The two-volume books, The Essential Terrance Dicks, reprinting some of the late writer’s Target novelisations of Doctor Who stories, are being reprinted as part of the paperback Penguin Classics range. Here’s the blurb for both: “I think if you can get a kid reading for pleasure, not because it’s work, but actually reading for pleasure, it’s a great step forward. It can start with me, you know,…

I can distinctly remember buying The Five Doctors paperback; it was the Saturday before The Five Doctors was to be screened during Children in Need 1983 and I was astonished to see the book available before it was broadcast. The bookshop, now long gone, was in the Harvey Nichols end of Sloane Street, Knightsbridge, and I recall being a little bemused that the Sloane Ranger (remember them?), in…

Horror of Fang Rock was a famously fraught production, commissioned as a late replacement script and filmed on cramped sets, tension hanging in the air like coastal fog as Tom Baker and director Paddy Russell rubbed each other up the wrong way. But despite these unpromising conditions, a true classic was somehow delivered, a masterpiece of suspense that ranks as a highlight even among the many…

There’s a wonderful bit at the beginning of Pyramids of Mars that I’ll rave about to just about anyone who’ll listen. As Sarah Jane wanders into the TARDIS console room, wearing Victoria’s old dress, she comes face-to-not-quite-face with a ruminating Tom Baker, who peers anxiously off to the left of the fourth wall and mutters “The Earth isn’t my home, Sarah. I’m a Time Lord”, with all the…

The Time Lords send the Doctor and his companions back in time to Skaro just before the birth of the Daleks with the aim of preventing their creation, altering their development, or at least learning a weakness that could be exploited: anything to stop them becoming the dominant creature in the universe. A plot we’re all familiar with; Genesis of the Daleks needs no introduction. Before the…

The Target novelisation, Doctor Who and the Wheel in Space, more than nearly any other, is semi-legendary. It’s the almost lost book, most of the copies destroyed in a fire. Copies circulate on eBay for crazy amounts of money for a short TV tie-in novel (between £50 and £100, last time I looked). The big question is though – is it actually worth the money? Is it a good book, for all its…

More often than not, when you’re a child, you don’t understand or even consider the significance of things. Take, for example, my Reception age daughter who is currently discovering the wacky madness of Sooty, Sweep, and Soo. She is aware that there was another friend of the trio before Richard Cadell, but that’s not important to her. Nor is it of any interest to her that Sooty is nearly 70 years…

Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks is one of the best of the Target novels. You will be amazed to hear that it is based on the television story entitled Day of the Daleks. I can remember its first broadcast, even though I was still at primary school; I found it absolutely entrancing and didn’t then notice that the Daleks themselves were oddly static or that their voices weren’t great, though I…

“And when all the programs on all the channels actually were made by actors with cleft-palettes, speaking lines by dyslexic writers, filmed by blind cameramen, instead of merely seeming like that.” — Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Fit the Eleventh) Doctor Who writer Douglas Adams has rightly been lauded for his comedic brilliance, visionary ideas, and technological…

First published in 1977, Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth is a book steeped in decay and the smell of death. The TARDIS lands on an abandoned building site by the filthily polluted River Thames. Barbara goes to the river to get water and recoils from the body floating past. Do Not Drink Rainwater. All Rainwater Must Be Boiled Before Consumption. The Doctor and Ian stumble on the body of…

Two very special books are out now, marking the anniversary of Terrance Dicks’ death, and collecting together 10 of the Doctor Who legend’s best-loved Target novelisations. These are seriously impressive volumes, and even at their respective £25 RRPs are absolute bargains. The spines line up to form the Target logo, while inside, we get to enjoy numerous adventures featuring the Daleks, a…