Doctor Who Short Trips – The Mistpuddle Murders is out now.

Welcome to Mistpuddle.

"I’m sure you’re all wondering why I’ve gathered you here. I’m sure you’re all wondering why the village is home to woodland creatures with a taste for tea, cakes and secrets. And I’m sure you’re all wondering where the Doctor has vanished to. The truth is not as quaint as the pretty cottages and mostly cute residents would have you believe.

Murder has come to Mistpuddle. And no-one is leaving until we uncover whodunnit."

Producer and script editor Ian Atkins told us all about this most intriguing of crimes: "Mistpuddle came out of Dark Shadows really, in that Sarah Sutton had had a sort of Marple role in The Devil Cat which people had praised, and it seemed an interesting direction for Nyssa – she is, after all, a keen intelligence geared towards problem solving which is exactly what you need. I'd talked to her in studio about doing something 'Murder Mystery' with a Short Trip, and she was really enthusiastic about it.

“Sarah is always superb in these sessions, her voice talents are massively underrated, and when you've got a rich selection of voices, then it widens the number of characters you can have, which in itself widens the sort of stories you can tell. There's no point doing a murder mystery with three people! As Simon Forward had done such an amazing job on Mel-evolent, balancing humour, a feel for the era, and a strong story, I asked him if he’d like to write a (sorry) Doctor Who-dunnit for Nyssa, and off he went!

"The choice of setting was Simon's, and it's wonderfully Doctor Who, while also being oddly right to that sort of pre-war Christie world we know from years of quality TV detective stories. After all, why not a village of friendly animals in which something dark is lurking? A murder mystery is a complex construction and I admire how quickly Simon was able to bring together all the threads, some of which pull away as false leads, one of which is tied straight into a murderer. It's a real skill to do it in a short story.”

Writer Simon A Forward also told us about working on the Short Trips range: “Without wanting to sound lazy, being asked to write a Short Trip is like being asked to go away for a bit on a mini holiday with friends. Don't get me wrong, I do put the work in – it just feels like recreation! Especially when given a chance to write for companions like Nyssa, a character I always liked but felt she had more strings to her bow than we got to see in the TV series.

“She's perhaps not the natural fit for the, er, quirky variation on murder mystery I had in mind but what might seem like mismatched ingredients is often what makes the magic happen. I can only hope Sarah Sutton had half the fun narrating as I did writing the adventure – and I owe Ian Atkins huge thanks for inviting me on another holiday in the Doctor Who universe.”

The Mistpuddle Murders is available now for £2.99 on download only from Big Finish. Or you can save money with a bundle of the Short Trips range and get 12 stories for £30 a year.

Coming next in the Doctor Who Short Trips range it’s Seventh Doctor companion Mel’s turn to play detective as Bonnie Langford narrates a story of Victorian superstition with a Doctor Who twist. The Devil’s Footprints is out in December.

The Doctor's old friend, the reverend H.T. Ellacombe, has been out of touch for too long. But when the Doctor goes to find him, he and Mel discover something else entirely: unidentifiable footprints in the snow around the Victorian village where he lives.

The villagers are terrified that the very Devil walks their lands in the wintry nights, but with the Doctor distracted by finding his friend, it seems it’s up to Mel to do the snooping around in attempt to uncover the truth...