List of Doctor Who novelisations

This is a list of "Doctor Who" novelisations, in order of publication.

The first three "Doctor Who" serials to be novelised were the William Hartnell stories "The Daleks" as "Doctor Who in an exciting adventure with the Daleks" by David Whitaker, "The Web Planet" as "Doctor Who and the Zarbi" by Bill Strutton and "The Crusade" as "Doctor Who and the Crusaders" by Whitaker. These three books were published in 1964 to 1965 by Frederick Muller Ltd.

Between 1973 and 1991, Target Books published almost every "Doctor Who" television serial as a novelisation, starting with new editions of the Frederick Muller Ltd. books. When Target was taken over by Virgin in 1991, three further serials "The Power of the Daleks" and "The Evil of the Daleks" by John Peel and the radio serial "The Paradise of Death" by Barry Letts were added to the range.

The only serials never to have been officially novelised are "The Pirate Planet", "City of Death", "Shada", "Resurrection of the Daleks" and "Revelation of the Daleks", due to licensing issues with the original scriptwriters. (Unofficial fan novelisations were published by the New Zealand Doctor Who Fan Club between 1989 and 2000) The Children in Need special "Dimensions in Time" and the Comic Relief spoof "Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death" have also not been novelised.

The novelisation of the 1996 "Doctor Who" television movie by Gary Russell was published by BBC Books. There are currently no plans to novelise episodes of the revived series with Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor or David Tennant's Tenth Doctor. (However, in late 2007 novelisations of the first two 2005 episodes were published as ebooks. They were quickly removed from the [http://www.targetonlinebooks.co.uk/ website] following threat of legal action by the BBC's Brand Protection Team.)Fact|date=June 2008

In addition to the television serials, three scripts from the cancelled Season 23 were novelised, "The Nightmare Fair", "The Ultimate Evil" and "Mission to Magnus" (details below). Also a short series entitled "The Companions of Doctor Who" was published — this comprised the novelisation of the pilot of "K-9 and Company", and the original works "Turlough and the Earthlink Dilemma" and "Harry Sullivan's War".

Besides "Paradise of Death", Target also novelised two additional non-televised stories: the radio play "Slipback" and the audio story "The Pescatons".

A novelisation by Barry Letts of a further radio drama, "The Ghosts of N-Space", was published as part of the Virgin Missing Adventures range in 1995, as was the novelisation of the independent spin-off "Downtime"; that same year, the Virgin New Adventures range published a novelisation of "." The most recent novelisation to be published was an adaptation of the webcast "Scream of the Shalka" published by BBC Books in 2004.

In 2005, BBC Audio released unabridged audiobook versions of the first three Frederick Muller novelisations, read by actor William Russell. Beginning in September 2007, they began releasing further unabridged audiobooks of the Target novelisations at the approximate rate of two every two months; the books themselves remain officially out of print.

Also in 2007, Penguin Books, under its imprint Penguin Character Books, began publishing novelisations based upon the spin-off series "The Sarah Jane Adventures".

Publication details

Although Target endeavoured to commission the original scriptwriters to novelise their own stories, this was not always possible. As a result, many books in the Target line were written by Terrance Dicks. During the late 1970s-early 1980s Target, which classified the novelisations as children's fiction, imposed a page limit of 128 pages on the novelisations. Some books (particularly several by Dicks) even fell short of this limit and nearly fell into the category of novellas. By the late 1980s, however, the page cap had been lifted, although John Peel was still required to split his novelisation of the epic 12-episode "The Daleks' Master Plan" into two volumes because the manuscript was too long.

Target began numbering its novelisations from 1983, with almost all of the first seventy-three books being numbered as reprints came out and the novelisation of "The Abominable Snowmen" being given the #1 position. The first new book to be numbered was "Time-Flight". Target's numbering did not initially reflect original publication order (which would have placed David Whitaker's "Doctor Who and the Daleks" book first), but rather was conducted in alphabetical order. The numbering likewise had no connection with production or broadcast order. Due to print delays and last minute reordering of publication schedules, some of the later books were released out of numeric order.

In 1988–1989 W. H. Allen's Star label published a number of the Target novelisations in a format of two novelisations in one book. The pairings were:
*"The Dalek Invasion of Earth" and "The Crusade"
*"The Gunfighters" and "The Myth Makers"
*"The Dominators" and "The Krotons"
*"The Mind of Evil" and "The Claws of Axos"
*"The Dæmons" and "The Time Monster"
*"The Seeds of Doom" and "The Deadly Assassin"
*"The Face of Evil" and "The Sun Makers"

Titles

For the first few years of the Target line, it was common practice for the novels to have titles that differed from the adapted serials. For example, "Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion", which was based upon the serial "Spearhead from Space". This practice was dropped in the mid-1970s. Another tradition established by the books was to append the words "Doctor Who and ..." to the titles, except in a few cases where impractical. This practice continued until the early 1980s.

List of novelisations published by Target

Adaptations

Generally, Doctor Who stories that have been broadcast will be adapted into print, rather than vice-versa. However, the 1995 New Adventures novel "Human Nature", written by Paul Cornell and featuring the Seventh Doctor, has been adapted by the same author for the 2007 series of "Doctor Who" as a two part story with the episode titles "Human Nature" and "The Family of Blood", with David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor. Also, Steven Moffat based his 2007 episode, "Blink" upon a 2006 short story, "What I Did on My Christmas Holidays by Sally Sparrow", originally published in "Doctor Who Annual 2006".

External links

* [http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/~ecl6nb/OnTarget/general/main.htm On Target, a guide to Target novelisations]