The Art of... The Smugglers

Doctor Who - The Smugglers was written by Terrance Dicks and first published in 1988.

Dicks novelised 64 Doctor Who stories, but this was the only purely historical adventure he ever tackled.

The book was the final novelisation of the classic run to be issued in both hardback and paperback. Up until then, the h/b was issued a few months before the p/b version. WH Allen announced that they would henceforth be issuing both versions together - only to drop the hard cover altogether.

The cover art is by Alister Pearson. He opts to include the two main aspects of the story - the pirates, represented by the ship at night, and the smugglers by the church where "Holy Joe" Longfoot is based and where much of the action takes place. This is contrasted with the pirate half by being depicted in daylight.

The Hartnell portrait derives from a publicity shot of the actor in the TARDIS from The Web Planet.

The soundtrack opts to feature as its main image the best known photograph from the story - the Doctor being threatened by Cherub. The other common image is that of the Squire with Polly and the injured Ben, and that is also used. Captain Pike, a sailing ship and some figures landing on a beach at night complete the montage cover.

This was released in May 2002. Anneke Wills provides the narration.

Pearson's image is used again on the audiobook release but, unlike many, it is adapted by the artist to fit the larger, squarer space. Indeed, he has opted to repaint the work, as can be seen with the configuration of the sails on the ship and the treeline behind the church. The main artwork is framed by pillars and an arched design, presumably reflecting the church crypt setting. The daytime sky has been totally repainted in a much more satisfying manner, and there is a clearer dividing line between the day / night halves of the image in the foreground.

As you can see, the novel is read by Wills, and it was released in 2020.

Finally, with no VHS or DVD release available, the moviedb site uses a colourful photomontage to illustrate the story. The same photographic sources as the soundtrack release are used, but minus the Squire and adding the church.

The surviving Australian censor clips plus the colour home movie footage from location can be found on the Lost in Time DVD set. The latter originally appeared on the unofficial The Doctors release.

A couple of years ago it was claimed in the press that the story was going to be animated, along with The Underwater Menace. We've had that, but no sign yet of The Smugglers being animated. With sailing ships and large groups of pirates and excisemen, it was never an obvious choice for animation but the team behind these have stated that they would like to release everything eventually.

A great alternative is the recent AI recreations courtesy of Ian Levine, some of which are already available on YouTube, with a promise to have them all freely available in the near future.