2026’s Paul Spragg competition winner revealed

Winner Daniel Tout

Big Finish Productions runs an annual competition in honour of our beloved friend and colleague Paul Spragg, who passed away suddenly on 8 May 2014.

Paul was a champion of new writing talent, and so each year in his memory, it’s an opportunity to identify a talented writer to have their original Doctor Who story professionally produced as an audiobook.

The theme for this year was the First Doctor. Daniel’s winning story, The Underwater Prison, has been recorded by Stephen Noonan, who has been the voice of the First Doctor for Big Finish since 2022.

The Underwater Prison will be released as a free download on 29 December 2026, which would have been Paul Spragg’s birthday, and is available to pre-order now, exclusively here. The audiobook will be packaged with behind-the-scenes interviews, the studio script, and Daniel’s winning submission document. 

Despite his friends’ warnings, the Doctor sets off alone to explore the fantastical bioluminescent vista of an aquatic realm. 

When he decides he must protect a childlike creature, he wonders if he will ever be able to leave this underwater world.

The 2026 Judges

The 2026 judging panel were Big Finish’s creative director Nicholas Briggs; reader Stephen Noonan; Mark Wright, range script editor of The First Doctor Adventures; and Big Finish producer Dominic G Martin; and Peter Anghelides, producer and script editor of the Doctor Who – Short Trips range.

“There was a very enjoyable discussion between the judges,” said Stephen. “It was very refreshing to read something like this. There's a remarkable originality about the story, where you go to a world which is completely divorced from the human or the humanoid.”

Peter Anghelides added: “Daniel’s wonderful story conjures up an alien environment that we hadn’t seen in that era’s TV adventures. And it has a guest cast we hadn’t previously encountered either. It puts the Doctor at its heart, using his ingenuity and bravery, plus some technology that seems very much in keeping with 1960s Doctor Who.”

This year, for the first time, we are also publishing the names of shortlisted candidates who impressed the judges. They are:

• Jamie H. Cowan for his story Vacancy
• Victoria Ellis for her story Due Date
• Harry Rogers for his story The Final Bell
• Joshua Tomes for his story The Cup of Tea at the End of the World

“Every year it seems to get harder for us to choose just one winner for the competition,” said Peter Anghelides. “So this year, the judges wanted to commend the best of those who didn’t win, but who we thought were contenders.”

The previous winners of the Paul Spragg Memorial Short Trips Opportunity are all available to download for free:   

• 2016: Forever Fallen by Joshua Wanisko (Seventh Doctor) 
• 2017: Landbound by Selim Ulug (Third Doctor) 
• 2018: The Last Day at Work by Harry Draper (Second Doctor) 
• 2019: The Best Laid Plans by Ben Tedds (Twelfth Doctor) 
• 2020: Free Speech by Eugenie Pusenjak (Tenth Doctor) 
• 2021: The Lichyrwick Abomination by Joe Vevers (Ninth Doctor) 
• 2022: The World Tree by Nick Slawicz (Eleventh Doctor) 
• 2023: The Hoxteth Time Capsule by Paul Davis (Sixth Doctor) 
• 2024: War Stories by Patrick Ross (Twelfth Doctor) 
• 2025: The Wednesday That Wasn’t by Luke Hollands (Thirteenth Doctor)

Big Finish listeners eager to hear the First Doctor can also purchase other adventures from the First Doctor Collection, which includes stories from the ranges The First Doctor Adventures, The Companion Chronicles, Short Trips, The Early Adventures, and The Lost Stories.