Terrance Dicks: he was definitely my favourite at the time: very readable and I actually felt I understood what was going on. But they were SO formulaic. He just churned them out by the dozen, and god it showed. If I hear the words 'very small very pretty' 'vaguely Bohemian' 'such was the authority in the Doctor's voice' 'open face' etc etc ever again I won't be answerable for the consequences.

He also made mistakes. One of the murder victims in Robots of Death was around when they were discussing his murder, and the wrong soldier was crawling around a ventilation shaft in Warriors of the Deep...I can't believe I'm remembering all this! I last read these books 15 years ago!

Dicks' greatest crime, of course, was sexism. You wouldn't have thought it was humanly possible to make the books MORE sexist than the programme, but he managed it. That quite understandable yelp Sarah gives when confronted by a cybermat is transformed into 'Sarah reacted in true feminine style: she let out a hearty scream.' I have plenty of other examples, but after that one they're somewhat superfluous.

Ian Marter: boredom to end all boredom. I never persevered long enough to discover he was a masochist. Who would have thought it of dear Harry?

Malcolm Hulke: I loved all those extra bits he put in. Well, apart from the shameless Christian propaganda he pushed at innocent children at every available opportunity. But he managed to turn even Colony in Space into a wonderful book. His portrayal of life on Earth in whatever century it was still chills me. And I'm not the only one: my brother can't get the words 'He was an ICM man with an ICM wife and ICM children and a beautiful FOUR-roomed ICM home' out of his head either.

David Whittacker: weeeell...I suppose it was a brave move to introduce romance into the very first Doctor Who book. But I really could have lived without it.

Were some some of these books printed in the US by Pinnacle in the late 70's or early 80's?
I recognize some of the authors' names and they were novelizations of episodes.

That's right, Keith. Pinnacle was the US distributor of Target, for a short time. Most of my novelizations have the little bull's-eye logo on them, though, not the Pinnacle pyramid.

Yeah, I dug out my old copies and checked the copyright information and it identifies Universal-Tandem as the original publisher and Target appears to be an imprint of Universal-Tandem. Amazing what you can learn by reading the boring legal stuff.
At least 10 of the Target books were reprinted by Pinnacle.
1. Doctor Who And The Day Of The Dalaks
2. Doctor Who And The Doomsday Machine (Colony In Space)
3. Doctor Who And The Dinosaur Invasion
4. Doctor Who And The Genesis Of The Dalaks
5. Doctor Who And The Revenge Of The Cybermen
6. Doctor Who And The Loch Ness Monster (Terror Of The Zygons)
7. Doctor Who And The Talons Of Weng-Chiang
8. Doctor Who And The Masque Of Mandragora
9. Doctor Who And The Android Invasion
10. Doctor Who And The Seeds Of Doom

All 10 books have a forward by Harlan Ellison.

The third book identifies the stories as being 4th Doctor stories even though the first three books are 3rd Doctor stories. Since I had never seen Dr. Who at the time, I imagined Tom Baker as the Doctor. Quite a surprise when I finally saw the episodes.

I guess because these were novelizations, the authors chose not to describe what the characters looked like, assuming that the readers would know. I had only seen pictures of the 4 actors who'd played the Doctor, so I had no idea what Jo Grant and Sarah Jane Smith looked like. (Or the actresses who played them;-) Oddly enough, I imagined Jo as a brunette and Sarah as a blonde. (But then Sarah stuck me as being not as smart as Jo.)

I find that I preferred the novelizations done by the original scriptwriters. This started happening towards the end of the Target run. I suppose Dicks et al just weren't interested in churning out formulaic children's books. Or the scriptwriters were clamoring for more money.

Whatever the reason, I was pleased that the scriptwriters used the novels as a way of fleshing out their ideas. I never say "Power/Evil of the Daleks", but I really enjoyed the novels. "Evil" was quite good; for once, the 2nd Doctor came off as quite cunning, and not the Chaplinesque simp he could occasionally be. Jamie had a few extra braincells working, too. Only Victoria was the same, but I don't know how she could have been improved, short of a total rewrite.

Remember Victoria's job on the show was to bring the male veiwer in from the gardening. (And Jamie's was to make the women put down their knitting. Or so joked Frazier Hines once.)

What's happened to all the Target books? There used to be a whole shelf full in my local branch of Waterstones, but they seem to have vanished. Who exactly owns the rights to them now?

There are some artwork oddities on the covers of the Pinnacle books. Both #1 Day Of The Dalaks & #3 The Dinosaur Invasion have a spaceship on the cover. On #1 UNIT is written on the ship. I don't ever remember seeing a spaceship like this in Dr. Who and I don't think UNIT even has a spaceship.

Despite the fact that all the Pinnacle books have Doctor Who In the title, the Doctor doesn't appear on the covers until #9 The Android Invasion & #10 Seeds Of Doom.

In the Target version of Doctor Who And The Auton Invasion (Spearhead From Space) the cover and an interior illustration of the squidlike form of the Nestene looks much better than what is actually seen in the episode.

You can see an even better Nestene creature in the BBV spin-off video Auton 2.

Richard--Target no longer owns the rights, so they are printing any more new editions. There's some backstock available, but I'm sure very few bookshops carry them.

I guess BBC Books owns the rights, but I don't know if they'll bother to reprint. TV tie-ins aren't viewed as having a lot of shelf life.

Target was bought out by WH Allen which in turn was bought out by Virgin - the publisher behind the New and Missing Adventures. They were doing reprints of the novelisations up to (I think) around 1994 with new jackets on the books but they stopped because of falling sales figures.
I imagine Mike is right above about BBC Books owning the rights now and the only time I could foresee any more reprints coming out if Doctor Who was a continuing, new series again.
You know, when they stop printing these things, like the novelisations and the New Adventures, I can often find the odd perfectly new book for sales for $2 to $3 in Australia. Not every one - just sometimes.

By the way Mike, isn't it spelled Apocrypha? Or is that the US spelling you have up there?

Blast! Too many h's!

Oh yes, there was one Target author I forgot to mention. Barry Letts. What kind of person would begin a book with the words 'Doctor Who was a happy man'????

The same kind of man that wrote The Ghosts Of N-Space.

The same kind of man who would invent the term 'N-Space' twice, with different meanings.

The same kind of man who wrote "The Daemons".

Well, someone had to defend the poor man.

Zorro, are you sure that's defending him? ;-)

The cover of the Pinnacle edition of Doctor Who And The Doomsday Machine (Colony In Space) has some oddities on the cover, especially when compared to the TV version.

In the center is a golden, smooth skinned creature with wispy smoke-like hands. This is the tiny creature that sentenced Jo & the Doctor to death in episode 4.

Above the creature is another mammalian type animal with sharp teeth. I have no idea what this is supposed to represent in the story.

On either side of the creature and animal are two half-faces, one has a brown eye, the other has a green eye, so they must represent two different people, but both of them resemble the Master. (Artistically you would use two half-faces to represent either the hero and villain, or two threats that the hero must face, but I don't what the artist here was going for.)

In the upper right corner is a heroic looking, clean shaven, long haired, barbarian type human with a spear. I guess no one told the artist that the Primitives are nonhuman.

Of course it`s defending him! Surely you`re not denying that "The Daemons" was great?

By the way, Emily, Letts didn`t start his "Daemons" novelisation with the line "Doctor Who was a happy man" - he started it with "Thunder rumbled ominously". He started the first chapter with the line you refer to, but there was a prologue before this.

Zorro, I was joking. That's why there was a little winky face ;-) at the end of my sentence.

I've never read the novelzation, but I liked the show. However, not everyone did like the show, so they would not see your comment as a defense.

BTW I heard that The Daemons was Pertwee's favorite Doctor Who story.

Zorro, I stand utterly corrected. You'll have to forgive me, but it's about 15 years since I last read the Daemons, and for some mysterious reason stuff about thunder didn't stick in my mind the way THAT LINE (I can't face repeating it) did.

Sorry, Keith - I`m not clever enough to realise that that was a winky thing - I thought you`d just gone mad and started inserting random punctuation for no reason.

Mad? Mad!!! Why if weren't in this straight jacket I'd challenge you to a duel! @^@$%)!@&*!

They're called emoticons and there are quite a few of them, but I only use a couple myself.
Happy :-)
Sad :-(
Winky ;-)
Really Happy 8-)
Really Sad 8-(
Surprise 8-0
Plllbt :-P

In the novelization for Day Of The Daleks the Doctor is able to better convince the freedom fighters that they are responsible by showing that the type of explosive used was too futuristic, which I think worked better.

The novelization also tied up the loose end left in the show by having Jo & the Doctor see their past selves at the end of the book, since they had seen their future selves at the beginning of the story.

The cover of the Pinnacle edition features a more apelike Ogron than is seen in the show.

Emily, I think you forgot Phillip Hinchcliffe, who did the Masque of Mandragora.

Probably because I can't remember a thing about Masque. Except that I was so pleasantly surprised when I saw the video that the novelisation can't have been that good.

Barry Lett's novelisation of The Paradise of Death had Sarah Jane going for a quick skinny dip near the end - it seemed way out of her character, despite her noting "and clothes just didn't seem to matter". Maybe Jo could have got away with it, or Ace, but Sarah Jane?

Do you think anything more should be novelised?

Obviously, there are two obvious candidates - City of Death and The Pirate Planet, both officially canon, plus the sometimes debatable canonicity of Shada.
The problem here is Douglas Adams who has refused to novelise them or let anyone else do it. However, I have read in the past he turned down the offer because they wouldn't let him write to the length he wanted - a moot point, give the page count of BBC Books & Virgin's efforts nowadays.
The other is the fact he now comes at a high price. But couldn't BBC Books hold back publishing a few novels in a year and use the extra cash flow to pay Adams?

And what of Resurrection and Revelation of the Daleks? I read an interview with Peter Darvill-Evans when he was the head of Who at Virgin and they were supposed to see the light of day in 1995 with Eric Saward doing them but nothing eventuated.

Other Target/W.H. Allen/Virgin books included the novelisations of The Pescatons, Slipback, The Paradise Of Death and The Ghosts of N-Space (all audio adventures), The Nightmare Fair, The Ultimate Evil and Mission To Magnus (three scripts from the aborted season 23), Downtime and Shakdown (independent video productions) and K-9 And Company (generally regarded as canon because of K-9's appearance in The Five Doctors).

So what else is out there that could be, should be, or shouldn't be novelised. Let's see (it's in no particular order):
1. Auton I, II and III.
2. The PROBE series with Liz Shaw.
3. The remainder of the aborted Season 23. Eric Saward was also supposed to be doing the Robert Holmes Auton/Singapore story too, according to the same interview I mentioned above.
4. Wartime - the Benton video.
5. The Big Finish audios. Not likely for a while because, as Gary Russell has pointed out, they need to sell the CDs/tapes first to keep the project viable. But down the track...
6. The aborted The Dark Dimension.
7. Don't hit me... Dimensions in Time (very unlikely, I know).
8. The Stranger series of videos/tapes - not Who I know, but could be an interesting associated sideline.
9. Other scripts that didn't quite make it over the years, such as The Prison In Space and Paradise Five.
10. The stage plays The Ultimate Adventure, Seven Keys To Doomsday and Curse of the Daleks (don't think Recall UNIT would work). I read an interview with Terrance Dicks 10 years ago where he said he was working on sorting out the rights for the novelisation for The Ultimate Adventure but nothing happened.
11. The MindGame videos.
12. The audios which have K-9 and Mistress, Alice and Dominie (Ace and the Doctor), Zygons and so on.
13. Destiny of the Doctors CD-ROM game (someone managed to novelise the Klingon CD-ROM game).
14. The movie scripts that didn't make it, such as Johnny Byrne's Last of the Time Lords.
15. Richard Franklin's novel about Captain Mike Yates. He's had it for a while but it's as yet unpublished - how bad could it be?

Novelisations can give more background and expand upon what's there or the original script can be a smaller part of a larger story, such as in Terrance Dicks' Shakedown.

Can anyone think of any others? Do people want novelisations or are well served as it is from BBC Books?

I think that if the BBC let Adams novelize his Who scripts, they'd have a big hit. I'm sure the real problem is that Adams has no interest in doing it. After all, he's already borrowed heavily from his Who scripts in writing the later Hitchhiker novels and "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency." Plus, he's living in LA now, still trying to turn Hitchhiker and Dirk Gently into movies.

I wouldn't bother with the missing season. The two I read weren't that good.

Actually, an Adams novelisation might sell enough to justify it. However, I think it would be a waste if you can get Adams to do it- he's said he doesn't want to do Shada, because he doesn't think it's very good (IIRC). It would be better to get him to do an original novel. Of course there is no way in hell it would ever happen but we can dream...

Jon Blum, IIRC has expressed an interested in novelising 'Time Rift' a 7th Doctor fan video, starring Blum as The Doctor

The problem with a lot of the BBV spin-offs is that they simply do not sell as well as the kosher merchandise, and that if he did choose to novelise them, he'd rake precious little in. The Who book market is saturated enough as it is, IMHO, and there are just too many duds as it is without an avalanche of Nicholas Briggs-written stuff pouring in. We could turn this topic around, and cite those series or reference works which ought to never have been printed! The Nine Lives of Doctor Who is one - a waste of time all in all. If anything, the Who library is getting too fat and needs a bit of a diet...

IMHO, of course. I mean, I'm all for an expansive pick and mix, but at what cost?

Also the fact that Briggs seems incapable of writing anything good could be a factor.

Virgin and BBC Books are only popular with certain sectors of the Who audience - what if less of the original novels were published (only six a year instead of 12) and novelisations were published in the other slots to appeal to fans who are after more of a traditional Who approach to novels?

You know, I thought of Time Rift and fan-made video/audios later on yesterday - guess there's nothing stopping them from submitting adaptations to BBC Books. Same goes with previously unnmade Who stories. And there are Who stage productions that didn't quite make it, such as The Inheritors of Time.

I've read other interviews with Adama where, when John Nathan-Turner was trying to salvage Shada during his first season, he chopped back the story to four parts and he felt it was better for it. I've also seen him say somewhere he would consider doing the novelisations when he has nothing left to write.

I was thinking about the list of Who spin-offs and was quite astounded - Star Trek doesn't seem to have anything similar, aside from the computer games. No audio adventures I'm aware of, nor videos featuring say, the Cardassians. Is it because they actually get television spin-offs and Who isn't on TV any more? Interestingly, Star Trek spawned cartoon - something Doctor Who has ventured into yet.

There has been some discussion on producing an animated Who series, but it hasn't gone any farther than that--discussion.

Back in the 70's Power Records & Peter Pan records released some Star Trek audio adventures for children on records, accompanied by comic books.

Were they adaptations of novels or completely new adventures?

I believe they were new adventures.

Thought of something else that could be novelised - the other unmade season, Season 27. Some of that probably filtered into the New Adventures but there are other scripts out there probably gathering dust.

I s t u p i d l y considered novelisations of the two Dalek films starring Peter Cushing but let's face it, we've already goes those novelisations with Hartnell as the Doctor.
However, if Doctor Who publishing was as big as it is now back in 1965, they probably could have released tie-in movie novelisations as well and no one would have batted an eyelid.

If Doctor Who in general was as it was circa 1965, we may have had a giant white structurally-magnificent Millennium Dalek. Which could have incorporated a Death Zone, a Waiting Zone... (are there any other zones?)

Or maybe not.

The unloading zone?

It wouldn't be called the Death Zone, it would be called the Extermination Zone. Other Zones would include The Annihilation Zone and the Destruction Zone (both indistinguishable from the Extermination Zone), and the My-Vision-Is-Impaired-I-Cannot-See Zone.

I've now been to that idiotic Millennium Dome thing (I got a free ticket, I wouldn't want anyone to think I PAID for the dubious privilege) and guess what...it's got a TARDIS in it! In the 'future' section of the Transport Zone, alongside Star Trek quotes and enormous Thunderbird pictures, there is...a blue police box! It's only a few inches high, it's more square than oblong, and it's got white round the window frames for some reason...but at least they _tried_.

Curse those generic Star Trek quotes! It's a shame the Doctor never adopted a more prolific turn of phrase, and that the entire series has really only produced "Exterminate", which is all very well but hardly clever or insightful. So we get "To boldly go" and "Beam me up Scotty" as a testament to British innovation and ingenuity. Fitting. Completely fitting.

The Dome is a complete waste of many pounds and I hate it. Won't touch it. I suppose the only reason I'd go there would be because it was once the location for a certain Cyber battle. Wasted on Silver Nemesis, of course, which incidentily shares a lot with the Dome. Going into List Mode:

1) The aforementioned location
2) Both compared badly to other projects which did comparatively better, (The Millennium Eye, Remembrance of the Daleks)
3) Empty and vaccuous and full of disappointments
4) The product outline came before the content
5) Both meant as a celebration
6) You can wait for hours for something exciting to happen
7) Lots of little things slapped together to make a messy, uncoordinated whole
8) Both graced by royalty
9) Lots of superficial glitz and razzmattazz
10) Oh I can't think of any more

Of course, I'm quite glad the Doctor doesn't spout cliches and catchphrases. But perhaps he could've said with mock-Trek gravitas "We've just gone back in Time!" in everything from Marco Polo to The Time Warrior, and "We've gone forward in Time!" in everything from The Sensorites to Mysterious Planet. Then Alistair McGowan might have something to work with. "Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow" is something Pertwee plugged in interviews and conventions in an attempt to try and grab some last minute fame and notoriety. And even then it doesn't have that bite. "Jelly Baby?" doesn't cut it. But one thing's for sure, there has to be more to the show than "Exterminate". I've just looked at the length of this posting and have realised I've gone off on one...

What if they had free target novelisations there? - he asks, desperately trying to get the thread back on track.

Who wants to get back on track? PJW's quite right...when the Guardian newspaper did Pass Notes for Doctor Who a few years ago, in the 'Don't say' section they put 'Beam me up Scotty' and in the 'Do say' section all they could think of was 'Come, let me show you my TARDIS, my dear' which doesn't have much of a ring to it. I'm rather fond of 'Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow' myself, but even with my minimal knowledge of physics I know that neutrons don't flow.

We *think* neutrons don't flow but the Time Lords have obviously discovered something we haven't yet.

Yeah, that's what I keep telling my sceptical friends, two of whom unfortunately have science doctorates and fall about laughing at me.

UNBELIEVERS! Just remember what happened to the failproof (it failed) and Titanic the unsinkable (it sank) - we laugh at a lot of science from 300 years ago, 300 years from now people will do the same with what we think is cutting edge now. Neutrons will flow...

Yeah, but do they have polarity?

Maybe they do at the sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-neutronic level - we just can't see it yet.

Perhaps we ought to take it more literally.

"Reverse the polarity of the neutron, Flo."

Who is Flo? Is it a piece of aparatus on him he as named Flo. It's not beyond him if he can name his car Bessie.

"I've just reversed the polarity of the neutron, Flo" indicates it is more likely an invisible friend and not a device that can somehow reverse polarities, as he wouldn't be telling the device he has reversed the neutrons with the bloody obvious.

The Pinnacle cover of Revenge of the Cybermen is generally okay. It features a golden moon (Voga) in the backround with a Cyberman and a Vogan in the foreground (left to right). Surprisingly the artist must have seen some reference material as the Cyberman looks okay, and the Vogan is surprisingly similar to the TV version (although a bit more lifelike).
However, next to Voga is a small round object that looks a little like the Death Star. (Maybe the artist thought that was how Nerva Beacon should look?) Approaching Voga is a spacecraft that looks unlike any seen in the story.

Maybe he was only given certain reference photographs and had to use his imagination for the rest?

Many of the Terror of the Autons covers show a one-eyed beast with tentacles and everything, despite the fact we only see a crappy white outline. Even in Spearhead, we didn't see that much.

Speaking of novelisations, did you know Gareth Roberts was briefly engaged to novelise Revelation of the Daleks and even did a basic outline for Virgin but Eric Saward changed his mind and decided he didn't want someone else to novelise it.

The cover of Doctor Who & The Loch Ness Monster (Terror Of The Zygons) shows a better looking Scarasen than seen in the show. (But I suppose that's a cheap shot. ;-) The Zygon, however, is green rather than reddish-orange.

This may sound weird, but the novelisations for Power/Evil of the Daleks don't seem like 'proper' novelisations to me - well, not in The Loch Ness Monster sense at any rate. Both these books really ought to have had 130 pages, a Chris Achilleos cover and text so large you have to hold them a metre away from your face to read them. So the idea of Revelation getting novelised is not something I get excited about. I think part of the problem is that, for me, these books were originally a way for me to access stories I had never seen before, and now in this video age, I find myself not really caring if certain titles are in my collection or not. Completists may be concerned about missing the four un-novelised titles from their collections - and so they should having gone the whole way - but I myself have no desperate need to have The Pirate Planet in book form. Don't get me wrong - I loved what Target did. But these new imprints don't capture what I liked about them.

This is an area of Doctor Who that will always be a past love - of school libraries with battered copies of The Cave Monsters and The Claws of Axos and The Tenth Planet, (and checking in the front of the books to see how many people had taken them out), and the now-rare sight of a classroom book with a Yeti on the front. Those were the days. When you would read a book and yet again face the confusion as to who these companions with the Doctor were. Who the hell was Dodo? for example. And reading The Abominable Snowmen and assuming the Doctor looked like Tom Baker.

I guess what I'm saying is that if Revelation gets done, what point will it serve? It is now on video, has been repeated on TV, and has been dissected and talked about for donkey's years. If Eric Saward/Gareth Roberts/JK Rowling cover it, we'll still hark back to how like the television version it may or may not be. Oh it can embellish it, tease out characters and plotlines and offer explanations for discrepencies, but how much will it matter?

The cover of the Pinnacle edition of Doctor Who and The Android Invasion shows a backdrop of a planet (Earth?) & a moon, or distant world. In front are 3 figures facing right. The Doctor, a maintenance droid and a Kraal, presumably Stygron.

For the most part the artist did a good job on the figures, although the Kraal is green whereas in the show they appear to be more brown.
Also he showed the Kraal as having a normal type nose, with a connecting bridge. However in the show, if you look carefully at the Kraal profile, what appears to be the bridge of the nose is actually a small horn. This is difficult to see, even looking for it, so even if the artist had a reference picture, he might not have spotted it.

PJW: What point does it serve in novelising feature films? Simple answer: people will buy them.

I wish Eddie Saward novelised 'Made in Singapore' :(

It's Eric Saward. And those no reason why someone else can't because the rights would belong to Robert Holmes' estate.

*eric* saward then (e!)
Sure, there is no reason why no one else can, I just don't think it will happen now because there is no avenue for it to be published in nor does anyone want to publish it.

Wonder what ever happened to those Titan script books....?

Heya, I just finished reading the Target novelisation of 'The Massacre', and I was wondering if anyone out there has heard the audio, read the script, or is old enough to remember seeing it, and would be able to tell how similar the novelisation is to the television serial?
Obviously I know that the Time Lord stuff wouldn't have been in there, but some of the book just struck me as odd, I dunno... like it had been changed to fit the space and didn't reflect the four episodes - it certainly didn't seem to fit with the impression I got from David J. Howe's television companion.

You can find a copy of the script (or, at least, a transcript of the audio tape) at

http://www.bw.edu/~jcurtis/Scripts/scripts_project.htm

Onscreen, Davison doesn't get a line at the end of Logopolis but I always liked what Bidmead added to the end of the novelisation, just after the regeneration:
"Well, that's the end of that," said a voice they had not heard before. "But it's probably the start of something completely different!"

Yeah, I've seen those scripts, they s uck, as they have no directions.

Thank god that line wasn't included in the 'real' Logopolis, Chris. Do people really want to interrupt their mourning for Tom Baker by bursting into hysterical laughter on being suddenly reminded of Monty Python?

Is that a Monty Python line, really? Or just something Python-esque?

Hey, I use that line for myself when I try to reassure myself when major changes are happening in my life.

Yes, John Cleese used to say "And now for something completely different" while dressed as a newsreader.

I'm familiar with that - but it never crossed my mind when reading that line in the novelisation.

Out of interest, does anybody on the board vehemently collect the Target range? I've started reading the DWM Target history and I have to say I find it fascinating. Time was EVERY classroom of EVERY school stocked at least one battered copy. Seeing all those little cover reproductions in the magazine brought back so many memories. I also recall, it's just sprung to mind, how gutted I was to find that the guy at the start of the Invasion of the Dinosaurs novelisation, (Shewie?), had nothing to do with the televised adventure at all.

I do. I have all but about 28 titles in my collection. Like the original novels, the Target books range wildly from awful to better than the televised story. I've enjoyed the novelizations of the missing stories, since I've never seen any reconstructed videos.

Lately they've become harder to find. Obviously they are out of print, but I've also had a hard time finding them in used books stores.

I've got a fair few too - 100 maybe? But I can't recall the last time I read one. Still haven't gotten around to reading The Pescatons novelisation yet, and I've never heard the record, either.

I've recently gotten back into them, I'm currently trying to finish off my collection, but I'm missing about 14 - mostly 7th Doctor novelisations.

I love 'em, every one in my grade used to read them back in primary school.

The cover of the Pinnacle version of Doctor Who & The Talons of Weng-Chiang features the face of Chang as a backdrop, with Magnus Greel, looking like a pulp novel character, to the right and a rat to the left and bottom middle a girl in the essence converter.

Art Nit: The cover shows the girl surrounded by two rods with electricity going from them to her head, and her hair is standing on end, while in the show a red 'mist' would surround the victim and then show them dead.

Note: When I bought this book mumble mumble years ago, the sales girl saw the rat and went "Eeeew!" I thought that was amusing. I wonder how she would react if she actually saw the rat from the show?

Dunno if someone has mentioned this before but I'm gonna say it anyway, so nyah.
There's a rare hardcover version of 'Doctor Who and the Zarbi' that has the 4th Doctor on the cover, being spoken to by the Animus through that tube/head chamber thing it uses.

Wouldn't some stories have been better if they'd featured different Doctors? Could you imagine what The Web Planet might've been like with Tom Baker? Or Survival with Jon Pertwee? Or Remembrance of the Daleks with Patrick Troughton? If only the TV series could've taken the liberties the book covers seemed to!

This Saturday a second-hand bookshop is opening in town, and I can see a selection of Target novelisations on the shelves. I have the whole series, but I know that not everyone here is so fortunate, so if anyone wants to e-mail me a list of titles they need, I might be able to get some of them.

The cover of the novelisation of The Reign of Terror appears to feature pop star George Michael. The cover artist was clearly short of reference material and as far as I can tell took his inspiration from a publicity shot taken just before Wham! split up in 1986. If anyone has the book he is the one who is the guard looking down rather sadly (and just check that 'designer stubble' look a couple of centuries early).

Christopher H Bidmead - what an appalling author. Not only are his books excruciatingly boring (admittedly it would be difficult for Logopolis to be anything else) but he achieves the impossible and actually makes the dreaded scarf-unravelling scene in Castrovalva (the most tramatic event of my childhood - well OK, I'm exaggerating slightly) EVEN WORSE by having the Doctor *shudders* strip off all his other clothes (bar one shirt!) as well!!!

What do you expect from a Computer Journalist, then ?
I think he now has a monthly column in a U.K Personal Computer Magazine (P.C User ?) concentrating on GNU/Linux & Unix O/S implementation on P.C's !
(He used to be "Personal Computer World's" Linux Columnist, but moved to P.C User early this Year !)
Yours,busy dodging "Tar" balls from a Irate Penguin ! (not Frobisher BTW !)

This is interesting - these guys in New Zealand have written their own novelisations of the stories that are missing from the Target print run - The Pirate Planet, City of Death, Shada, Resurrection of the Daleks and Revelation of the Daleks.

You can order them as well... here's the link: http://nzdwfc.tetrap.com/cat/novelisations.html#res

and there's a FAQ about them: http://nzdwfc.tetrap.com/cat/faq.html

With the return of the new series and the realisation that kids do actualy read books (thanks to Harry Potter) I wonder if the Target books would find a market if they were re-published?

Since my last question received such a stunning response on here I've decided to ask another. Are novelisations planned for the new series?

(If so will Eccles have a 'pleasantly open face'?)

Pleasantly open?

I should think something more like "a nose that could be used as a can opener & a practically non-existant hairstyle". ;-)

But then I haven't seen that many pics of him so I could be misrememberering his features.

I don't remember the novelisations ever commenting on the Doctors' noses before now. Which, in the Pertwee era, must have taken some self-restraint. (I'd notice that splendid beak long before I'd notice the young/old face and the shock of white hair. Especially as the face isn't in the least young and the hair is actually grey.)

I don't think they're planning any novelisations, but there are three books (for KIDS!) coming out starring Our New Hero.

I think The Five Doctors novelisation might have mentioned the prominent nose that seemed to have been present in most of his incarnations?

The Monsters Inside accuses our Doctor of having 'heavy features'. The cheek of it.

Well, the Sixth Doctor did get rather heavy at one stage.

Oh, the SIXTH Doctor, that's different, he could get accused of being the size of an elephant and I wouldn't bat an eyelid, but this was our sacred Ecclestonian darling being libelled in this way.

Did jon pertwee like colin baker refuse to do the regeneration sequance

and who thinks colin bakers script writing was rubbish???

Jon Pertwee did do the regeneration sequence. He regenerated into Tom Baker at the very end of "Planet of the Spiders." The sequence was so good, they showed it again at the beginning of "Robot."

If you mean scripts that C.Baker wroter being rubbish, he didn't write any. If you mean the quality of scripts written for C. Baker, I think just about anyone here would agree there was some stinkers during his time. Certainly those written by Pip and Jane Baker (no relation) were pretty awful. And the idea of, let alone the actual dramatization of, "The Trial of a Time Lord" left a lot to be desired.

Yeah, I'd say Colin Baker was unbelievably unlucky in that approx 95% of his scripts were rubbish (the exception being bits of Varos. The bits not involving nappied cannibals, avian transformations, acid baths, etc). Bad stories with a great Doctor (e.g. most of season 17) or good stories with a weak Doctor (e.g. most of the Davison era) are still thorougly enjoyable, but combine Colin Baker and Colin Baker's coat with the writers they had in seasons 22 and 23 and suddenly you're lunging for the off-switch.

I noticed listenin to C. Baker in the audio adventures that he'd toned down his performance quite a bit from his time on TV. That made a big difference. It also fits in with the whole I'm-worried-I'm-becoming-the-Valyard theory that the M/PDAs seem to favor.

I think the fact we can't SEE him is as important to the Sixth's Doctor's audio rehabilitation as the toning-down. That and the fact Big Finish give him most of their (extremely limited) supply of decent scripts.

I'm sure the not seeing that coat is a contributing factor, but I also think that Colin has toned down his Brian Blessed-ness. A lot of times it sounds as if CB is just having a pleasant chat with you the listener.

Shouldn't this thread be under Who in Print?

Quite possibly. I'm pondering (along with where to stick the Quick Reads and the Files). When Mike set this up, Who in Print was for CANONICAL books, but boy has the new series put paid to THAT.

Yes, several of the categories in this section are "in print."

Yeah, but they're also apocryphal. And bear in mind that Who in Print is blessed with 357 threads, whereas Apocrypha - even after I massively beefed it up - only has 23.

OK. You win. Gods forbid any accusations of illogicality should hang over MY board. 'Who in Print' has been repaced with 'The Novels' just to clarify matters. (*Reproachful look* I LIKED 'Who in Print'.) The first person to start debating whether Telos novellas count as novels will be put up against the nearest wall and shot. Metaphorically speaking. On the other hand, any suggestions about what to do with the 'Other Original Who Fiction' section when most of 'em are unoriginal novelisations will be welcomed with open arms...

So do Telos novellas count as novels?

The first person to start debating whether Telos novellas count as novels will be put up against the nearest wall and shot.

Unless it's Rodney of course, he just can't help himself, poor dear...

heh heh

From Gallifrey Base:

The range of Target Novelisation adaptations from Audio Go is about to enter new territory with the first original novelisation of a televised story.

Previously penned by Terrance Dicks, this year sees Doctor Who and The Stones of Blood being released as a brand new version written by its original television script writer, David Fisher.

This is a one-off for the time being...

They have GOT to be kidding.

Haven't they?

Ah, bless, Shada is to be novelised by Gareth Roberts! A mere three decades late...wonder if the other Adams stories will be available too, eventually...

...A £16.99 hardback!!!!

Either the BBC is taking the mickey, or inflation is MUCH worse than I thought.

Terrance Dicks dyes his hair. Maybe he's trying to be one of his descriptions of the Doctor?

I don't THINK he's ever described a Doctor as 'fat, old and prone to groping'...

I ruined my copy of Web of Fear while trying to read it in the bath.

It'll dry out.

Luckily it's not one of the ones they've reprinted with new introductions and are attempting to flog at a fiver apiece, so you won't be tempted to buy a new one...

Well. The new editions are quite sweet, with their Introductions and 'Between the Lines' essays and in-depth descriptions of all the regulars (one line on the changing face of Doctor Who was sufficient in MY young day).

And the Auton Invasion:

Ah, the intro is by some Russell T Davies bloke ('You may remember mne from such classics as Children In Need Cutaway and Tonight's the Night's Alien Talent Search with John Barrowman'). Adorable account of being a child-Who-fan (though nothing beats the adorableness of Matthew Waterhouse's account, of course).

The 'About the Authors' mentions Terrance Dicks' BBC books but not his Virgin ones, funnily enough.

'Some of [Holmes'] scripts are considered amongst the absolute best ever' - that's a rather clumsy way of phrasing it.

And the Abominable Snowmen:

Intro by Stephen Baxter, who mistakenly declares that 'As a Who fan you're sure to be aware that Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons had just made its TV debut' - as a TRUE Who fan I was blissfully unaware of the very existence of such a programme, at least until Nitcentrallers started comparing Captain Jack to Captain Scarlet.

Dunno why 'Between the Lines' is acting like Britain has gone metric. Cos it really hasn't.

And the Cybermen:

Intro by Gareth Roberts. 'The Doctor in this book is simultaneously distant as a star and reassuring as a teddy bear' - bless!

'Gerry and the other Target mainstays never produced a boring page. They were incapable of it' - SLIGHT exaggeration there, but on the whole my GOD he was spot-on that one boring book could ruin a child's life (experience of reading. Whatever).

Ben isn't in the BRITISH Navy, you morons, he's in the Merchant Navy. It's a completely different thing. I think.

Me (a dozen years ago) - The cover of the Pinnacle edition of Doctor Who And The Doomsday Machine (Colony In Space) has some oddities on the cover, especially when compared to the TV version.

Above the creature is another mammalian type animal with sharp teeth. I have no idea what this is supposed to represent in the story.
Having recently reread the book I realized that it's the priest class of the planet's natives. D'oh!

Nothing to be ashamed of, it took a minute of wracking my brains to remember there WAS a priest class.

Yeah, they pretty much only show up to put things/people into the furnace. The thing in the furnace is far more memorable.

On either side of the creature and animal are two half-faces, one has a brown eye, the other has a green eye, so they must represent two different people, but both of them resemble the Master. (Artistically you would use two half-faces to represent either the hero and villain, or two threats that the hero must face, but I don't what the artist here was going for.)
And as I went to sleep last night it dawned on me that one of the half-faces could have represented the Captain of the IMC ship. D'oh!

one of the half-faces could have represented the Captain of the IMC ship

Just checked my copy and...obviously a different edition. The Master's face with a couple of freaky natives in the background.

RODNEY (in The Savages section):

I can't remember a resurrection OR revelation novel....

Yeah - where the hell ARE they? And if they don't exist, why didn't we NOTICE when we've spent DECADES pining for a Pirate Planet and a soon-to-be-released-at-a-mere-seventeen-quid Shada? Why didn't we spend TSLABYOD campaigning for their release?

Yeah, I was talking about the Pinnacle Edition, (Target's US imprint).

Well since Emily has been putting novelization nits on the show boards I'll put the nits I find in the novelizations there, but stuff that the author of the novelization had little or no control over (covers, back cover blurbs, other stuff added by some editor) here.

Doctor Who And The Auton Invasion by Terrance Dicks (Target Books)

Back Cover: Says that this is the first story of the third incarnation of Doctor Who.
Insert standard rant about the Doctor's name.

Describes the Autons as "giant-sized".
While some are described as bigger than ordinary humans, others are the same size.

Describes the Nestene Consciousness as a "squid-like monster of cosmic proportions and indescribably hideous appearance."
1. While I might describe the squid-like body as big or large I would hardly describe it as cosmic, (after all on TV it wasn't even as big as a real life giant squid or a colossal squid). Frankly a creature would have to dwarf a skyscraper to even begin to be described as "cosmic".
2. I find it ironic that the back-cover blurb writer described it as indescribable after describing the thing as squid-like.

Doctor Who And The Day Of The Daleks by Terrance Dicks (Pinnacle Books)

This was the first book Pinnacle (a division of Target) put out, to coincide with the syndication of Doctor Who episodes by Time-Life Television in 1979, & as such includes information to introduce Americans to who the Doctor, his companions & enemies are.

The description of what the show is about is more fitting for the 4th Doctor then the 3rd Doctor.

The Daleks
Says that the Kaleds "were genetically crippled by centuries of warfare with neighboring planets."
Huh? It was a war on their own planet. The Kaleds didn't even know about life on other planets until the Doctor showed up

"and they are so vicious they make R2D2 look like a simpering, lily-livered robot."
Huh? When was R2D2 ever presented as "vicious"? You'd think they would want to compare the Daleks to an actual villain such as 'makes Darth Vader look like a whining, momma's boy!'

Doctor Who And His Companions
Ahem... The Doctor

Jo Grant
"she's also smart"
...

Introducing Doctor Who by Harlan Ellison
Given that this was only published in the American Pinnacle editions, I wonder if Emily has ever read this? She'd probably like it. Heck, parts of it sound like things Emily has written.

Ellison recounts a speech he gave at a World Science Fiction Convention. I'm not nitting it, I just thought Emily would like to read this part.
"Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; Close Encounters is obscurantist drivel; 'Star Trek' can turn your brain to puree of bat guano; and the greatest science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who! And I'll take you all on, one at a time or all in a bunch to back it up!"

Once or twice through the introduction he does seem to refer to the Doctor as Doctor Who.

"the robot threat of the Daleks".
They are not robots, they are more like small, squishy beings in tanks.

Back Cover. Says the Daleks "have one goal - total world power."
World? That's thinking small for a space-faring race.

The book ends with 4 pages of advertisement for the Blade book series.
Struck me as an odd choice since Doctor Who (the classic series, anyway) was very chaste & meant for all ages & the Blade series was known for having two, or three, sex scenes per book. (Not that the sex scenes were the only reason people read the books... I mean, some people read Playboy for the articles, right?)

Doctor Who And The Doomsday Weapon by Malcolm Hulke (Pinnacle Books)

This was the second in the Pinnacle editions.

The Master
Refers to The Doctor as Doctor Who.

About Time Lords it says, "They don't age."
However the first chapter has an old Time Lord of over 2000 training his replacement. Sure sounds like aging to me. Additionally, if they didn't age then that would mean the First Doctor looked like an aged William Hartnell from 'birth' to his first regeneration.

"As to the Doctor, while he is not genuinely fond of the Master".
They're kidding, right?

Back Cover: Refers to the Doctor as Doctor Who.

The Back Cover also mentions that the Doctor is a very mature Time Lord at 750, but the first chapter has a Time Lord who is over 2000.
If 750 is mature, what is 2000?

Doctor Who And The Dinosaur Invasion by Malcolm Hulke (Pinnacle Books)

This was the third of the Pinnacle editions.

Back cover: "Three hundred and fifty million years ago, dinosaurs crawled the earth, devouring everything in sight".
1. The oldest known dinosaur is 220 million years old.
2. While there may have been times when dinosaurs crawled, they did have an upright gait and they could walk, run, possibly trot & cantor as well.
3. If they devoured everything in sight then life would have ended.

Refers to the Doctor as Doctor Who.

Interior: Claims that this story is about the Fourth Doctor.
However, I don't believe the text of the actual story was rewritten from the British original. No references to a long scarf, or hat, or shock of curly hair.

The Dinosaurs
"Three hundred and fifty million years ago, reptiles were the first animals to breed on land"
IIRC insects & spiders were breeding on land millions of years before the first reptile.

Doctor Who and The Genesis of the Daleks by Terrance Dicks (Pinnacle Books)

This was the fourth of the Pinnacle editions.

Back Cover: Refers to the Doctor as Doctor Who.

"sent to Skaro, the home of their creation, at a point before their existance"
Home of their creation? Makes it sound like the Daleks created something here. Wonder if the blurb writer was considering other lines like, 'home of their creator' or 'source of their creation' or 'planet of their creation' & just got confused when he actually typed it?

"Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; Close Encounters is obscurantist drivel; 'Star Trek' can turn your brain to puree of bat guano; and the greatest science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who! And I'll take you all on, one at a time or all in a bunch to back it up!"

I HAD read that somewhere...I had no idea it came from a novelisation.

Once or twice through the introduction he does seem to refer to the Doctor as Doctor Who.

Grrr! The cretin is obviously No True Fan!

About Time Lords it says, "They don't age."

I suppose it's just about acceptable hyperbole if you're talking to a mere human. Tennant did SAY he didn't age in School Reunion, despite blatantly ageing a good ten years between Parting of the Ways and End of Time...

"As to the Doctor, while he is not genuinely fond of the Master".
They're kidding, right?

They obviously haven't seen Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords.

Back cover: "Three hundred and fifty million years ago, dinosaurs crawled the earth, devouring everything in sight".
1. The oldest known dinosaur is 220 million years old.
2. While there may have been times when dinosaurs crawled, they did have an upright gait and they could walk, run, possibly trot & cantor as well.
3. If they devoured everything in sight then life would have ended.

You don't know when you're well off. What about the Cave Monsters' infamous back cover: 'a 40 ft. high Tyrannosaurus rex, the biggest, most savage mammal which ever trod the earth!' (Tragically, the recent reprints have rewritten the blurbs...who the hell do they think they ARE!)

Claims that this story is about the Fourth Doctor.

It WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT!

Doctor Who and The Revenge Of The Cybermen (Pinnacle Books)

The back cover blurb calls him Doctor Who instead of The Doctor.

The back cover blurb refers to a poison that will work against the Cybermen.
Well, I suppose if you stretch your imagination to the farthest extreme you could call gold a poison, but as it physically clogs the Cybermen's parts it's more like plaque buildup in the arteries. ;-)

The Creation Of The Cybermen
According to this little bio of the Cybermen they come from the planet Telos. Mondas doesn't even get a mention.

NANJAO. At the end of the book they have a survey for readers to say what they thought of this book & even mentions that some lucky reader might get their name used in an upcoming Pinnacle novel.
I wonder if anyone actually did win that & see their name used?

The back cover blurb calls him Doctor Who instead of The Doctor.

They do that A LOT.

I'd sneer at their bizarre prehistoric beliefs if only RTG hadn't done the same thing for Season 1/27. Before Tennant came along and told him it was actually THE DOCTOR, thank you very much.

The back cover blurb refers to a poison that will work against the Cybermen.
Well, I suppose if you stretch your imagination to the farthest extreme you could call gold a poison, but as it physically clogs the Cybermen's parts it's more like plaque buildup in the arteries. ;-)

Actually it clogs their breathing apparatus. Which is kinda odd, given that they don't actually breathe. I guess they knew they could get away with using the word 'poison', we just can't AFFORD to think about this issue too closely.

According to this little bio of the Cybermen they come from the planet Telos. Mondas doesn't even get a mention.

*Sigh* OK, that's irritating. But probably the lesser of two evils, when you think of Attack's cringe-making 'I bet they didn't tell you that they originally came from Earth's twin planet Mondas but that got destroyed so they moved to Telos' info-dump.

I wonder if anyone actually did win that & see their name used?

We NEED to know!

Still, anyone who missed out could dry their tears a few decades later and get themselves horribly killed in the Benny NA Ship of Fools...

They do that A LOT.
Yeeeeeeeeesssss... it does seem to be the default nit.

But wait'll you see what they did in the next book!

Doctor Who and The Loch Ness Monster (Pinnacle Books)

The back cover blurb calls him Doctor Who instead of The Doctor.

A Run In On The Moors
This was inside the front cover clip of a scene from the story. Although what caught my eye was that it started off "Doctor Who ran as fast as he could" & I knew Terrance Dicks wouldn't make that mistake, so I flipped through the book to find the scene. Yep, the actual line in the story starts off with "He" not "Doctor Who".

Comparing the front cover segment with the scene revealed that when the description read "monster" the editors added "Loch Ness" before it. When it was called a Skarasen the editors changed it to "Loch Ness monster" and they also changed "Broton" to "The Zygon".

They also mixed & matched paragraphs over a 3 page stretch to make the segment.

1st paragraph is from page 69.
2nd paragraph is from page 71.
3rd paragraph is from page 70.
4th paragraph is from pages 70 & 71.
5th paragraph is from page 71.
6th paragraph is from page 71.

The 2nd & 5th paragraphs are actually one whole paragraph on page 71.

The back of the book had an advertisement for a series about a detective named Solar Pons, which sounds like some kind of Sherlock Holmes knockoff. It contained a nit and since I was nitpicking anyway...
Page 144. After saving a gal. "I ran to his side and helped him move here to a chair."
Her, not here.

The back of the book had an advertisement...It contained a nit and since I was nitpicking anyway...

THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is DEDICATION.

Or a desperate cry for help, or a sign of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. ;-)

Oddly enough the next book I'm reading had the same Solar Pons excerpt, but they fixed the her/here nit.

Doctor Who and The Seeds Of Doom (Pinnacle Books)

The back cover blurb calls him Doctor Who instead of The Doctor.

Doctor Who and The Android Invasion (Pinnacle Books)

The back cover blurb calls him Doctor Who instead of The Doctor.

The back cover blurb mentions the coffin-like meteorites & then says, "Have the body snatchers returned?"
Unless there's an episode I've forgotten about this seems to be a reference to the movies (original & remake) Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, which isn't Doctor Who.

The back cover blurb mentions the coffin-like meteorites & then says, "Have the body snatchers returned?"
Unless there's an episode I've forgotten about this seems to be a reference to the movies (original & remake) Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, which isn't Doctor Who.

There is no such Who episode that I can think of! BURN THE BLASPHEMERS for contaminating Who covers with references to lesser programmes!

Doctor Who and The Masque Of Mandragora (Pinnacle Books)

The back cover blurb calls him Doctor Who instead of The Doctor.

Doctor Who and The Talons Of Weng-Chiang (Pinnacle Books)

The back cover blurb calls him Doctor Who instead of The Doctor.

"It's the Victorian London of Sherlock Holmes."
Doesn't that indicate that Sherlock Holmes exists as a person in the Whoniverse?

The back of the book advertisement is for The Executioner series. Not really a great match with Doctor Who as the Doctor rarely uses a gun. On the other hand the first book in the series was Pinnacle's first published book & it was a cash cow series for them so one can see why they'd want to hype it to potential new readers. I did laugh when they stated that Don Pendleton was not a house name for a bunch of different writers, though. Yeah, at the time he was still writing the books, it was only years later that it became a series with hundreds of different authors. (Technically it never actually became a house name the title of the series became "Don Pendleton's The Executioner" & the real author's names disappeared from the covers, but close enough.)

Aaaaaaaaand that's it for all my novelizations of Doctor Who. Good night everyone!

"It's the Victorian London of Sherlock Holmes."
Doesn't that indicate that Sherlock Holmes exists as a person in the Whoniverse?

Well, to be fair to the genre-confused blasphemers, he DOES exist in the Whoniverse, at least in All-Consuming Fire and Happy Endings. Plus, rather confusingly, Arthur Conan Doyle exists in Evolution.

The back of the book advertisement is for The Executioner series. Not really a great match with Doctor Who as the Doctor rarely uses a gun.

Maybe they're counting on any American kid reading a Who book being so fed up of the lack of guns they'll IMMEDIATELY turn to some trigger-happy bit of violence...Alternatively, as this was Talons, maybe they think the Doctor IS a gun-totin' nutcase.

Aaaaaaaaand that's it for all my novelizations of Doctor Who. Good night everyone!

Whaaaaat! Get back here THIS INSTANT! There are HUNDREDS more of the little bug- er, delights! How can you even THINK of stopping with Pinnacle!

Free! I'm free! You'll never catch me! Muhahahahahaha!!! ;-)

You may THINK you've escaped from the Targets, you...you QUITTER, but I'm prepared to bet that one day you shall come back, yes, you shall come back...

Well, considering that this was only the second time I had read the Pinnacles since I bought them back when they came out... seems unlikely...

The two Targets which I bought around the same time I've only read once. (I think I started to read The Auton Invasion back then, but set it aside & didn't finish it.)

DIDN'T FINISH THE AUTON INVASION!!!

It's an all-time classic!

It's the ONLY Target novelisation that Terrance Dicks actually puts any EFFORT into.

Doctor Who and The Dinosaur Invasion

The television story Invasion of the Dinosaurs routinely comes in for criticism for the realisation of the dinosaurs, despite the fact that they are literally a sideshow with the real plot revolving around the conspiracy to bring about Operation Golden Age. In print there is less risk of the dinosaur effects letting the side down, and with Malcolm Hulke already having a strong track record at producing novelisations all the portents seem in favour for this adaptation. However sometimes having such favourable circumstances can result in the finished product being so over anticipated that the outcome can be a major disappointment.

Fortunately that is not the case here. As ever Hulke takes the opportunity to show events from the point of view of individual characters, even right down to dinosaurs as they seek to come to terms with the world around them as they arrive in the twentieth century and there is a sense that they are as terrified as the humans. The human characters come across as equally sympathetic, with Whitaker portrayed as a man driven by a self-righteous ego, disliking much of the details of his operation and those he has to work with but driven by the shared goal of making the Earth a better place. Butler also translates well, gaining a noticeable scar on his face which makes him unliked by others, most notably Whitaker, but in an especially effective scene he reveals how he obtained it whilst working as a fire fighter saving a child's life. Such little touches help to make each character come to life and so the novel feels more alive than many a more mundane translation of a script to the printed page.

Hulke makes a few subtle changes to the story as well. Gone is the Doctor's futuristic car, replaced by more conventional military vehicles as he moves through London (as in the original scripts) whilst there's an interesting sequence at the start in which we are introduced to Shughie McPherson, a Glaswegian football fan who passes out during the evacuation of London and finds himself in an abandoned street, surviving until he encounters something that finishes him off, thus instantly attracting and holding the reader's interest (especially the casual buyer glancing at the first few pages in a bookshop).

If there's one area which Hulke does not devote too much time too, it is the "space travellers" heading towards New Earth and the images of Earth as an overpopulated and polluted environment. Hulke devoted a good chunk of Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon and Doctor who and the Green Death to these themes so to once more retread the same ground would have become repetitive, especially given the limited space within the book. The one really noticeable weakness is the characterisation of the Brigadier. He states that he never thought he'd see the day when he has to blow up London Underground stations (I wonder if the fledgling Doctor Who Appreciation Society had a field day crucifying this novelisation on its original printing, especially given one of the other adaptations in the same year...). More generally the Brigadier is portrayed as the comic buffoon of the later Pertwee years who makes blatently obvious and irrelevant comments that send the character up. Given that onscreen Invasion of the Dinosaurs is one of the noticeable exceptions to this, showing the Brigadier and UNIT in a more serious light, Hulke's decision to go with the more comical portrayal is a surprise and the result is the one weakness in an otherwise strong book.

More generally the Brigadier is portrayed as the comic buffoon of the later Pertwee years who makes blatently obvious and irrelevant comments that send the character up.

Ah, I hadn't noticed. That's a shame. It doesn't really matter how stupid the Brig gets on-screen - as long as Nicholas Courtney is saying the lines you'll love him ANYWAY. A book is, of course, a different matter.

Doctor Who and the Crusaders

Imagine a Doctor Who book in which another culture potrayed sympathetically. A conflict in which neither side is shown as being "right". Philosophical discussions about the nature of time travel and history. Hints of sexual relations that were considered a taboo. One of the Doctor's companions dressed in an extremely kinky outift. Sadistic scenes of torture. Love sprucing for companions of the Doctor.

You're probably all thinking that I've picked up the wrong book and am in fact reviewing one of the Virgin New Adventures. But Doctor Who and the Crusaders has all of the above and more.

This novelisation was written over forty-five years ago and whilst it may occasionally show its age (the terms "Negro" and "Negress" are used several times, something that it's hard to imagine even the 1970s Target novelisations doing) it nevertheless remains a highly readable book to this day. Unlike Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks and Doctor Who and the Zarbi there was no obvious reason in 1966 for this novelisation to be written and yet that enhances the book since it feels as though it was written with loving care and attention. David Whitaker had a strong vision of how he saw the series and this manifests itself throughout the book. Each character is lovingly crafted and really comes to life with backstories often expounded upon as we learn more about how the Lord Chamberlain keeps the court running or how Haroun ed Diin and his family came to grief at the hands of El Akir. There is also further development of the potential romance between Ian and Barbara, making the story of Ian's quest to find Barbara into an epic romance.

The story follows broadly the same course as the televised version but the order of the scenes has been rearranged considerably, so there are now much longer sections with first the Doctor and Vicki then Barbara and then Ian. Although this means that there are times when characters are absent for long periods, never once does this become noticeable as the narrative speeds along towards the climax. There are many subtle enhancements to scenes that allow for material that could not be shown on television, whether more grandiose sets than could be achieved on the series' budget or the suggestion of incest between Richard and Joanna that was removed from the television show.

As noted above, there is much in this book that would not normally be expected from a standard television novelisation and in many ways it can be seen as the forerunner of many trends in the New Adventures. Indeed it makes the reader sad that David Whitaker did not live long enough to produce an original Doctor Who novel as both his novelisations suggest that he would have produced one of the most thought provoking and mature novels. I especially like the prologue (although continuity pedants will pick up on the statements that Susan has been left in the twenty-first century to marry David Cameron) in which Ian asks the Doctor just why they are able to influence events on alien worlds but not on Earth. Whilst the Doctor's explanation that Time is like fate and impossible to alter may not answer all the questions it raises, it is astonishing to find such a willingness to address head on an issue traditionally overlooked on television or simply brushed aside as "You can't rewrite history! Not one line!"

As the only historical novelisation for many years and rereleased in the 1970s alongside the Dalek and Zarbi novelisations, Doctor Who and the Crusaders has often been overlooked and dismissed by those more interested in the science-fiction side of the series. But it is one of the strongest novelisations of all, showing a highly imaginative development of the television story and deserves far more attention than it has received.

continuity pedants will pick up on the statements that Susan has been left in the twenty-first century to marry David Cameron

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

deserves far more attention than it has received

It's quite lucky NOT to have got much attention! Mary Whitehouse would have had a FIT!

Malcolm Hulke wasn't responsible for the Christian propaganda. He was a liberal humanist and had a humanist funeral. Blame the Target higher-ups.

But why on Earth would the Target higher-ups ONLY insert Christian propaganda into HULKE books? There sure as hell weren't any Dicks moments when the pleasant open-faced/vaguely Bohemian-looking/man with a young-old face and shock of white hair told the very small, very pretty girl that Jesus Saves...

Dicks' mentioned Hulke's humanist funeral and Sherwin mentioned Hulke's lefty political views.

Someone must have forced Hulke. Its no co-incidence that about this time there was a lot of backlash against the decline of attendance in church pews.

The best-ever film about the life of Jesus is 'The Gospel According to St Matthew' by atheist communist Pier Paolo Pasolini. Just because Hulke was a humanist it doesn't necessarily follow that he can't have an interest in Christian mythology or value Jesus for his ethical teachings.

And I really can't see anyone at Target smuggling pro-Christian messagery into the books in the 1970s as a matter of editorial policy!

I don't think referencing Christianity is necesarily propaganda.

Now if the Doctor had said or done things like:

"Silurians survived the Great Flood by going into suspended animation underground!"

"Jo, you must go to church every Sunday to save your soul!"

"Master, accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior before it's too late!"

"Brigadier, praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!"

Or the Doctor getting on his knees to pray and a lightning bolt coming out of the blue to zap the Daleks.

Or the Doctor getting on his knees to pray and a lightning bolt coming out of the blue to zap the Daleks.

I'd pay to see the look on his face if THAT ever happened

Tenth Planet new edition introduction by Tom MacRae:

He DIDN'T KNOW about Target novelisations! HOW could he NOT KNOW???

'A pocket-sized paper TARDIS' is the PERFECT description of 'em once the penny finally dropped, anyway.

Ark in Space's introduction by Steven Moffat:

'Frequently, the most thrilling visualisation of a Doctor Who story wouldn't be on the telly, it would be on the front cover of the book that came after' - no it wouldn't.

Is Ark in Space really 'possibly the only story you can imagine with any of the various regular casts'? Can't say I'd noticed.

'Magically, impossibly, an actor from the show, had written the book of it. Surely now anything was possible? I'd like to say that this was the exact moment I decided, one day, to become the Doctor Who showrunner. But actually I just decided to go straight home and read the book' - ah, bless!

and we're down to nit-picking introductions to novels.... I think a few more K-9 episodes are in order.... at least they are episodes....

or watch some more of the dvd features...

Moderator's Note: moved from 'Original Series: Season Eight: Colony in Space' section:

This is one of a handful of stories I read not-too-long before I watched it. It was one of that handful of stories that was published by a company other than Target (though Target later published it here as well). This is the cover, which was my first image of the story. It was obviously painted by someone who'd never seen the story, yet whose interpretation would have been preferable.
http://img1.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/n2/n11290.jpg
Think I might have pictured Tom Baker. Although I was aware of other Doctors, I hadn't yet seen Pertwee. (If memory serves, and it may not, I read this right around the time Castrovalva aired.)

Pinnacle was owned by Universal-Tandem who also owned Target so it was more like an American sister publisher to the British Target.

Ten novelizations were put out by Pinnacle.

Universal-Tandem was sold to Howard & Wyndham in 1975 and had merged into W.H. Allen by 1977, while the Pinnacle books didn't begin to appear until 1979.

I'd presume that Pinnacle were owned by Universal Publishing, who had owned Universal-Tandem prior to 1975?

Probably. I was going by what I had written on the Target Novelizations board years ago when I still had the Pinnacles.

Oh, the mess of trying to understand publishers when they have so many [bleeping] companies/imprints/brands/tax write-offs/etc.

Lately, I've been doing a Doctor Who Target novelization reading blitz.

Who's 50: 'Novelizations...from the final season of the Classic Series were deeply literate and complex works in their own right' - let's not go TOO far. 'Doctor Who - Remembrance of the Daleks was such an important work that elements in it were referred to in the TV series (in "Ghost Light") and set the path for the original novels of the '90s' - ooh, WHAT in Ghost Light? (And anyway, Remembrance wasn't from the final season.)

The only one I can think of is the Master's 'Oh well, there's always tomorrow' at the end of the Space War NOVELISATION

Were there any similar "laid-back" moments in the Targets?

Not that I can think of. Of course, they were almost all by Terrance Dicks, who certainly couldn't be bothered to alter the originals (in which the villains were generally DEAD or, in the Master's case, gleefully escaping to fight another day).

The cover of the first edition of The Keeper of Traken novelisation is dominated by a portrait of Sarah Sutton as Nyssa.

You can bet Tim McCree scoured charity shops and garage sales and EBay for that particular item!

Oh, and the 1978 reprint of The Three Doctors, with a new cover painting, actually has used a photo of Troughton as Salamander as the reference instead one of Troughton as the Second Doctor.

Ha ha ha ha ha!

This one?
http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1207780617l/1838681.jpg

But he's wearing the second doctor costume....

yeah but it's based off a photo of Salamander!

You can bet Tim McCree scoured charity shops and garage sales and EBay for that particular item!

Actually, Judi, I purchased it in 1982. No such thing as EBay in those days

Ice Warriors new edition (with introduction by Mark Gatiss):

'It became a wonderful ritual, saving pocket money, then deciding which Target book to go for. I devoured them. Not literally. Though I did live in the north and was always hungry' - bless!

'And, surely, somewhere out there in the freezing, snowy wastes, the Ice Warriors are still waiting...' - yes, all very sweet despite knowing FROM BITTER EXPERIENCE that Gatiss shouldn't be allowed anywhere NEAR the Ice Warriors...

The other...innovations of the reissued-at-vast-expense novelisations remain stubbornly unsuccessful. 'The Changing Face of Doctor Who' section is inexplicably extended to the Companions ('Jamie is also extremely brave, never one to shirk a fight or run away' - HELLO! TOMB OF THE CYBERMEN, ANYONE?! and 'Victoria Waterfield is a reluctant adventurer...She remains forever an unwilling adventurer....she is clever and intelligent' - are you helpfully trying to define 'tautology', or something?) and the 'Between the Lines' essay is, as ever, painfully and pointlessly enumerating all the differences between broadcast and print adventures.

Three Doctors new edition (with introduction by Alastair Reynolds):

Who the hell is Alastair Reynolds?

fun fact: Doctor Who and The Web of Fear was the last time a likeness of Pat Troughton appeared on a new novelisation until The Power of the Daleks in 1993. Presumably, as with other Doctors, they did not want to deal with Troughton's financial demands?

Why are Doctors so PETTY? They'll save our planet for free but we don't get to LOOK AT THEIR FACES (even as badly-drawn ones as generally appear on a Target novelisation) unless they get COLD HARD CASH?

Of course, Troughton did have several families to support...

We got those awful covers for Davison Targets cause Davo's agent got greedy.

Blimey, Colin Baker's face didn't appear on any of his novelisation covers? The one time the universe hands me a break I don't even NOTICE.

Andrew Skilleter's original, unused cover art for 'The Twin Dilemma' was a big Colin picture but his agent had it pulled (for money or flattery-related reasons, accounts differ) and W.H. Allen didn't bother after that. Fortunately this only affected a small number of books.

But if you squint you can just about make out his features on the cover of 'The Caves of Androzani'.

Thanks for the warning.

I won't be squinting at the Androzani cover any time soon.

Which new series story would benefit from being a Target novelisation?

I love to see what Malcolm Hulke could have done with ANY of them.

The REALLY bad ones would have benefited most, of course.

The Crusade novelisation *really* makes you wish David Whitaker had lived long enough to complete his The Enemy of The World novelisation and long enough to write an original Doctor Who novel. Would have been some of the most thoughtful and mature ever produced, if his existing The Crusade novelisation is to go by.

The Crusade novelisation *really* makes you wish David Whitaker had lived long enough to complete his The Enemy of The World novelisation

Yeah, his death was SUCH a tragedy...Ian Marter is my least favourite noveliser by a mile.

and long enough to write an original Doctor Who novel.

Someone should write a First Doctor novel obsessed with mercury and food machines, in his memory.

Would have been some of the most thoughtful and mature ever produced, if his existing The Crusade novelisation is to go by.

It might have been a little TOO mature. We wouldn't want, say, scenes lovingly describing the exact tenor of Farah's screams as Salamander beats her, the way we got with Barbara...

Plus we don't want any more David Cameron slip-ups...

KAM: "Master, accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior before it's too late!"

I can just imagine the Delgado Master looking speechless before spluttering "You want me to WHAAT?!"

Oh, Delgado would keep his cool and suavely explain that the 'Jesus Christ' thing was an outdated concept, and speaking existentially -

Gatiss on Twitter: 'Rather randomly, I was asked to novelise "The Crimson Horror" a couple of years ago!' - Well, why the hell DIDN'T you then!

Dammit, why don't we have ANY New Who novelisations!

Alright, the whole thing may be a little pointless now we have these shiny magic time-travel devices known as DVDs, and the SJA novelisations weren't spectacularly successful (judging by their sudden discontinuation) but whilst we still have Terrance Dicks with us, what's wrong with asking him to spend a month or so whipping up eighty (or whatever) novelisations just to carry us through our year of nothingness?

Criticising Gatiss or Colin Baker is like shooting fish in a barrel, but a fish shot in a barrel is still lunch.

Depends on the gun you use. ;-)

I have in my hot little hands and viewing with my diabetic glasses, the modern edition of Doctor Who and the Dinosaur Invasion.

It's just not the SAME clutching one of those shiny expensive all-introduction-ed-up modern things, not when compared to the supreme joy of swooping on a 10p battered original(ish) paperback in a boot sale, but as long as it's got KKLAK! on the cover I guess you'll be OK...

The Cave Monsters reprint:

Terrance Dicks' introduction: 'The Doctor isn't really the Doctor unless the TARDIS can go on its travels' - that's a bit of a sweeping statement, isn't it? SOMEONE obviously hasn't seen poor Matt stuck on Trenzalore for NINE HUNDRED YEARS (or Capaldi stuck in a Confession Dial for FOUR AND A HALF BILLION YEARS)...

'When the show was in production, Barry Letts had second thoughts. He said the reptiles and apes couldn't have been around together during the Silurian period, and the reptiles should really have been called the Eocenes. Luckily things were too far advanced to chance the name, so I gave the Doctor a line to cover the problem' - LUCKILY! And you didn't give the Doctor THAT line till Sea Devils, did you?

'Personally I was happy to stick with the Silurians, scientific accuracy be damned. The Silurians sounded like a race of malignant intelligent reptiles. Eocenes just sound feeble. Later on, somebody said Eocenes was wrong as well - you just can't win' - fair point.

'Scriptwriting and prose writing are very different jobs and many scriptwriters found it hard going. Bob Holmes said it was "Like digging trenches!"' - well he did a BLOODY GOOD JOB on his trenches, then...

The Changing Face of Doctor Who: 'While on Earth the [Third] Doctor formed an alliance and friendship with Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart' - didn't this alliance/friendship start with TWO and his COLONEL?

'The Doctor helped the organisation to deal with all manner of threats to humanity in return for facilities to try to repair the TARDIS and a sporty, yellow Edwardian-style car he calls Bessie' - that's a BIT mean, give or take one scene in Spearhead, I'm SURE Our Hero would have saved us from ALL the monsters even WITHOUT being bribed with a sprightly yellow roadster...(plus he didn't specify 'yellow', in fact he wanted whichever-car-he-nicked-in-Spearhead). Also, the services of Liz Shaw were DEFINITELY on his list of world-saving demands...

Love the way this omits to explain what 'UNIT' actually STANDS for (thanks, New Who)...

Between the Lines: 'While a few minor errors or inconsistencies have been corrected, no attempt has been made to update or modernise the text - this is Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters as originally written and published' - oh, come ON! It's a FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT WORK if you remove the 'T-Rexes are MAMMALS!' quote from the back-cover blurb...

Hulke 'dispenses entirely with the serial's opening scene, in which the technicians Spencer and Davis are attacked by a dinosaur while potholing. The event is instead recounted later by other characters' - so hardly dispensed with ENTIRELY, then...

'The only clue [Liz Shaw] might be more than decorative comes in Chapter 8, when she is left at Squire's farm to conduct a forensic check' - *winces*. 'Even Jo never gave the Brigadier an excuse to say "She's got hysterics," as he does at the end of Chapter 17' - *winces some more*. But if Hulke was so determined to be sexist, why have Miss Travis instead of the Doctor save the day?

'Personally I was happy to stick with the Silurians, scientific accuracy be damned. The Silurians sounded like a race of malignant intelligent reptiles. Eocenes just sound feeble. Later on, somebody said Eocenes was wrong as well - you just can't win' - fair point.

From what we have learned since, the proper name would have been Cretaceous. Somehow, that sounds a fair bit pejorative.

'Madame Vastra is a Cretaceous' - it just doesn't WORK.

Instead of Jamie slapping the "hysterical female", how about Polly slapping the testerical male?

'Madame Vastra is a Cretaceous' - it just doesn't WORK.

Wrong ending. The name would probably be Cretacian, which is even worse.

The Visitation reprint novelisation:

Well, they've obviously run out of famous people prepared to write them nice introductions saying how marvellous Who is.

I read in DWM the other day that the original Visitation novelisation had a front-cover photo because Davison hated the proposed portrait of himself so much and JNT backed him up. 'Vain idiot' I thought to myself, 'as if anything could be worse than your bland blonde boring non-Tom-Baker face.' Then I picked up a copy of the lovingly-reprinted-with-original-artwork book and OMEGA JESUS RASSILON this thing is an Abomination.

The Changing Face of Doctor Who:

'Despite his apparent youth, the Doctor demonstrates again and again a depth of wisdom and experience that is at odds with his appearance' - ooh, WHEN!

'The Fifth Doctor was also more affected by the process of regeneration' - Tom was unconscious for WEEKS, you idiot! Colin was in a state of post-regenerative angst for his ENTIRE LIFE!

'Rather than a father figure, he was more of an older brother to his companions' - frankly very few Doctors are father figures to very few Companions and I'm just not getting this 'big brother' vibe either.

'And his affection for them was obvious' - not to me it wasn't. Davison had the least-affectionate Doctor/Companion relationships since the early Ian n'Babs days (i.e. before they started suffering from Stockholm Syndrome).

'The Doctor, Romana and K-9 helped [Adric's] people repair their Starliner' - for heaven's sake, THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT SODDING STARLINER!

'Throughout his time in the TARDIS, Adric tends to put himself first' - ooh, absolutely. He put himself first sucking up to vampires in an attempt to rescue Romana. He put himself first sucking up to that homicidal nutcase Hindle in an attempt to rescue the Doctor. He put himself first running back into a crashing freighter to try to save the Earth...

'Nyssa is frequently frustrated at the lack of opportunity to put her considerable technical skills to good use' - yeah, she mentioned this ONCE. And it's not like travelling through space and time saving planets requires ANY technical skills, no sirree.

Tegan 'implicitly trusts the Doctor'? TEGAN?!

About the Author:

'Since leaving Doctor Who in 1986' - THAT'S all you're saying about the scandal that rocked Who to its foundations?! (Alright, I exaggerate slightly as I don't think Who HAD any foundations left by then, but you know what I MEAN.)

Who was the author and what was the scandal?

Eric Saward, screaming row with JNT, stormed off taking his Trial of a Time Lord script with him about two minutes before it was due to be filmed, subsequently publicly slagged JNT off in the media...

Aaaand, in yet another blow to The Cave Monsters' back-cover claim that the T-Rex is 'the biggest, most savage mammal which ever trod the earth!'...it's revealed that The T-Rex Was A Sensitive Lover.

0.o Mammal?!

*Helpless shrug* best novelisation EVER but, yeah, certain...scientific inaccuracies...in the blurb.

Eric Saward

Thanks.

screaming row with JNT, stormed off taking his Trial of a Time Lord script with him about two minutes before it was due to be filmed, subsequently publicly slagged JNT off in the media...

Oh, that little thing. ;-)

The T-Rex Was A Sensitive Lover.

8-o

You know these paleontologists really have to remember to put their "erotic dinosaur fiction" in a separate folder from their "dinosaur facts".

;-)

You know these paleontologists really have to remember to put their "erotic dinosaur fiction" in a separate folder from their "dinosaur facts".

Nonsense, if someone is actually prepared to PAY them to come up with erotic dinosaur fiction, who are we to criticise...

And what of Resurrection and Revelation of the Daleks? I read an interview with Peter Darvill-Evans when he was the head of Who at Virgin and they were supposed to see the light of day in 1995 with Eric Saward doing them but nothing eventuated.

Saward in DWM (in 1989): 'Terry Nation originally refused to give permission to do the books because he didn't like the tv stories.Then Target suggested a deal: if I gave a whole sixty per cent of my fee to Terry Nation, they would consider letting me write them. Putting it crudely, I thought that was bloody outrageous so I said no, and that was how it was left, and still is.' - Will NO ONE think of the FANS!

'My reaction is that they'll never be written. I would object to anyone else doing them; there just aren't enough good writers at Target and whatever I may have been, I certainly wasn't the worst Doctor Who writer, and so I don't want anyone else doing them' - oh-kay. Thing is, Target doesn't NEED loads of good writers when it is blessed with TERRANCE DICKS, surely?

On second thoughts, maybe it's good that David Whitaker never lived to novelise Terminus or we'd have gotten a scene where a nude Nyssa is lashed and writhes in pain as her cruel captor watches...

Yeah, I don't know if I could cope with '"Your tender flesh," he said hoarsely, "is about to feel my first caresses"' from THE GARM...

Filthy dawg!

Now sadly corrected, but a few days ago, Penguin Australia's listing for the audiobook of the Target novelisation of The Ark had the co-authors as Rudyard Kipling and Paul Erickson.

It would have been lovely to speculate that Kipling had worked incognito as 'Lesley Scott' back in the day had he not, inconveniently, died 30 years before The Ark was written and recorded.

Quite understandable. What's thirty years? A mere timey-wimey bagatelle. And hey, it's got a jungle choc-full of animals, what more would you need as proof?

Alright, possibly Steven declaiming 'If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster/And treat those two impostors just the same/Then you'll be a man, my son!' at the assembled Arkers as they all keel over with plague, but one can't have EVERYTHING.

And come to think of it, when applied to Monoids instead of Africans, White Man's Burden isn't quite such a racist crock of •••• after all...

Imagine Target Books novelising the history of Nitcentral? Rodney and Tim written by Terrance Dicks!

Never mind THEM, what about US?

Any time we so much as expressed an opinion, Uncle Tewwance would doubtless chalk it up to true feminine hysteria...

...well what ELSE do you chalk it up to?

Malcolm Hulke would have written Rodney as "A big IMC house, with IMC wife and IMC kids" middle class.

Any time we so much as expressed an opinion, Uncle Tewwance would doubtless chalk it up to true feminine hysteria...

...well what ELSE do you chalk it up to?

A passionate devotion to Who more commonly found in the male of the species?

I liked it when the same author who wrote the television story wrote the Target novel. They would often included things that they couldn't fit into the televised story.

Examples:

Andrew Smith, in his novelization of Full Circle.

Terrence Dudley, in his novelizations of Black Orchid and The King's Demons.

Counter-example: Lucarotti putting back all the gibberish that the Powers That Be ruthlessly expunged from his Massacre script, like the infamous Hartnell-being-pulled-around-catacombs-on-a-sled-by-dogs stuff...

It's worse than that - Lucarotti re-read the scripts and decided (reasonably enough) that they were actually by Donald Tosh, so he ended up inventing a new story around loosely the same premise.

Jeez, if he was starting from scratch couldn't he have come up with a more FUN massacre to novelise...?

Ohmygawd...

New Who Novelisations!!

OK, only four of 'em and WHY THE HELL CAN'T RTG WRITE US A NEW EPISODE DAMMIT and also we'd JUST got down to two missing novelisations (Remembrance and Resurrection) and now we're suddenly up to about a hundred and forty of the little buggers (less if they're not novelising each episode separately, of course) and what the hell is Cornell playing at, presumably he was given his pick of EVERYTHING and decided that the last twelve years' worth of Who was •••• and he'd plump for the episode he hasn't even SEEN yet...

Will you be reviewing these neo-Targets?

OF COURSE I will!

Never mind the Autons, I wonder if RTG is gonna sneak in a reference to Graham Norton's ghostly invasion...

Why can't they novelize Remembrance and Resurrection?

Is it because of Saward (he wrote both of them)? Why would he be such a harda** about them?

yes it's because of Saward. and it's Revelation and Resurrection.

it's Revelation and Resurrection.

*Groan* of course it is, usually I'm more careful and pause and double-check the 80s Dalek-'R'-stories on my fingers cos decades (hell, a millennium) later NONE of those titles come naturally to me...

Douglas Adams once said that the reason he didn't want anyone to novelize his three Who stories as because he would do it himself. However, his untimely death at age 49 prevented that from happening. Of course, now, years after his deaths, his Who stories were finally published.

Is Saward doing the same here, not letting anyone else novelize his Dalek stories, because he will do them himself. Eric, you're almost 73. Better hurry up and novelize those Dalek stories.

Honestly, it's a miracle no fanatical-completest Fan has killed him off in the happy expectation that his estate will be more cooperative...

If Saward doesn't want to write the novels himself, why doesn't he ask someone else to do so (Terrence Dicks, come on down).

How about it, Eric?

Er, because he doesn't want to, and has said as much in various interviews over the years.

Also, Adams was never going to novelise his Doctor Who stories either, and also said as much in various interviews over the years.

So, we basically have to kill Saward if we want those novelizations.

Shall we pick straws?

Sometimes I worry about you Emily. Then you post something like that and all is right with the world again.

Er, because he doesn't want to, and has said as much in various interviews over the years.

Which brings me back to my question. If Saward can't be bothered, why doesn't he just ask someone else to do it?


Adams was never going to novelise his Doctor Who stories either, and also said as much in various interviews over the years.

So if took him dropping dead for his three Who stories to finally see print?

Perhaps Emily and Francois are onto something here.

If Saward can't be bothered, why doesn't he just ask someone else to do it?

Because he doesn't want anyone else to do it either.

There's no great mystery here, and he and Adams were hardly the only holdouts. Terry Nation kept us waiting a decade for novelisations of his final scripts, and half as much time again for adaptations of 'The Power of the Daleks' and 'The Evil of the Daleks', even though he wasn't even their original writer.

It's probably not a situation that can arise with the new series, where I imagine these sort of rights are tied up at the initial contract stage, but 'Doctor Who' - not atypically for British television productions of the time - didn't demand writers sign away those rights from the get go. Which is why, when Universal was proposing remaking classic Who stories back in the 1990s without bothering to check that the BBC owned the original scripts, lots of writers including Saward went ballistic.

Fortunately Kate, nearly all the writers for the first three Doctors are dead now (indians from "Bonanza": 'on the series, we were always trying to kill the Cartwrights, but i guess Father Time took care of that for us')

Their work remains the copyright of their estates for 70 years after their deaths so even if there were no novelised stories from the 1960s and 1970s, we wouldn't automatically get them as a result of their authors' passing.

If Saward can't be bothered, why doesn't he just ask someone else to do it?

Because he doesn't want anyone else to do it either.

Actually it's more that he doesn't want the Terry Nation Estate to get 60% of the cash. (See: my post of June 3rd 2017.)

we wouldn't automatically get them as a result of their authors' passing.

Oh, estates would be happy enough to grab any cash, just look at the Lethbridge-Stewart novels breeding like rabbits, or the forthcoming Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen novel...

Any hope of Doctor Who and Scratchman if we offer a large donation to charity in Marter's name and a two litre bottle of gin to Tom?

I'll double your charity offer AND the gin to AVOID having to read/see/listen to anything remotely connected with that Scratchman Abomination.

Saward did realize that the Daleks were not his to begin with, when he wrote the televised stories. He knew that Terry Nation was going to get a cut, regardless of whether he was involved or not with the writing.

However, Terry Nation has now been dead for twenty years, it's not like he needs the money anymore. Can't Saward make a new deal that would allow him, or someone else, to write Resurrection and Revelation?

Too bad a bunch of greedy lawyers have to ruin it for everyone.

Lawyers? This isn't exactly ambulance chasing. A law was written called Copyright that gives estates of dead authors a ridiculously long amount of protection. If you're going to blame anyone, blame the lawmakers lack of common sense for a sensible time of protection after death.

And as you put it, Saward knew he was using someone else's property, so he likewise shares the blame. Had he just used original creations (Resurrection of the Mestor, Revelation of the Mestor ;-) he would get all the royalties.

Resurrection of the Mestor, Revelation of the Mestor

No please please Rassilon nooooooooooooooo...

Yeah, Keith, you're right. These Copyright things need to be re-examined.

It's not like dead authors need the money.

These Copyright things need to be re-examined.

They already have been, which is why the period of posthumous copyright was extended from 50 to 70 years in the 1990s.

Well, it's time to revisit it again.

Seems silly for videos to be yanked from YouTube because of some law written in 1940.

Good idea. They could call it the We're Abolishing The Notion Of Intellectual Property Rights Because Entitled Twats Desperately Want A Novelisation of Resurrection Of The Daleks Act.

Because YouTube supercedes the law?

No. I have no problem with actual copyright violations being yanked from YouTube.

I do object to proper Fair Use videos yanked though. (And I don't mean those ones where they just claim fair use and run a complete video without any discussion or scholarly analysis or any of the other things that fall under fair use.)

Kate's right. what about the ordinary people employed by corporations who get shafted by illegal downloads?

We're Abolishing The Notion Of Intellectual Property Rights Because Entitled Twats Desperately Want A Novelisation of Resurrection Of The Daleks Act.

A small act of reparation in recognition of our unparalleled suffering during The Sixteen Long And Barren Years Of Despair...

The War Games. 10 episodes condensed into 128 pages for the Target novelisation. I remember this because I ordered it thinking it would be a really thick book that would last me ages....

Tee hee.

To be fair to Uncle Tewwance, I don't remember him omitting anything that was actually MISSED.

And at least he changed the Time-Lords-forgetting-to-lock-the-cell-door to something slightly less stupid...

Try reading The Three Doctors before the TV episode. In the book Omega has a golden castle and battles the Doctor in an imaginary (well it's all imaginary sort of) amphitheater. The Gell Guards battle with UNIT is exciting and they can run... The TV story is like that in no way at all.

At least the TV story broke my heart over that recorder...I don't remember howling my eyes out over the novelisation...come to think of it, I don't remember ANYTHING about the novelisation...

I think the novelisation was based on the script. The DVD documentary comments on the wonderful imagery of the script and how the execution was a big letdown, especially the point of singularity which was supposed to be some towering cosmic column dissecting the universe or some-such, and it ended up on our screens as a thin spoke of steam.

Ahhh, Bob n'Dave, WHEN WILL THEY LEARN?

I am currently starting to read all of the DOCTOR WHO Target novelizations in the order of television airing. The second story, THE DALEKS, was actually the first DW novel adaptation ever, I believe. This is unusual in that the story is told from the first-person point of view of Ian Chesterton. Also, Ian gives an origin story completely at odds with the established one. In this, not only did the events of "An Unearthly Child" never happen, but Ian states that he met Barbara and Susan following a highway accident and had never known either of them previously.
Since the story is a manuscript by Ian, we can assume that he has chosen to obfuscate the truth of the beginning of the Dalek adventure for reasons of his own.

I prefer to think of it as an Ian-from-an-alternative-universe's truthful account falling through a wormhole into our reality (or, um, something), I hate to think of dear Ian as a pathological liar...(Though obviously he and Babs would have had to do a certain amount of pathological-lying to explain away their missing two years.)

After all, Jo Grant gets two origin stories too, and no one's first-person-narrating either of them...

no one's first-person-narrating either of them...

It would be like Forrest Gump narrating if they did a first person Jo Grant narration.

Oi!

Our Jo saved the world on several occasions!

(Admittedly none of said occasions required actual brainpower that I can recall off the top of my head, but that's not the POINT.)

Plus she managed to get to the Doctor's funeral, which is more than you can say for the REST of 'em...

(Admittedly the seven kids hint not so much at stupidity as at RABID INSANITY.)

Jo's favourite show is the Tellytubbies. Her most loved character is the baby in the sun in it.

Are you getting Jo confused with the Master?

Well, maybe Jo likes that other pre-school staple, Barney the Dinosaur ("two plus two is four, two plus two is four...").

If you're talking about Jo's childhood, Barney is way out, even with the UNIT dating problem.

Although if you're talking about Jo watching TV with her kids that would be a different story.

Jo's not gonna be watching TV with her population explosion! She'll be way too busy changing seven sets of biodegradable nappies/chaining herself to Robert Mugabe/floating up the Amazon in a hatbox...

As I have said before, when Terrence Dudley novelized Black Orchid and The King's Demons, he spared two characters (Latoni in BO and Sir Geoffrey in TKD). Both those characters survived in the novels.

On the other hand, in his novelization of Full Circle, Andrew Smith went the other way. By the time the novel was done, all of the Outlers, except for Login's daughter, Keara, had been wiped out (unless you want to count Adders as an Outler, of course). Those two nameless Outlers on the show, who scarpered back to the Starliner when Mistfall started, died during the Marshman invasion of said Starliner. Still, Mr. Smith gave them names in the novel, Gulnar and Renfal.

Now, there was nothing on the televised story that said that Gulnar and Renfal lived or died. They just disappeared from the story, so it was left open. However, in the novel, they are most definitely dead.

Mr. Smith even made up two additional Outlers, who did not appear in the televised stories (and who's names I can't recall at the moment), only to kill them off! Both are killed trying to make it back to the cave when Mistfall starts.

As to why Mr. Smith did that, your guess is as good as mine.

Changes in the novelisations that are written by the original author often reflect their original intentions, so it could very well be the televised version that was the deviation. Fewer cast members and a lower death count--of children yet--sounds very BBCish.

THE KEYS OF MARINUS - When Barbara opens a drawer in Vasor's cabin, she discovers items stolen from the rest of the members of the party. In addition to the teleport bracelets and the keychain, there is the Doctor's ring. How did Vasor get the Doctor's ring? The Doctor earlier skipped ahead to the location of the final key. He didn't even visit this part of the planet!

Well, we always knew Susan was a troubled adolescent, but stealing her Grandfather's ring...*shakes head sadly*

Now on "The Sensorites". Geez, this Nigel Robinson is an awful writer. He's almost as bad as his namesake Harold Robinson.

I know nothing of Harold Robinson but YEAH Nigel Robinson can't write a decent novelisation, or indeed New Adventure, to save his life.

>I know nothing of Harold Robinson

Me neither, but Basil Fawlty calls him an "awful man" whose work is "painful!".

How About a Waldorf Salad? is a typical title, or is that by Harold Robins?

On March 27 and 28 of 2012, "John F. Kennedy" posted two long reviews of Doctor Who and The Dinosaur Invasion and Doctor Who and the Crusaders respectively.

Since we now know that this was one of Natalie's sock puppets, I suspected that she was not the actual author of said reviews. Turns out I was right

Both reviews were Copy And Pasted from the Doctor Who ratings guides. Both were originally written by a chap named Tim Rolls-Pickering. The Crusaders review was posted at the DWRG on November 16, 2003, and the Dinosaur review was posted there on January 5th, 2004.

Emily, you might want to make sure that the actual author gets the credit.

In lieu of a board for the audio recordings of the Target novelisations (which I'm not asking for)...Caroline John does an absolutely horrid impression of the Brig.

Ah, Shame (as another Brig would say)...

I always think of Enid Blyton stories when i hear "shame", "gordon bennett", "what the blazes" etc coming out of TV Who characters.

I think 'What the blazes!' suits the Brig really well.

Ace's 'Gordon Bennett'...not so much but hey, compared to 'Boom!' I'll take anything.

And hearing Bambera say 'Shame' is, like the rest of Battlefield, a guilty pleasure. One of the manifold disappointments of Seventh Doctor audio Animal was that the returning Bambera didn't bloody say it.

Isn't the term "Gordon Bennett" just another way of saying good grief?

No, it's a euphemism for Jesus Christ or God. Mary Whitehouse would've thrown a fit had Ace said them as swear words.

Today I Found Out did a video on the life of the man who inspired the saying.

I have almost all the Tom Baker and Peter Davison stories Target novelizations.

my favourite bit from The Auton Invasion:

1 Prologue: Exiled to Earth

In the High Court of the Time Lords a trial was coming to its end. The accused, a renegade Time Lord known as the Doctor, had already been found guilty. Now it was time for the sentence. The Doctor looked very out of place standing amongst the dignified Time Lords in their long white robes. To begin with, he was quite a small man. He wore an ancient black coat and a pair of check trousers. He had a gentle, rather comical face and a shock of untidy black hair. But there was strength in that face, too, and keen intelligence in the blue eyes. A hush fell as the President of the Court rose, and began to speak. 'Doctor, you have been found guilty of two serious offences against our laws. First, you stole a TARDIS and used it to roam through Time and Space as you pleased.' 'Nonsense,' said the Doctor indignantly. 'I didn't steal it. Just borrowed it for a while.' The President ignored the interruption. 'More important, you have repeatedly broken our most important law: interference in the affairs of other planets is a serious crime.' Again the Doctor interrupted: 'I not only admit my interference, I am proud of it! You just observe the evil in the galaxies. I fight against it.' 'We have accepted your plea, Doctor, that there is evil in the Universe which must be fought. You still have a part to play in that great struggle.' At once the Doctor began to look hopeful. 'You mean you're going to let me go?' 'Not entirely. We have noted your interest in the planet Earth. You have visited it many times. You must have special knowledge of that world and its problems.' 'I suppose I have,' agreed the Doctor.
'You will be sent to Earth in the Twentieth Century Time Zone. You will remain there for as long as we think proper. And for that time the secret of the TARDIS will be taken from you.' The Doctor was indignant. 'You can't condemn me to exile on one primitive planet, in one particular time.' The President's voice was cold. 'We can, and we do. That is the verdict of this Court.' A new thought struck the Doctor. 'Besides, I'm known on Earth already. It could be most embarrassing for me.' 'Your appearance has changed before. It will change again. That is part of your sentence.' The Doctor continued to protest. 'You can't just change what I look like without asking me!' 'You will have an opportunity to choose your new appearance,' said the President patiently. 'Look!' As if by magic, a huge screen appeared on one wall of the Court. Upon it the Doctor saw a wide variety of faces and forms. At once the Doctor started to make trouble. He rejected each one with the utmost scorn. 'Too thin. Too fat. Too young. Too old. No, I certainly don't want to look like that, I can tell you.' The President of the Court sighed. They were letting the fellow off lightly. He ought to be humble and grateful, not kick up all this fuss. 'You are wasting time, Doctor,' said the President. 'Since you refuse to take the decision, we shall take it for you.' The Doctor made no secret of his indignation. 'Well, I've got a right to decide what I'm going to look like,' he grumbled. 'They attach a great deal of importance to these things on Earth. I mean, it's not my fault if this is the best you can do, is it? I've never seen such a terrible looking bunch!' Ignoring the Doctor's protests and complaints, the President sent a thought-impulse to a fellow Time Lord who sat at a nearby control panel. The Time Lord's fingers moved swiftly over the rows of buttons. Immediately the Doctor was held in the grip of a force-field. Unable to move, he felt the entire courtroom dissolve round him into a sort of spinning blackness.

With my acquisition of Androids Of Tara novel, I now have all the Tom Baker stories.

You do realise there are TWO Androids of Tara (and Stones of Blood) novelisations? David Fisher decided the original Terrance Dicks ones were insufficient and did his own...available as audiobooks only but you know your duty...

The way Sharez Jek is clutching his face on the Androzani cover, he seems to be saying "Mama Mia, I forgot all my English!".

Yes, but I still have all the Tom Baker stories. These two audiobooks does not invalidate my original point.

What is this Fisher guy's problem anyway. Mr. Dicks didn't make any major changes in his novelizations.

A lot of writers in the 1970s and early 1980s chose to leave the novelisations to someone else as that was the done thing. The idea of the original screenwriter adapting their own work into prose only came into vague around 1984, but by then the bulk of the Pertwee and Tom Baker stories had already been done.

It doesn't seem implausible that writers from those years might have second thoughts after seeing the perfunctory results (Terrance c.1980 basically being a cut and paste machine in human form) or hadn't even realised that the option of doing it themselves was seriously on the table. Fisher seems to have been one of those, and IIRC he's said so in interviews as far back as the mid-1980s. It's notable that after Dicks had adapted 'Stones' and 'Tara', Fisher chose to novelise his subsequent stories himself, setting a trend that other screenwriters would start to follow in the mid-1980s.

Such as Terence Dudley, who novelized two of this stories, Black Orchid and The King's Demons himself, rather than have someone else do it.

Me:
In lieu of a board for the audio recordings of the Target novelisations (which I'm not asking for)...Caroline John does an absolutely horrid impression of the Brig.

I was pretty generous there. Fine actress and all, but these border on Monty Python silly voice territory. She creates a different voice for each character, which is fine, but she makes no attempt to sound like the ones we know, not the Brig nor the Doctor, and not even the characters that populate the various stories, some of whom she gives new accents to.

Okay, she's an actress. She's creating characters, not trying to recreate what's been done nearly 50 years ago. But surely the only people listening to these are longtime fans.

And the deepening of her voice for the male characters (and they're nearly all male in these stories) is so very distracting, equivalent to a male reader falsettoing the female characters' voices.

Luckily, I make do with just the books.

I don't need the audio recordings.

I sometimes wonder what a Terrence Dicks novelisation of NitC would be like. How would he write about Emily and her hate of Colin, or Kate Halprin and her sarcastic wit?

And would he be mean enough to describe me as 'very small and not very pretty'? And gods alone knows how the feminism would go down with dear old Uncle Tewwance...

...Maybe we'd do better with someone like Malcolm Hulke who can somehow conjure up a great novel out of a messy scrappy heap of stuff* (I'm thinking The Doomsday Weapon, obviously) than with Terrance, who'd give us a great opening line but then just zip through all the facts in two days flat.

Or perhaps only The Moff can do justice to Judi's multiple personalities, he did a splendid job with all fourteen Doctors in the Day of the Doctor novelisation.

*Not that I mean to insult our beloved board, but it's not like we've spent the last twenty years trying to create a strong narrative thread or anything...

I sometimes wonder what a Terrence Dicks novelisation of NitC would be like. How would he write about Emily and her hate of Colin, or Kate Halprin and her sarcastic wit?

I wonder what he'd write about me?

In a Target novelisation, you'd probably be swigging maple syrup from the bottle and carrying an ice hocky stick.

Alas, I can't swing maple syrup, it's full of sugar, which is deadly to me (and to you, Natalie).

Wish I could regenerate a new pancreas.

Anyhoo, I also have most of Peter Davison's stories in the Target line. Only two are missing, Resurrection of the Daleks, because Saward is too lazy to novelize it (and too stubborn to ask someone else to do it) and Dude, Where's My Nyssa?, which I don't have for obvious reasons.

You think diabetes would matter to a Terrance D-icks novelisation? The Fourth Doctor should be a Type 2 diabetic with all the jelly babies he eats.

I take metaformin tablets which is helping with my blood sugar readings. Should've been on the tablets since my diag but you know, stupid doctors...

The Fourth Doctor should be a Type 2 diabetic with all the jelly babies he eats.

First, you should know that eating excess sugar will not cause diabetes, unless it makes you gain so much weight that it puts you at risk of the type 2 variety.

Second, the Doctor is a Time Lord, not a human, we should not assume that he is susceptible to the same organic failings our primitive inferior bodies are vulnerable to.

I was joking, i know that excess sugar doesn't cause diabetes. My own was likely because of my immune system attacking my beta cells.

I came off as a sanctimonious dick in that one, didn't I? My sincere apologies.

I also have most of Peter Davison's stories in the Target line. Only two are missing, Resurrection of the Daleks, because Saward is too lazy to novelize it (and too stubborn to ask someone else to do it) and Dude, Where's My Nyssa?, which I don't have for obvious reasons.

Hey, how do you know that the Kinda novelisation doesn't spend dozens of pages exploring Nyssa's subconscious in exquisite detail as she snoozes away? You'll never know unless you read it!

(Admittedly the existence of the words 'Terrance Dicks' on the cover somewhat reduce your chances but you NEVER KNOW!)

the Doctor is a Time Lord, not a human, we should not assume that he is susceptible to the same organic failings our primitive inferior bodies are vulnerable to.

Though if THAT was the case you'd think he'd've thrown it in Mel's face (along with the carrot juice) when she was bullying him into dieting...

I came off as a sanctimonious dick in that one, didn't I?

Nonsense, you've gotta keep up the mini-science-lectures, they're the only way I get any science!

My own was likely because of my immune system attacking my beta cells.

I have Type 1 Diabetes. It usually happens to little kids, but I was 34 when I was diagnosed with it.

During my hospital stay, they kept asking if either of my parents had it (they didn't), meant that it usually was passed down genetically. I guess mine was the result of a mutant gene. I guess I'm the first in my family line to be unlucky to have it.

I guess I'm the first in my family line to be unlucky to have it.

Same for my Mum... and she gave it to her children...

It could have been because you had the bad luck of getting an infection from something with antigens that also resemble beta cell proteins, and your immune system just kept going once it was triggered. It commonly happens with autoimmune diseases.

How do you know all this, Francois. Are you an actual scientist, or are you just Nitcentral's answer to Cliff Clavin?


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Clavin

I started reading when I was four years old, and I haven't stopped since. Well, except when I am watching science documentaries. And, of course, there's now the vast knowledge store of the internet. You kinda pick up a few tidbits of information along the way.

Ah, so you are our version of Cliff Clavin

Enough with the non-Who analogies!

HE'S OUR RUSTY!

Him too.

Except that he hasn't stripped us all naked when we attack him. For which we must be deeply grateful.

John Leeson’s reading of "The Invisible Enemy" is decent enough, though his Marius borders on the outrageous side of funny foreigner accent and his Leela is a curious “little girl” squeak which is at odds to some of the actions she’s described as doing.

I'll make do with the original novel then.

Hear, hear, there's nothing wrong with sticking to good old-fashioned dead trees instead of coughing up a fortune to hear people squeak out their misinterpretations of our childhood favourites...

Yeah, dead trees for me. I love a book you can hold in your hands.

A moving part of the Invasion of the Dinosaurs book is where, after being fatally clawed by a dinosaur, in the last second of his life, Shughie McPherson resolves to give up drinking.

Ah. I found it cynically amusing rather than moving, but each to her own.

[Doctor Who and the Dinosaur Invasion]

'It's weird seeing London like this - all these deserted
streets.'

'I rather like it,' he said. 'Have you noticed how
clean the air's become? No cars, no people. Only
yesterday I saw a fox in Piccadilly.'

She turned and laughed. And nightingales singing
in Berkeley Square?' She was referring to an old and
very sentimental song from the years of the Second
World War.

Captain Yates did not laugh in return. He spoke
quite seriously. 'It's not impossible. Nature is always
ready and waiting to take back the places that humans
have despoiled.'

'I like London the way it was,' said Sarah. Traffic
jams, pollution and all.'

Nitcentrallers in a Terrance D-icks book:

Tim: walks around with a bottle of maple syrup and carries a hockey stick

Francois: sells onions

Rodney: works on a sheep farm in the outback

Emily: starts off as straw feminist and degenerates into pathetic screamer

Judi: minor character that irritates the Master and is TCE'd

There is a pop culture reference that's in a Target book, but not in the television story it was novelising. The Doctor refers to Garron and Unstoffe as "Laurel and Hardy" when in conversation with Romana in Ian Marter's Ribos Operation book.

Sometimes authors would toss these things in.

Of course, given the amount of time the Doctor hangs around 20th Century Earth, it doesn't surprise me that he knows who Laurel and Hardy are.

As regards our hearts' desire, someone on Gallifrey Base has announced that 'The scheduled but still to be confirmed releases in November 2019 by BBC books are Hardback Target book length releases of Resurrection and Revelation, paperbacks to follow a few months later.'

And there's THIS to prove that SOMETHING is DEFINITELY going on.

Only *pitiful sobs* it's too late, isn't it. Thanks to Rose, Christmas Invasion, Twice Upon a Time and Day of the Doctor our dreams of a complete Target novelisation collection have been well and truly blown...

So, Saward finally caved on allowing Resurrection and Revelation to be novelized. Ah, well, Eric, look at it this way, you'll get your cut.

And then all of Classic Who will be finally novelized.

Now, can we arrange to replace all those T-D*cks cut and paste jobs with actual novelisations? ;)

And then all of Classic Who will be finally novelized.

Yeah, and I'm sure that would have given us enormous amounts of joy and excitement...during The Sixteen Long And Barren Years Of Despair.

Now, can we arrange to replace all those T-D*cks cut and paste jobs with actual novelisations?

BURN THE BLASPHEMER!

Though, OK, the Stones and Tara new-novelisations WERE quite fun...

Alright, the Blasphemer may remain unburnt for the moment.

I just think it would be better if a lot of novelisations were not so thin and weak.

Honestly, only one or two of 'em gave me the impression Terrance Dicks was really taking the ••••. The rest were PRECISELY what I wanted (as a child if not these days) - a faithful rendition of a true Who story that I will tragically never get to see due to being too young/non-existent at the time and utterly failing to foresee the invention of the video player...

Admittedly, Terrance's best one WAS his first, the one he actually put a bit of effort into, The Auton Invasion...

Well, at least Saward is finally giving in on this. I guess more than thirty years of being hounded by Whovians has finally worn him down.

Or he just needs the money.

Yup, it's been officially announced on the Gallifrey Base news page, apparently 'the Doctor and Peri are being lured into a trap that will change them forever' (did I miss something?) and, er, according to Saward, '“’Resurrecting’ these tales may turn out to be a greater ‘Revelation’ than you’d expect!”'...

Oh, and he's written a graphic novel about Lytton, just to make our lives complete...

So Saward is going to write them? Makes sense, since he wrote the television stories, after all.

Gerry Davis retconned Ben and Polly to be from the 1970s in both the Tenth Planet and Moonbase novelisations. He also gave the 2nd Doctor ‘long legs’.

Just re-reading Terrance Dicks' Giant Robot novel. Something I'd never picked up on before; an odd scene at the SRS meeting where the cars outside the meeting are mentioned, and it said that there was even a horsebox there. Given that Terrance wrote this back-to-back with his Terror of the Autons novel, is he cheekily suggesting that the Master is somehow pulling the strings in the SRS? If not, the mention of the horsebox makes no sense!

Oh, my...:

---

quote:

The novelisation of "The Tomb of the Cybermen" has the Doctor compare Victoria to Alice Liddell. Deborah Watling had previously played Alice in Denis Potter's TV play of the same name. The novelisation even goes to the length of making Victoria blonde so she resembles the Tenniel illustrations of Alice.

---

Warriors of the Deep, which both adds background to the Silurians and Sea Devils from the guy who commissioned them, and which poked merciless fun at the plot illogic ("Fortunately, Bulic knew his way around the Seabase's ventilation shafts").

Just reading Planet of Giants. Typos ahoy! "Are Ian and Susan all right?" asked Susan.

("Susan, stop referring to yourself in the third person!"
"Don't talk to Susan like that," said Susan.)

There is another typo earlier when the book refers to the Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara all by name, then says "the three of them stared at the dead man's giant face".

(...except one, as the Doctor had forgotten his monocle.)

Geez, where was the editor!?

Looking at my The Horns of Nimon novelisation (another thin and beige prose effort by Uncle Terry), the quality of the old Target covers really declined in the late 1970s, didn't they?

And plummeted in the 80s.

Well, the novels were re-issued later on, with different covers.

So, I guess when Saward's two Dalek stories are released, that will be all of Classic Who novelized.

The way Pertwee's hair is drawn on the original cover art for "Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion" makes him look like Billy Idol!

Well, I have a later edition, so I'll just have to take your word for it.

The Dinosaur Invasion novelisation implies they were sent back to Biblical times. That's two Hulke novelisations referencing the Christian Bible, which seems odd given the author's political leanings.

The Dinosaur Invasion novelisation implies they were sent back to Biblical times

I dunno if it implies that, in fact I'm not sure WHAT it's trying to imply with its bizarre 'Look! Read the Bible, it mentions people with four faces and four wings! This is JUST SO RELEVANT to Grover and Whitaker and Finch and their dinosaurs!'

When it came to looking at novelisation titles in the library - titles like Meglos, Castrovalva, Kinda etc weren't as relatable as Terror of the Autons, The Android Invasion, Robots of Death etc. I wanted a title that gave me a clue as to what the book gave me.

Uh, Natalie, those were the actual titles of the television stories.

And the New Series is just as guilty. Their first story is called "Rose", after all. We know it means Rose Tyler, but the Not We will be scratching their heads.

I’m about fifty pages through Resurrection but struggling.

It's set in the "Sawardverse".

The constant references to Terileptils is just irritating. One would half expect them to turn up. And he undermines all tension by having the Doctor realise it’s the Daleks early on in an almost throwaway line. Disappointed so far. I’ll finish it and it’s nice it’s finally novelised, but both this and Revelation deserve better.

You should read Twin Dilemma? Saward constantly goes off on these annoying anecdotes that bring the story to a screeching halt.

Yeah, but with The Twin Dilemma no one MINDS if the "story" is brought to a screeching halt.

Whereas Resurrection has real forward momentum on-screen.

Well, when I get Resurrection for myself (when it hits paperback), I'll make my own judgement.

Saward's "funniest" tangent in The Twin Dilemma - and i am damning with faint praise - is an accident with a matter transporter and a bottle of an alcoholic beverage. The person and the drink get fused together, a bit like "The Fly "

It's only been a few months since I did my Nitcentrally duty and inflicted the Twin Dilemma novelisation on myself but I've mercifully forgotten about that and, indeed, everything else bar the cat who knew it was impossible to calculate the square root of minus three...

I'm sorry, but I still think these anecdotes serve no useful purpose.

Mind you, Saward is not the only one guilty of doing this. David Gerrold did the same thing in his Star Trek novel, The Galactic Whirlpool. I cut the following from my review of that book:


The only complaint I have is these little anecdotes that Mr. Gerrold puts throughout the books. They tend to ramble and bring the story to a screeching halt. Many times I just said, "Yes, very interesting. Can we get on with the story?"


Where were the editors? Why didn't they veto these?

I'm sorry, but I still think these anecdotes serve no useful purpose.

What, as opposed to the ACTUAL Twin Dilemma narrative...?

Yes, TD was horrible, but that is entirely beside the point here. Saward was commissioned to novelize this story, and that is what he was supposed to do. The editor should have ordered him to cut the silly anecdotes out.

Say what you want about Terrance Dicks, at least he never did this in any of his novels.

Malcolm Hulke, on the other hand, DID, which is what made him the greatest of novelisers (at least till Moffat rewrote the rule-book in HIS novelisation).

Ian Marter's novelisation of the two Saward Dalek stories - a lot of gruesome violence, a "you bastard!" and boring tedium?

Malcolm Hulke, on the other hand, DID, which is what made him the greatest of novelisers

Yes, but he didn't go completely off tangent, like Saward did.


Ian Marter's novelisation of the two Saward Dalek stories

He would have had to write them via Ouija Board.


a "you bastard!"

Funny to think how worked up everyone got over the term "bastard", considering what the novels can get away with now.

Yes, but [Hulke] didn't go completely off tangent, like Saward did.

That Dinosaurs prologue with the drunk guy was pretty off-tangent, I remember being annoyed by it as a kid.

And as for that 'Read the Bible everyone!' gibberish at the end of Dinosaurs because human time-travel-inventors reminded the Doctor of four-headed aliens/angels...*Shakes head despairingly*

Yes, but those were within the context of the story. And those were only two.

On the other hand, Saward did it over, and over, and OVER! He really needed an editor to rein him in.

That Dinosaurs prologue with the drunk guy was pretty off-tangent, I remember being annoyed by it as a kid.

Whereas I read the novelization first and was disappointed it wasn't part of the TV story.

those were only two

There are plenty more examples. Hulke invents an entire one-sided love-affair between...some woman or other and that crazy Silurian-capturing bloke, for example. And the Earth President and her General. And then there's the IMC man with the IMC wife and the IMC children and the FOUR-romed IMC home! Plus various sinister scarred baddies get backstories, I seem to remember involving saving children or rather-too-enthusiastically killing IRA members (?).

RTG gives us a whole chapter about Wilson (of 'Wilson! Wilson! Got the lot'ry money!' fame)'s criminal backstory.

Cornell gives us synopses of Bill and Nardole's entire post-TARDIS centuries of life.

And then there's the whole Ian's-a-rocket-scientist! thing we get in The Daleks. And boy do we get a thorough tour of that bloody Ark. (The Ark one not the Ark in Space one.)

And doesn't The Rescue novelisation KILL OFF all the surviving (but-not-any-more!) natives?

That Dinosaurs prologue with the drunk guy was pretty off-tangent, I remember being annoyed by it as a kid.

Whereas I read the novelization first and was disappointed it wasn't part of the TV story.

Come to think of it, I read the thing well over a decade before I watched it, so I'm not sure WHY it got on my nerves. I was probably just desperate for MY DOCTOR to appear instead of some drunk tramp I no doubt priggishly disapproved of.

I was probably just desperate for MY DOCTOR to appear instead of some drunk tramp I no doubt priggishly disapproved of.

Yes, I find watching the Tom Baker era like that, too...

When was the Fourth Doctor ever drunk?

Sure, he fell down unconscious virtually every single time he partook of any alcohol but that was cos it was drugged (Morbius, Tara) or because he was promptly knocked unconscious by someone too stupid to drug the sherry (Stones of Blood).

There are plenty more examples. Hulke invents an entire one-sided love-affair between...some woman or other and that crazy Silurian-capturing bloke, for example. And the Earth President and her General. And then there's the IMC man with the IMC wife and the IMC children and the FOUR-romed IMC home! Plus various sinister scarred baddies get backstories, I seem to remember involving saving children or rather-too-enthusiastically killing IRA members

Since I still don't have many of these novels, Emily, I'll have to take your word on it.

Admittedly most of 'em fit into the flow of the story better than Saward's self-indulgent digressions but - at the risk of sounding repetitive - Twin Dilemma HAS no flow (or, well, anything else) going for it so no harm done.

---

quote:

So, I've finally got around to reading the Target novelisation of The Web Planet I got for my birthday, and the main first thing that struck me is the shift in language w/r/t the Doctor and the TARDIS.

The TARDIS itself is much less anthropomorphised, and its name is displayed in italics, like it's a ship name. It's really treated much more like a spaceship than the modern TARDIS, which at this point is a character all on its own.

And of course, there's the unbelievably jarring fact that the Doctor is always referred to in the text as 'Doctor Who'.

---

My first thought was that's odd given that David Whitaker is the one who first established the TARDIS as an entity. But then I double checked and Bill Sutton did that one.

---

quote:

Doctor Who Target Books:

Target always used to prefix story titles with “Doctor Who and the-“, eg, Doctor Who and the Invisible Enemy”, even when it was patently ridiculous (Doctor Who and the State of Decay). I think the first one not to use that convention was Death to the Daleks, but at that point it was an exception.

Looking at some of these, I’m reminded that, at some point, they abandoned that (Castrovalva, Logopolis). But it would have been amusing if they’d stuck to their guns and carried on. Doctor Who and the Rose? Doctor Who and the Tooth and Claw? Doctor Who and the Survival? Doctor Who and the Into the Dalek?

What would be the most ridiculous use of it, do you think?

---

Doctor Who and the Doctor Dances

the Ice Warriors with only Varga and Victoria is one of the examples of a Doctor-less cover.
(Well according to the "Changing Face..." blurb inside, it *is* Pertwee on the cover of The Mutants!)

Pick anything you thought was dull or slow or generally poor on TV and there you are. The beauty of books.

If it's between a Who novel and the latest exploits of the KarTRASHian creatures, the Who novel wins every time.

Doctor Who and the Doctor Dances

Doctor Who and Vincent and the Doctor

Doctor Who and It Takes You Away

Doctor Who and Dalek

Doctor Who and Deep Breath

Doctor Who and Knock Knock

Doctor Who and Let's Kill Hitler

Or, better still, Doctor Who In An Exciting Adventure With The Doctor Dances...etc etc...

Doctor Who and the Woman Who Fell to Earth

Doctor Who and Kerblam!

Doctor Who and the Fiveish Doctors

Doctor Who and Oxygen

Doctor Who and the Husbands of River Song

I think Doctor Who and Oxygen wins the prize.

I don't know. Doctor Who and Knock Knock gave me a good chuckle. It made me think of the Doctor with some small (non-canine) robot sidekick.

Doctor Who and the Bandril Ambassadors of Death?

Doctor Who And The Magic Trees

Can Saward's spelling really be that bad?

There is something vaguely satisfying about a professional writer who can't spell for toffee.

I've seen misspellings in quite a few novels.

Guess the editor was having an off day.

There is something vaguely satisfying about a professional writer who can't spell for toffee.

Well if that all the pay the publisher is offering no wonder the spelling is bad. I don't double-check my spelling for anything less than dark chocolate.

;-)

Don't they have editors to check for such errors?

Um, Target blurb? The Nimon don't want to enslave the galaxy, they want to destroy, not rule.
----
In the great maze of the Power Complex dwells the dreaded Nimon, a fearsome monster with immense scientific powers.

The Nimon has promised to restore the Skonnan Empire to its former glory. But first it demands sacrifice—youths and maidens from the peaceful planet Aneth.

The Tardis collides with the space ship delivering the victims, and the captured Romana is condemned to be sacrificed to the Nimon.

Aided by the faithful K9, the Doctor goes to the rescue. In the heart of the maze he confronts the Nimon and uncovers a terrifying plot to enslave the galaxy.

Um, Target blurb? The Nimon don't want to enslave the galaxy, they want to destroy, not rule.

Well, at least they're no longer altering the TITLES to lyingly imply a lot more excitement than you actually get (The Space War my arse). So we could cut 'em a bit of slack in the blurbs.

(I mean, obviously we're not GOING to cos we're Nitpickers but maybe the Nimon DID have a galactic-conquest plan in Eighth Doctor audio Seasons of Fear? I honestly can't remember but there was definitely SOME sort of wide-ranging plot going on that didn't just involve jumping to the next misfortunate planet and eating it. Admittedly the Doc didn't exactly uncover said plan in Horns of Nimon so the blurb would still be wrong. But at least spelt correctly which is more than you can say for Down's. Also devoid of any massive scientific errors like dinosaurs being mammals *coughTheCaveMonsterscough*...)

The Space War my arse

Which novel was called that?

The novelization of "Frontier in Space".

Well, maybe they fixed it in later publications.

Nice that they're getting around to novelizing the Modern Series.

I have the hideous feeling they were one-offs, there's zero sign of more DAMMIT I NEED MORE.

Plus it's blatant sexist discrimination against JODIE!, ALL the other New Who Docs have novelisations, even Hurt, even BRADLEY for heaven's sake.

Uncle Terry gives a better explanation than that "School Reunion" nonsense for why the Doctor didn't just pick up Sarah:

---

quote:

He set off into the forest then stopped with an obscure feeling of something missing. Of course! Sarah Jane Smith. She should have been beside him as usual, grumbling about their unexpected arrival in a strange destination, and the dangers they were sure to meet. The Doctor gave a rueful smile. Sarah was back on Earth now, like Harry Sullivan and the Brigadier. It had been the Doctor's own decision to take her back. Time Lord law had prevented him from taking her to Gallifrey. Besides, it was more than time that she took up her own ordinary human life again. Yes, the Doctor decided, he'd acted for the best. But as he walked through the forest, he couldn't help feeling a little lonely...

---

If it's 'Time Lord law' how can it also be 'his choice'?

And how DARE he condemn her to an 'ordinary human life' SHE DOESN'T BLOODY WANT? He should be the FIRST person to understand that...

And how DARE he condemn her to an 'ordinary human life' SHE DOESN'T BLOODY WANT?

That only happened after RTD turned Sarah Jane into his personal Gary Stu.

Sarah Jane was doing just fine when we saw her in K9 and Company and Five Doctors.

Sorry, RTD, but your pathetic attempt to rewrite history failed big time!

Sarah Jane was doing just fine when we saw her in K9 and Company and Five Doctors.

a) No she wasn't, no one appearing in K9 and Company can possibly be described as doing just fine, least of all Sarah Jane who - lest you've expunged the title sequence from your memory, and who could blame you - was deciding it was Wine O'Clock suspiciously early...and b) her response in Five Docs when K9 claimed the Doctor was involved suggested he was rubbing salt into some very sore wounds...

---

quote:

With a wheezing, groaning sound, the TARDIS disappeared from the suburban street corner where it had so briefly materialised. A small shaggy dog, ambling down the tree-lined road on some business of its own, pricked up its ears in astonishment, and barked suspiciously. Sarah looked round the quiet street, trying to get her bearings. ‘This isn’t Hillview Road. It isn’t even South Croydon!’ Sarah smiled. For all the Doctor’s confidence, the steering of the TARDIS had stayed obstinately erratic to the last. ‘He blew it,’ she said softly. She patted the dog. ‘Hey you, he blew it!’ The dog panted amiably, wagged its tail and went on its way. Whistling to keep up her spirits, Sarah set off to catch the bus home.

---

Yeah, well, you wouldn't expect TERRANCE DICKS to understand that even a feminist can get a broken heart when some git of a man dumps her...

Still not buying RTD's revisionist history.

"Arthur Hollis looked at his wife. She was one of the best, his
Mary, but a terrible one to talk. Ran in the family; her mother and her
sisters were just the same. Hollis himself had never been much of a
talker. The thought of describing his adventures to his wife, and
trying to answer her questions, filled him with horror."

With my acquisition of Resurrection Of The Daleks, I now have almost all the Peter Davison novelizations.

The only one I don't have is Dude, Where's My Nyssa? And I'm in no hurry to acquire that novel, for reasons I need not explain.

"‘Thank you for letting me know where to find the Doomsday Weapon. —The Master.’"

I emailed Tim a copy of the Kinda novelization as a PDF file. I hope he appreciates it. By the way, Keith, Francois, Emily, if you need one of the Targets I can just email you the PDF. Also got the New/Missing Adventures etc as PDFs.

That's very kind, but after a good twenty years of effort I'm now the proud owner of every NA/MA and every Target bar Fury From the Deep (which there's absolutely no hurry to acquire cos a library had an audio version of this so-called classic that I've had the misfortune to listen to fairly recently).

Natalie, what was the point of sending me that PDF of Dude, Where's My Nyssa? Once I saw what it was, I vapourized it.

Seriously, what did you expect!?

That you might appreciate the gesture? :'(

Or at least enjoy vaporising it...?

What Emily said!

Tim, is there any Doctor Who book made before 2013 that you *would* like a PDF copy of? I even have the Handbooks.

The Time Warrior, if you have it.

OK I'll just attach and email.

Woo-HOO!

Come July we'll be getting ourselves some Witchfinders, some Dalek and some Crimson Horror Targety goodness!

Nice to see Target back in business.

According to Target, one Hartnell story had a much better title ;)

DOCTOR WHO
AND THE DALEK
INVASION OF EARTH
Based on the BBC television serial Doctor Who and the World’s End
by Terry Nation by arrangement with the British Broadcasting
Corporation

Well, technically, the world didn't end

The area of Chelsea in which the TARDIS landed is actually called World's End. It was an unusually witty episode-title for the guy who gave us such gems as 'The Death of Doctor Who' and 'The Waking Ally'. (I mean, not that I'd have any objection whatsoever to an intriguing title like The Waking Ally IF THERE ACTUALLY WAS ANYTHING REMOTELY APPROACHING A WAKING ALLY IN IT.)

Ah, I did not know that.

Terrance Dicks uses the term "yid" in Timewyrm: Exodus. Given Dicks's known real life bigotries that are frequently added in novelisations but were not on TV (Women, the Welsh and the Scots for starters...), I'm not sure that he didn't enjoy using said anti-Semitic phrase.

To be honest, you're writing a book about Nazis...one of 'em is gonna say something politically-incorrect at SOME point. (Or, y'know, commit genocide.) If they don't you'll be accused of whitewashing Nazis.

And he DID change Silverstein's name in the Web of Fear novelisation to remove the gross anti-Semitism. He was in no way out to get Jews in the way he was out to get women.

Emily it right, the part of the book this happens in is the alternate time line in which Britain was conquered by the Nazis.

Hating Jews was what the Nazis were all about.

The fourth Doctor looks like he is about to give the Mummy Robot a right telling off on the original cover for Pyramids of Mars.

Not on the cover of the copy that I have.

This one - https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/tardis/images/a/a1/Pyramids_of_Mars_novel.jpg

Sarah Jane doesn't look too friendly either.

She wants to talk to that mummy's manager. ;-)

She wants to talk to that mummy's manager. ;-)

Sarah [to the Mummy's agent]: How come he's got big bewbs in this photo and i don't? ;-)

Here is the cover of my copy:


https://i.imgur.com/0m7lkuU.jpg


Clearly a later edition, as it has the neon tube logo that was introduced when JNT took over.

While it is an obvious attempt by the mid-seventies publisher to tie the book in with the bloke who was the current Doctor on BBC tv, this version of Doctor Who and The Crusaders would have been interesting TV viewing.

I suspect some of the Target titles would have been completely retitled, had the ‘and’ been kept. Doctor Who and the Power of Meglos, Doctor Who and the Fall of Logopolis, Doctor Who and the Time Trap (Castrovalva,) Doctor Who and the Urbankans (Four to Doomsday,) Doctor Who and the Undead (Mawdryn Undead,) Doctor Who and the Cyberman Conspiracy (Earthshock,) Doctor Who and the Tractators (Frontios,) Doctor Who and the Rani (Time and the Rani,) Doctor Who and the Bannermen, Doctor Who and the Ice World (Dragonfire,) Doctor Who and the Planet of the Cat People (Survival.)


Rights issues might have come into play here.

Doctor Who and the Crusaders uses both "Negro" and "Negress" to refer to the Arab characters. Somehowm i doubt that was retained when the "facsimile" reprint of the book was published a couple of years ago.

With the Doctor Who and…titles, I was rather astounded to discover the title Doctor Who and the Three Doctors.
This gave the impression that this story had four, not three, Doctors in it or didn’t anyone make that interpretation at the time.

I read the Crusade novelisation in high school and the only thing I remember from it is that while it was forbidden to change Earth’s history, it is alright to change the history of alien worlds.
That kind of reasoning does not make any sense certainly not for today’s readers.

Well, Matthew, back in the Hartnell days it was "We can't change history, not one line."

Of course, that was when they were doing actual historical stories, so the Doctor and Co. couldn't change anything, because it really happened.

Since Who abandoned pure historical stories long ago, that policy has been amended.

back in the Hartnell days it was "We can't change history, not one line."

That was just Season One Hartnell (The Aztecs), by Season Two Hartnell (The Time Meddler) he seemed distinctly under the impression that dammit, some lunatic COULD change history...with neutron bombs...

Yes, but by then they were starting to move away froe pure historical stories.

What's your favourite quote from a Target?

"Shughie turned and looked up. A massive claw hit him in the face. In his last moment of life, Shughie McPherson resolved to give up drinking whisky"

'They met in a hidden chamber, deep beneath the Capitol: the being from another dimension and the Time Lord who was betraying not only his people but his universe.'

-

'Many years later, in circumstances too scandalous to relate, I asked Ohila what had been in the goblet.
"Lemonade and dry ice," she admitted, as I lit her cigar. "Or something like that, I was in a hurry and it needed to look dramatic."
"But the Doctor did become a warrior."
"The Idiot Child was a warrior his entire life. The universe needed him to be a little more honest on the subject, so I provided a moment of theatre that facilitated his change of hearts."'

-

'Sometimes he missed the monochrome world of his first two incarnations. It had felt like a simpler, cleaner time; so many centuries had passed before he realised he'd just been colour blind.'

-

Oh, and Dent encountering his IMC gadgets including his blue-haired IMC wife but that's a whole page so damned if I'm going to copy it all out.

Yeah, that was very sweet but also very unlike the Doctor to do the respect-for-the-dead thing (guy couldn't be bothered to hang around an extra couple of hours to attend his own daughter's funeral for heaven's sake), especially when said dead person was a Master-loving traitor-to-humanity...

That last one is clearly from Harry Sullivan's War.

Was the 1996 TV Movie ever novelized?

Yes by Gary Russell

Ah, someone did novelize it.

I'd've DIED without Targets as a kid. It's not even mainly the connection with Who, it's just that I got through a HELL of a lot of books and without that extra hundred or so to joyously reread on a regular basis I'd've been screwed.

Enlightenment is another Target novel that was written by the same author that wrote the television story namely Barbara Clegg.

At the end of the novel, she adds the info that the surviving Earth crews were all returned to their own times when the race ended. She even has the White Guardian say as much

White Guardian: "The Ephemeral crews have been returned to their own times."

Nice to see this loose end addressed.

Enlightenment was one of only two Classic Who novelizations that was written by a woman. Survival, written by Rona Munro (who also wrote the television story), is the other one.

Doctor Who and the Library of Time:

OK, so it's not a proper Target novelisation but chapters from various recent novelisations but the cover is pleasingly JODIE!-heavy.

Introduction:

Yup, still getting a kick out of the Doctor being referred to as 'she' and 'her', after all these years...

Sexy stores the Doctor's adventures as books since WHEN! (Well, since her audio-visual archive met with a few accidents and ended up incomplete, apparently. *Wince* Wonder what happened to the dear old Space-Time Visualiser...)

'Just when I think I finally have a complete set of books, the Doctor has even more adventures' - well, DUH. Anyone would know THAT, let alone someone who (according to Doctor's Wife anyway) has a very non-linear relationship with time.

'Shelves are no problem for my architectural reconfiguration system' - I'm probably wrong to take this as a malicious dig at me and a few million other Fans with severe shelving issues.

Oh dear god. Just when you think it's safe to go back into the water...'This Target novelisation is based on the televised version of The Pirate Planet. For a version based on Douglas Adams's first draft scripts, check out BBC Books' Doctor Who - The Pirate Planet. It's a much longer - and very different - book.'

...Which one is even CANON?

Novelisations for the following are coming in July 2022:
The Androids of Tara

The Stones of Blood

The Fires of Pompeii

The Eaters of Light

The Zygon Invasion

These Doctor Who novelisations coming out in July 2022.

For The Fires of Pompeii, wonder if Moran provides a backstory about the Soothsayer and how she got to where she is in this story.

If I know how to write a story, I would have the Soothsayer getting saved by a Chinese man and she lives happily together with him.

Ooh! New Who novelisations always welcome! I assume Invasion'll cover Inversion as well and maybe it'll finally explain WHY WHY GODS WHY DID OUR DOCTORS AND UNIT GIVE OUR PLANET AWAY TO ORANGE GENOCIDAL MANIACS. Better still, Eaters is bound to give us some backstory about that time the Doc was a Vestal Virgin (Second Class)...

WHICH Androids n'Stones novelisations will be released, exactly? There are two each.

Matthew, both Androids Of Tara and Stones Of Blood were published decades ago. You're talking like this is new.

Well, if it's the David Fisher versions they haven't been in paper form before. And even if it's just the Terrance Dicks ones, they'll have exciting new covers and probably intros and cost a fortune...

Yes, but Matthew made it sound like a new thing, when it wasn't.

Not sure about the Modern Who novels though.

Well, that's the way the BBC announces them, as if THRILLING NEW NOVELISATIONS!!!!! are as significant as getting a new cover on the ones we spent our entire childhood rereading.

What do you mean, NOT SURE about the Modern Who novels? The Day of the Doctor one is infinitely better than not just any other novelisation but also than the ACTUAL Day of the Doctor...

Here is an article on those new novelisations:
https://thedoctorwhocompanion.com/2022/01/20/five-new-doctor-who-target-novelisations-to-be-released-in-july-2022/?fbclid=IwAR0IUQJjX4kd4-e-IWYmy-ny1A4a1D293E27qCZvjEN9fSa1BWA4chPgTkI

On The Stones of Blood & The Androids of Tara:
"As for The Stones of Blood and The Androids of Tara, both were originally novelised by Terrance Dicks; however, when they were recorded for audio release a few years ago, those recordings were based on new texts written by David Fisher. Now, we’ll finally be getting those Fisher-penned adaptations."

when they were recorded for audio release

O_o

Soooooooo... Big Finish is getting Target novelizations?

No. Obviously feeling that Big Finish just don't give us ENOUGH audios, the BBC produce 'em too.

But usually the BBC just burns the pictures.

*Bah dum bump*

This Fisher bloke was the guy that wrote the television episodes. If he wanted to novelize these himself, why didn't he do it decades ago, like Andrew Smith (Full Circle) and Terrence Dudley (Black Orchid and The King's Demons) did?

Why did he wait so long?

But usually the BBC just burns the pictures.

*Bah dum bump*

Salt. Wounds.

This Fisher bloke was the guy that wrote the television episodes. If he wanted to novelize these himself, why didn't he do it decades ago

Such was the authority in Terrance Dicks' voice...?

Except that Fisher DID do Creature From the Pit and Leisure Hive...

Fisher was told "Terrance Dicks does the novelisations" and he couldn't do them. After kicking up a fuss, they let him do Creature From The Pit and The Leisure Hive. It was around that time, Target changed the "Terrance-only" policy.

Terrance only?

But I cited examples when other authors wrote novelizations, the aforementioned Andrew Smith and Terence Dudley (of course, the novelizations they did were of the television stories that they wrote). Barbara Clegg also novelized her story, Enlightenment.

Ian Marter also had a go at a few of the novelizations.

While Terrence Dicks did most of the novelizations, he wasn't the sole author.

Chris Achilleos in DWM on his And The Daleks pink TARDIS cover: 'I'd only ever seen [Who] in black and white! Of course, I should have known better, because I'd seen police boxes around London. But for some reason it never occurred to me' - bless!

Re his new Visitation cover: 'He admits...that he failed to capture Peter Davison very well' - oh, how bad can it BE... *Looks. Shrieks*

After David Fisher kicked up a fuss, that's when the policy started to change... leading to the examples you cited. Read an interview with Fisher in DWM explaining this, way, way back.

Re his new Visitation cover: 'He admits...that he failed to capture Peter Davison very well' - oh, how bad can it BE... *Looks. Shrieks*

Still better than the original cover, which captured him all too well.

Hey, call me a philistine but I'd always wondered why they didn't just stick photos on the covers and was delighted to finally start getting REAL LIVE DOCTOR! on my novelisations rather than a bad drawing of him.

You're a philistine.

Novelisations for the following are coming in July 2022:
The Androids of Tara

The Stones of Blood

The Fires of Pompeii

The Eaters of Light

The Zygon Invasion

Or...not.

Zygons seems mysteriously missing from the Happy (Re)Announcement of the FOUR new titles...infuriatingly given how much I was counting on it to tell me WHETHER OR NOT THE WHOLE OF LONDON HAD BEEN SLAUGHTERED AND REPLACED BY ZYGON SCUM.

'These latest additions to the collection, all by the original writers of the TV episodes, will help Target fans complete their classic and modern-era collections'

Well, not really, our classic-era collections are complete AT LAST AT LAST AT LAST THANK YOU GODS!!!!! and having TWO DIFFERENT Stones/Androids novelisations will only cause unbearable confusion in our minds, whilst two (TWO!) extra New Who books will hardly make a dent in the hundreds (HUNDREDS!) of New Who stories we have been BLESSED with...

Zygons seems mysteriously missing from the Happy (Re)Announcement of the FOUR new titles...infuriatingly given how much I was counting on it to tell me WHETHER OR NOT THE WHOLE OF LONDON HAD BEEN SLAUGHTERED AND REPLACED BY ZYGON SCUM.

Amazon now has Zygon Invasion scheduled for a year's time. Well, if Harness needs an extra twelve months to figure out what the •••• was going on in his story, none of us are exactly in a position to criticise...

The Fires of Pompeii writer James Moran on what makes a Target novel special:
https://www.doctorwho.tv/news-and-features/what-makes-a-target-novel?cm_mmc=ExactTarget-_-email-_-DW193_Newsletter_20072022-_-email&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=ExactTarget&utm_campaign=DW193_Newsletter_20072022

Awwww. *Sigh* There's no doubt that the modern generation growing up with almost the entirety of Who at their fingertips on-screen where it belongs are missing out on SOME essential part of a true Who childhood...

Intro to The Essential Terrance Dicks: Volume 1:

'The early adventures of Doctor Who lit my life with fear and wonder. On my first day at school, I experimentally - and I thought heroically - kicked a nun. Her combination of veil and floor length skirt made her look to me like a small blue Irish Dalek' - DAMMIT why couldn't Cottrell-Boyce have brought this wonderful nun-kicking energy to That Abomination With The Trees...

'I think often of the humility that Dicks showed when he sat down to write these books. There was no kudos in it for him. There is no more despised genre than the "novelization". Yet he put all of himself into them' - he didn't REALLY though, did he. Maybe The Auton Invasion but after that...

Or maybe write a story where a Dalek is disguised as a nun?

"You will praise god or be exterminated!"

;-)

Meh. My eighth grade teacher wasn't a Dalek but still said that.

(Wait. She wasn't, was she..?)

Actually, the Daleks are AMATEURS compared to nuns. They just exterminate you and, alright, it may (Prisoner of the Daleks, Emancipation of the Daleks) or may not (everything else, especially Eve of the Daleks) be designed to cause you excruciating agony but at least it's over FAST. The nuns want you to be tortured for eternity, like, BLOODY ETERNITY. If you so much as have a shag or accept Tom Baker as your Lord and Saviour.

Awwww, RTG and The Moff discuss their novelisations...sorry, novels...

Adorable that RTG really wanted to do Gridlock instead...

Ooh!

Can't wait for Waters of Mars! Don't particularly care about Kerblam!. Was gonna say 'Or Planet of the Ood' when I remembered we could actually really do with an explanation for why the do-sod-all DoctorDonna got all the credit.

*Sigh* We are to be blessed beyond our deserving by a version of Evil of the Daleks from Jamie's POV by Frazer Hines. (To be fair, we COULD probably do with an explanation of why he turns on Our Hero like a rabid dog...but I'd rather live with the mystery than part with twenty quid...)

RTG's new Specials are to get novelisation releases in January! Weirdly enough by Gary Russell, Mark Morris and James Goss, but I guess RTG Himself is JUST A BIT BUSY AT THE MOMENT...

We are (slightly oddly) to celebrate our Sixtieth with an illustrated copy of RTG's Rose novelisation. Costing thirty quid. It's Amazon's No 1 Bestseller in the Who section, which does pleasingly suggest Fans are generally rather well-off.

From te Brain Of Morbius novelization:

---

quote:

Solon listened a moment longer, then slugged impatiently. 'I hear nothing — look, Condo!' He pointed to the path below. Two more Sisters were struggling along it, each carrying a heavy bundle of faggots.

---

RTG's new Specials are to get novelisation releases in January!

As is The Church on Ruby Road. When RTG FINALLY gets into novelisations He REALLY gets into novelisations...

That was quick!