn, a Wirrn grub and the Yeti’s left arm, the last piece of the build-a-figure. The finished Yeti stands 17cm tall with 14 points of articulation, and the packaging shows the inside of the Nerva Beacon
• Where to buy in the UK: From Character Options’ own online shop at £44.99. Buyers of the previous set get first access on Monday 16 November, with general sale following 24 hours later

Creative director Al Dewar says he has “waited nearly 50 years to get an action figure of the Wirrn into my hands”, and calls The Ark in Space a story with “everything that I love about the show”, from a truly horrifying alien to a battered police box landing on a gleaming space station. It completes a range that has also included a new Fourth Doctor with scarf, Cybermen and the Fifteenth Doctor. Collectors after something smaller can still look for the limited Circuit Breaker Battles in Time cards.

The Timey Wimey Book of Doctor Who promises six decades of “almost unreadable” fun

• New development: Candy Jar Books has opened pre-orders for The Timey Wimey Book of Doctor Who by Peter Shaw (“and Mighty Logar”), an unofficial comedy guide to the show, as reported this week by The Doctor Who Companion
• What is in it: Billed as “an unbelievable, unofficial, unreliable, and almost unreadable deep dive into six decades of Doctor Who history”, with absurd trivia, comic essays and fan memories, from a night spent with the Watling family to a ranking of the worst Target book covers
• Where to buy in the UK: Available to pre-order from Candy Jar Books. A publication date has not yet been confirmed

Among its promised mysteries: why the Doctor’s name is actually Steve Davis, how to defeat a Sontaran with a stiletto heel, and why Peter Davison wrote the theme music for a family of kitchen utensils. It is not one for the reference shelf, but after a long run of serious news about the show’s future, a book that does not take Doctor Who too seriously is welcome. For something more official, last month brought Tales of the TARDIS as a book of eight new stories.

Classic pick: The Ark in Space, the Fourth Doctor’s first great space horror

• Why now: With the Wirrn figure on sale from Monday, it is the perfect week to revisit the story that introduced them, one of the best-loved of all Tom Baker’s adventures
• The story: Four episodes from Season 12, first shown in early 1975. The Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) and Harry Sullivan (Ian Marter) arrive on a space station where the last of humanity lies asleep, and discover they are not alone
• Who made it: Written by Robert Holmes, with Philip Hinchcliffe in his first season as producer, the start of a famously dark, gothic run for the show
• Where to watch in the UK: All four parts stream on BBC iPlayer in the Doctor Who (1963–1996) collection

Only Tom Baker’s second story, and the one where his Doctor really arrives: watch for his speech about humanity, “indomitable”, as he looks over the sleepers. It is claustrophobic, properly frightening for its time, and a reminder of how much the show could do with one set and a good monster. Yes, the grub is famously made of bubble wrap. It still works. If you enjoyed last week’s pick, The Invisible Enemy, this is from the same Doctor’s first golden run.

Which Target novelisation by Terrance Dicks got you reading?