I’ve been thinking recently and I don’t think there’s been much discussion on this forum about the expansive world of short stories in Doctor Who.
From Short Trips to Decalogs to the 1981 Annual, from audio to prose, there have been countless bite sized adventures that the Doctor and co have been on and sometimes, they can even surpass full length stories.
So, I thought I’d create a thread where people can discuss and debate over their favourite, least favourite, or somewhat favourite short stories from the many corners of Doctor Who.
Personally, when I think of Doctor Who short stories a couple immediately come to mind:
Categorical Imperative by Simon Guerrier
From the anthology Short Trips: Monsters, Categorical Imperative is perhaps the best distillation of the Doctor’s moral compass I’ve ever seen. It’s the age old moral quandary of “would you kill Hitler as a baby?” and the tact and complexity with which it’s tackled here is immense, and one of my favourite character studies for the Doctor.
Corner of the Eye by Steven Moffat
A genuinely pretty horrifying short story from the 2007 Storybook that shows Moffat was trying to traumatise children even outside of the silver screen. Not only is it a brilliantly constructed and disturbing chiller but it also shows the origination of a number of concepts Moffat would reuse, like people being trapped in technology or a creature that’s perfected the ability to hide.
Great idea for a thread. I do struggle a bit with short stories. Sometimes I think they can be willfully obscure, especially some of the Big Finish prose ones. But there are some good ones in amongst the plethora.
A Full Life: an audio short trip with Adric living as a the title says, a full life. Very well done.
Continuity Errors: Moffat mercilessly ripped off his own work but this original ‘nipping back and forth in time to get the result the Doctor needs’ is a great little story in Decalog 3.
I absolutely adore the Who short stories!! They’re a treasured part of the extended universe, and I count many of them among my favourites. Listing all the ones I love would take forever, but here are a few off the top of my head:
The Longest Story in the World by Paul Magrs
From Short Trips and Side Steps. A beautiful, meta tale based on the Arabian Nights, and one I genuinely think about all the time.
Nothing at the End of the Lane by Daniel O’Mahoney
This one, also from Short Trips and Side Steps, is a palpably atmospheric alternative take on An Unearthly Child. It’s like a nightmare you once had and half-remember, complete with excellent characterisation and soaked in TV static.
Kept Safe and Sound by Paul Magrs
From Short Trips: Companions. I’m not even a particular fan of K9, but this story genuinely makes me cry; it’s so bittersweet and, like all Magrs’ work, in conversation with the nature of stories and storytelling.
There are so many more I want to name! This doesn’t even touch on the Bernice Summerfield anthologies. But this’ll do for now!
It’s fine to mix and match - some of the audio ones started out as prose stories anyway.
People are free to mention prose, audio or those Give A Show Projector short stories from the 60s. My favourite is this one where the Doctor explains the internal dimensions of the TARDIS years before The Robots of Death:
Oh, Doctor Who short stories. How you never cease to baffle me in the wide variety of your quality. Some of the best Doctor Who ever (Lepidoptery for Beginners my beloved) can be placed next to some of the most trite drivel (Face-Painter my despised).
I generally really enjoy short stories. I think it takes a lot if skill to pull it off, and some can stick with you like nothing else. I haven’t really taken a dive into Doctor Who short stories yet (unless you count the Blogs of Doom, which TARDIS Guide lists as short stories, and I read most of them just to be the first to rate them, and they were bad), but I’d love to some day. Being short makes it easier to get through a lot of them quickly, and I love boosting my stats and feeling like I am just a little closer to enjoying all of Doctor Who.
Expanding this a little to Torchwood so I can give a shout out to The Package by James Goss
Just a fun little comedic tale of Torchwood trying to save the world by getting a package that’s unfortunately gone back to the post office, and the casual worldbuilding that because they’re both owned by The Crown, Torchwood and Royal Mail have a decades long feud
Ah, wish I had something to offer here, but memory is like a…um, not a steel trap…more like a tissue paper trap. I’ve definitely read some marvelous Who short stories. I mean, hey, I have around 70 prose short story collections for Who and its spinoffs, there’d better be some good stuff in them right?
If and when I remember or revisit specific ones I’ll have to come back here and share.
I recently read one great Doctor Who short story - ‘The Death of Me’ by Robert Shearman - and really enjoyed it. I feel this story could be classified as an ultimate horror, where the main antagonists of this pair of broken people are this pair of broken people themselves. I do think the author wanted to say that only our inseceruties are our main villains in life. That’s why I like the idea of Valeyard, because imo he is not neceserilly ‘bad version of the Doctor’, but just ‘the version of the Doctor that hates themselves’ . Really liked it and would reccomend
Such a timely topic! I have decided to begin reading more short prose because they are usually perfectly bite-sized for situations where I don’t have a lot of time or motivation to read anything longer.
I recently began reading through the Big Finish Short Trips collections, starting with Zodiac. There are a couple of great ones in it, mainly The True and Indisputable Facts in the Matter of the Ram’s Skull, an effective horror story with the First Doctor, and The Switching by Simon Guerrier, which is a fun body switch story with Three that was also released as a Subscriber Short Trip audio.
I’ve also added the new Adventures Before to my TBR.
There have been so many short stories over the years, many of which I’ve not read in a long time. So, like @kevinwho, I’m also struggling to remember specific stories But I will throw in another vote for Continuity Errors by Steven Moffat. That was a lot of fun. I’m also currently listening to The Little Drummer Boy, which started life as a prose piece in one of the early Short Trips collections. That’s also particularly good.
One of my least favourites is ‘Fascination’ from the first Decalog collection. It’s been some time since I last read it but, from memory, it’s essentially a story of Peri being sexually assaulted as she’s mentally manipulated to sleep with some guy who can conjure up demons. Not an enjoyable read at all for me.
I read this one sometime last year, and thought exactly the same. I absolutely love it and the idea chills me even now.
Funny thing is, Moffat did reuse his concept in a short story, i.e. Blink was adapted from a story called What I Did on My Christmas Holidays by Sally Sparrow in the Doctor Who Annuel 2006. But according to Moffat, when he wrote Listen, he totally forgot that he had ever written this story or created Floof.
