ON THE SHELF
THE OFFICIAL DOCTOR WHO T.V.TIE-IN NOVELISATIONS


Schwartzman: Doctor Who in an exciting adventure with the Daleks
Although Doctor Who is by no means the only TV serial to have been adapted for a series of novels, its longevity, plot variety, episodic format and enormous popularity were ideal qualifications for a similarly long-lived series of popular novels, yet publishers were remarkably slow to capitalise on this potentially lucrative source of material. Pioneers in the sci-fi TV tie-in genre included adaptations of the classic Quatermass serials, A for Andromeda and its sequel The Andromeda Breakthrough, and the very first British sci-fi TV serial, Stranger from Space. With Doctor Who enjoying 26 years of TV stories, it's no surprise that once a brave publisher took the plunge, it resulted in probably the longest series of TV tie-in adaptations ever.

Fox: Doctor Who and the Crusaders
Doctor Who's first venture into the world of children's literature came less than a year after it first appeared on TV. Publishers Frederick Muller Ltd were amongst several commercial enterprises who realised there was money to be made out of the Daleks, and after favourable responses to approaches made to the BBC and Terry Nation, David Whitaker was commissioned to write an adaptation of The Mutants at around the same time film maker Milton Subotsky secured the rights to make a film version. Not intended to be part of a series, this debut novel, entitled Doctor Who in an exciting adventure with the Daleks, was published in hardback in September 1964 and proved to be fairly popular. Encouraged by this, Frederick Muller bought the rights to a further two stories which appeared a year later, Doctor Who and the Crusaders by David Whitaker, and Doctor Who and the Zarbi by Bill Strutton. However, although extremely well written, neither were as successful as the Dalek novel and no further stories were considered for adaptation. Both Whitaker novels appeared in paperback versions, Doctor Who in an exciting adventure with the Daleks on the Armada imprint of May Fair Books, and Doctor Who and the Crusaders on the Green Dragon imprint of Atlantic Book Publishing, but initial print runs were not repeated.

Anon: Doctor Who and the Crusaders
In 1972, the editor of Universal-Tandem Publishing's new Target range of children's books was looking for potential titles to market and came across the three Frederick Muller novels at a trade fair. Discovering the options were available for sale, and realising most Doctor Who fans were beginning to want permanent records of the TV adventures (this was a full decade before domestic home videos existed), he bought the rights and launched all three as Target novels in May 1973. By this time the BBC had given permission for further stories to be adapted, then script editor Terrance Dicks being particularly enthusiastic, a series was planned and writers, including Dicks, commissioned. Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion (Spearhead from Space) by Dicks and Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters (Doctor Who and the Silurians) by Malcolm Hulke appeared together in January 1974, with subsequent novels following in pairs every other month. The first two titles were also published in hardback on the Allan Wingate label, whilst hardback editions of the original Frederick Muller novels were published by White Lion in 1975 with Tom Baker's likeness on the dustcovers. Subsequent hardback editions published during the next two years were intended for sale to public libraries only and weren't commercially available until the early 1980s, whilst hardback editions were discontinued altogether at the end of 1988. An initial plan to adapt the entire range of Pertwee stories was quickly dropped to allow the inclusion of a number of Troughton stories, and when Tom Baker took over the role in December 1974, his debut story was published less than three months later. The series continued with one new novel being published on a monthly basis, with one-or-two exceptions, until virtually all the TV stories had been exhausted. Universal-Tandem Publishing became part of Wyndham Publications in 1977, which itself was swallowed up shortly after by the W.H.Allen empire. The Target label, by now exclusively linked with Doctor Who titles, the idea of it being a general range of children's books having long fallen by the wayside, remained until Virgin Publishing acquired W.H.Allen in 1991. The final novel to be published as a "Target" book was Victor Pemberton's adaptation of Doctor Who: The Pescatons, a story which had appeared on an LP record in 1976. The last two adaptations of original TV stories, John Peel's Doctor Who: The Power of the Daleks and Doctor Who: The Evil of the Daleks, appeared in 1993 and 1994 on Virgin's Doctor Who imprint, leaving just four stories un-novelised (not bad when you consider eleven stories can't be released on video or DVD because they're missing from the BBC archives, whilst a further sixteen are incomplete). Two of these are Douglas Adams titles, the other two Eric Saward's Dalek stories. Adams was approached by W.H.Allen to adapt his stories but turned the offer down when he discovered the standard fee was much less than what he got for his series of Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy novels. The problem with the Saward scripts will probably never be resolved. With the TV series now defunct, Virgin Publishing received permission from the BBC for a new series of original novels based on the characters, and launched what eventually evolved into an entirely new concept of the original Doctor Who format, which in turn heavily influenced the style of the revived TV serial when it appeared in 2005. Whether the new Welsh series will be adapted as a series of novels remains to be seen. The self-contained 45 minute format is notoriously awkward to translate into book form, as James Blish (who adapted the Star Trek stories) and Trevor Hoyle (who did the same for several episodes of Blake's 7) discovered, and today's viewers seem less likely to buy a written adaptation of a favourite TV show than a DVD.

Willow: Doctor Who and the Cybermen
Naturally, such a lengthy series of novels necessitated a large number of different authors, although for a long period in the late-Seventies Terrance Dicks was producing the lion's share, sometimes at a cost to quality. With several different authors having their own individual approaches, the Doctor Who novels covered a wide variety of styles. Dicks tended to stick fairly close to the original script with a standard three chapters per episode, whilst Bill Strutton and William Emms's adaptations of their original scripts featured each episode as individual chapters (Strutton also committing the cardinal sin of referring to the Doctor as "Doctor Who"). Sixteen novels had chapters entitled Escape, ten of them by Terrance Dicks. John Peel's adaptation of The Evil of the Daleks had two chapters with the same title. Steve Gallagher (writing as John Lydecker) did away with chapters altogether for his two novels, which was a bit of a shock for first-time readers, several of whom found that reading until the end of the next chapter meant reading the entire book in one go! Nigel Robinson and former TV regular Ian Marter tended to handle those early stories whose writers had passed away, whilst Donald Cotton specialised in comedic adaptations written from the viewpoint of one of the characters. His adaptation of Dennis Spooner's The Romans was presented as a collection of letters and diary jottings written by various characters. John Peel (no relation to the legendary radio DJ) referred to original draft scripts, inserting large amounts of material which never made the screen. The very first novel, mercifully retitled Doctor Who and the Daleks by Universal-Tandem, was written from the viewpoint of Ian Chesterton and featured a totally new introduction as it was, at the time, intended to be a stand-alone story. Similarly, Malcolm Hulke's Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon (Colony in Space) featured Jo Grant meeting the Doctor for the first time as, at the time, there were no immediate plans for Jo's first three stories to be adapted. When John Nathan Turner became producer of the TV series, he was keen for the novels to be as close to the TV originals as possible. This led to W.H.Allen arranging for the original TV writers to adapt their own scripts almost as part of their BBC commission. One or two, such as Christopher Bailey and Johnny Byrne, were reluctant to do so, but most of the others happily went along with it, mainly as it gave them an all important foothold in the literary world. Only one of the fourteen Sylvester McCoy stories wasn't adapted by its original script writer.

Wood: Doctor Who and the Zarbi
The practice of numbering the novels was introduced in 1983 with the publication of Peter Grimwade's Doctor Who: Time-Flight. For some reason though, all the novels published to that date were numbered in alphabetical order. Thus Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen became Target Number 1 instead of Doctor Who and the Daleks (the first novel) or Doctor Who and an Unearthly Child (the first TV story). This meant the numbering system had no meaning whatsoever unless readers had no knowledge of the correct chronological order of the original TV stories. At around the same time, the rather juvenile practice of naming the novels "Doctor Who and..." was changed to a more adult hyphen between the "Doctor Who" and the story title.
Several early novelisations were translated into foreign languages for overseas markets. Eight titles were translated into Dutch, seven into Turkish (although one was never published), five into Japanese, ten into Portuguese - including one for the Brazilian market, eight into French, six into German, three into Polish (plus one not published), and two into Finnish. Strangely, only the Dutch had ever screened the original TV series, although some later stories were dubbed into German and screened on satellite channels after 1989.

Achilleos: Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks
The original Frederick Muller novels had all featured illustrations, and Universal-Tandem continued this practice for several novels until Doctor Who and the Green Death in May 1975, although Doctor Who and the Giant Robot was the first un-illustrated novel in March of that year. Drawn from screen stills, Arnold Schwartzman illustrated Doctor Who in an exciting adventure with the Daleks, John Wood did Doctor Who and the Zarbi, whilst Henry Fox handled Doctor Who and the Crusaders. The Green Dragon edition of Doctor Who and the Crusaders featured illustrations different to those found in the Frederick Muller edition by an unknown artist. Of the new Universal-Tandem adaptations, Chris Achilleos provided illustrations for the first four, with Alan Willow taking over for the remaining seven. Examples of their work illustrate this page.