Last week (I am never up-to-date with my updates) there was
a new Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition,
devoted to the novelisations published by Target Books in the 1970s and 1980s.
My contribution to this, quite frankly, wonderful publication was an
introduction. In the space of 3000 words I had to give a potted history of the
books and explain their appeal. Obviously both subjects could easily merit much
more detailed and comprehensive articles, but such articles have already
appeared elsewhere so, for this, I decided to include a few personal memories
(as examples of how all Doctor Who fans
of a certain vintage associate the books with moments in their childhood), and
dedicated a chunk of my wordcount to stuff which hasn’t really been covered
elsewhere; the books’ literary style, and how their content shifted over the
decades from writing novelisations for ‘casual viewers’, kids who watched Doctor Who on telly who might need the
basics introduced to them, to ‘dedicated fans’ who wanted accurate novelisations
of old adventures they didn’t have on video and expanded novelisations of the
recent adventures they did have on video. Thinking about it now, that is best
illustrated by the shift from the books having ‘Doctor Who and the’ titles to
having ‘Doctor Who hyphen The Title of the Story’ titles. I wish I’d thought of
that when I was writing the article! (There’s also a gradual shift from having
child-enticing covers in the 1970s showcasing the monsters to fan-accommodating
covers in the 1980s consisting of photo-referenced heads floating in a
vortex).
I also included a box-out on something else which has never
really been brought up, which is how the Doctor
Who novelisations fitted into the history of novelisations as a sub-genre.
Because when they started, there were a few other novelisations of shows like Timeslip already on the shelves, and
then later, as you move into the late 1970s and the 1980s, there’s a whole load
of books offering new stories and novelisations of TV series, from sitcoms like
The Good Life and to Porridge to Grange Hill and EastEnders.
I mean, one overlooked thing about the Doctor
Who novelisations shift to ‘photographic’ covers in the early 1980s meant
that they were being brought into line with the other TV tie-ins being
published at the same time. Plus that was the era of novelisations of Hollywood
movies, just before video recorders came in and rendered the whole idea
moot.
Sadly I didn’t have room for all that, or to go into detail
about the dull and complicated history of the hardback editions, or to mention
the amusing misprint in Doctor Who –
Delta and the Bannermen. However, I still found plenty to say, and all the
other aspects of the novelisations – their covers, how the differ from the TV
stories, plus the Discovers books and
other spin-offs are all covered elsewhere in the magazine. Only £6.99, available from all
good newsagents!
