We have our first ever Thirteenth Doctor Short Trip, which in turn is the winning entry of the 2025 Paul Spragg Memorial Opportunity; all done to coincide with Jodie Whittaker and Mandip Gill making their Big Finish debut in The Thirteenth Doctor Adventures. Oh, isn’t that brilliant! Released on what would’ve been Paul’s 50th birthday (29th December 2025), The Wednesday That Wasn’t is written by Luke Hollands and read by Clare Corbett, the latter of whom was also part of the competition’s judging panel.
The Galactic Lost Property Office stores misplaced items from across the universe, such as scarves from Trenzalore or umbrellas from Peladon, with Edna Tarron as the sole keeper. But one day, Edna receives something unimaginable and anomalous kept inside a stasis sphere: a Wednesday. The Doctor turns up to try and claim ownership of the day, and so do three other villainous petitioners. In order to connect all the pieces together, the Doctor uses her sonic screwdriver to transport herself and Edna inside the sphere and visit different locations on the exact same Wednesday: the Sketrax homeworld, the Third Celestial Bank, and the Memory Mines of Salkoon.
The narrative and concepts work well together in the script. Far more straightforward than the trapped planets in stasis containers in the Series 11 finale (can’t be bothered to spell it out), and less convoluted than Gallifrey’s disputed origins being shown in the Matrix in The Timeless Children. Even the amounts of expository dialogue suits the audiobook format, without making it clunky and hard to follow. And how can you displace a day from time and leave it in lost property? A day isn’t a sentient object! That’s what I find intriguingly impressive about the premise. And Edna does make a logical point by telling the Doctor, “You can’t wish a day away.”
I love Rafe Wallbank’s nostalgic cover artwork containing familiar items surrounding the Doctor in a calendar backdrop — some which includes a Magna-Clamp from Doomsday, a Shakri cube from The Power of Three, a Mire repair kit from The Girl Who Died, and an intelligent glove from The Church on Ruby Road (obviously no “mavity” reference here, as it’s too early in the Doctor’s timeline). There’s even a film canister which pays homage to The Feast of Steven, the seventh episode of The Daleks’ Master Plan, which sadly remains missing from the BBC archives (but only exists on audio). Very metatextual.
We also have some unintended, indirect nods to past and future eras. The Doctor using a banana as a weapon to defeat Kandra, War Queen of the Sketrax, reminds me of what her ninth incarnation (Christopher Eccleston) said about the groves of Villengard in The Doctor Dances (perhaps she got one from there?). And I do fancy a slice of banoffee pie! The same goes for the crystalline figures from the sentient AI Third Celestial Bank; I couldn’t help but think of the Not-Things from Wild Blue Yonder which are visually analogous to AI. And what do the bank and the Not-Things have in common? Fuelling hatred. That’s a problem we’re all facing right now with AI chatbots and image generators (especially on social media), and the script tackles the issues in great detail.
One thing in particular that I didn’t expect at all was the appearance of Yaz, Ryan, and Graham, with the latter two also making their Big Finish debuts. They only appear in flashbacks as Edna is the main companion here. Still, I can only assume that the story is set sometime after Spyfall, since it uses the Series 12 opening theme, plus the Doctor explicitly mentioning “Time Lord” in front of the Delegation of Salkoon. Would’ve preferred it if the end credits had used the extended closing theme with the Middle 8 (my favourite variant of Segun Akinola’s arrangement), which debuted in Ascension of the Cybermen.
After narrating the marvellously experimental When I Say Run… by Ben Tedds (who won the 2019 competition with The Best-Laid Plans), from Tales from the Vortex (Short Trips Volume 13), I couldn’t be more amazed with Clare Corbett’s performance. Not just her vocal range, but her uncanny Jodie Whittaker impression truly stands out; I was delighted since I first heard the trailer. And if Big Finish were to produce a Thirteenth Doctor Chronicles boxset, she would be the perfect choice to narrate and do more of her Jodie impression, like how Jacob Dudman did the Tenth (David Tennant) and Eleventh (Matt Smith) Doctors’ voices.
It’s so wonderful that we now have ten winning Short Trips in memory of Paul Spragg, with the Thirteenth Doctor being a welcoming addition to the range. I call it a definitive starting point for anyone who wishes to try out a Short Trip, alongside the previous winners’ entries.
The Wednesday That Wasn’t is available to download for free from Big Finish.
(And once you unlock the Short Trip, you’ll also be able to download both the studio script and the original submission in PDF.)
