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 How the Doctor Changed My Life featured stories all written by previously unpublished authors.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:
| Title | Editor | Published | Theme/Concept | |
| Short Trips: Zodiac | December 2002 | The signs of the Zodiac | ||
| Short Trips: Companions | Jacqueline Rayner | March 2003 | The Doctor's companions | |
| Short Trips: A Universe of Terrors | John Binns | June 2003 | Horror | |
| Short Trips: The Muses | Jacqueline Rayner | September 2003 | The Nine Muses | |
| Short Trips: Steel Skies | John Binns | December 2003 | Confined environments | |
| Short Trips: Past Tense | Ian Farrington | April 2004 | Historical settings | |
| Short Trips: Life Science | John Binns | June 2004 | The nature of life | |
| Short Trips: Repercussions | June 2004 | Unforeseen consequences | ||
| Short Trips: Monsters | Ian Farrington | August 2004 | Monsters | |
| Short Trips: 2040 | John Binns | October 2004 | The year 2040 | |
| Short Trips: A Christmas Treasury | December 2004 | Christmas | ||
| Short Trips: Seven Deadly Sins | March 2005 | Seven deadly sins | ||
| Short Trips: A Day in the Life | Ian Farrington | June 2005 | The hours of the day | |
| Short Trips: The Solar System | Gary Russell | September 2005 | The nine planets of the Solar System | |
| Short Trips: The History of Christmas | December 2005 | Christmas past, present and future | ||
| Short Trips: Farewells | Jacqueline Rayner | March 2006 | Death and other kinds of loss | |
| Short Trips: The Centenarian | Ian Farrington | July 2006 | The life of one man – Edward Grainger | |
| Short Trips: Time Signature | Simon Guerrier | September 2006 | Music, time and consequences | |
| Short Trips: Dalek Empire | Nicholas Briggs with Simon Guerrier | December 2006 | The Dalek Empire series | |
| Short Trips: Destination Prague | May 2007 | The city of Prague | ||
| Short Trips: Snapshots | June 2007 | The effect the Doctor has on people | ||
| Short Trips: The Ghosts of Christmas | Cavan Scott & Mark Wright | December 2007 | Christmas: past, present and future | |
| Short Trips: Defining Patterns | Ian Farrington | March 2008 | The causes and effects of the universe | |
| Short Trips: The Quality of Leadership | May 2008 | The many leaders the Doctor has met | ||
| Short Trips: Transmissions | Richard Salter | July 2008 | The art of communication | |
| Short Trips: How the Doctor Changed My Life | Simon Guerrier | September 2008 | The after effects of meeting the Doctor | |
| Short Trips: Christmas Around the World | Xanna Eve Chown | December 2008 | Christmas in different countries | |
| Short Trips: Indefinable Magic | Neil Corry | March 2009 | The magical life of the Doctor | |
| Re:Collections | Various | May 2009 | The final book and a collection of the best stories from the series |
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.
On 31 December 2009, Big Finish lost their license to produce or sell their short story anthology book series Short Trips. On 10 February 2010 Big Finish announced that the range would be relaunched as double CD audiobooks featuring eight new short stories each. The stories were to be read by popular Doctor Who actors. Also on this day Big Finish asked for short story submissions, from anyone who hadn't written for them before, for possible inclusion on the CDs. Soon after the closing date it was announced that they had received 500 entries and that Colin Baker would be among the actors reading the stories, as well as writing the Sixth Doctor story for Volume 1. After four volumes, this series was discontinued, but the range was relaunched yet again as a monthly download-only series in 2015. The person in brackets in the "Featuring" column is who the story is read by.
The releases listed below were single releases made available by Big Finish as subscriber and magazine exclusives and podcasts. Starting from September 2016, Big Finish is releasing these exclusives to general customers under the banner, Short Trips Rarities. There will be at least a two-year delay between a story's subscriber exclusive release and its wider general release, in order to still keep these an incentive to subscribers of the main range.
The annual Paul Spragg Memorial Short Trip will continue to be released individually.
See main article: Short Trips – Volume 1.
See main article: Short Trips – Volume 2.
See main article: Short Trips – Volume 3.
See main article: Short Trips – Volume 4.
In November 2020, it was announced that the Short Trips range would return to the audio anthology format. It consists of 6 episodes.