Back On Target

Thursday 8th August sees the release of the latest Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition - and this one's dedicated to the Target book range.
I have bought every issue of Doctor Who Magazine right from the first issue of its earliest incarnation - Doctor Who Weekly - in 1979, and I generally buy all the Special Editions as well. That was until recently. I didn't bother buying the Yearbook for 2017, as there wasn't any broadcast Doctor Who in the year it covered (2016) apart from a Christmas Special - and I certainly won't be buying the 2020 one either. I've also decided to give the recent Twelfth Doctor Volume One a miss, as it is just a rehash of the partwork with some extra photographs.
I was in two minds about buying this week's Special Edition as well, because I already own a well-thumbed copy of The Target Book, written by David J Howe, and published by Telos Publishing over a decade ago.

This gave the complete history of the Target range, focusing mainly on the Doctor Who books but also featuring sidebars covering other works, which ranged from a series about Canadian Mounties to a series about Skinheads of all things. Every author was profiled, along with every cover artist, and there were images of every single book cover, including all the various reprints and even some abandoned covers and design sketches. It's a big, glossy paperback and it's gorgeous.
Since it was published in 2007 we have had some new Target releases, however, so naturally it isn't up to date. We've had reissues of some of the classic range, plus some more recent stories have now been novelised - Rose, The Day of the Doctor, Twice Upon a Time.
Another slight drawback with The Target Book is that the largest images are around one sixth of a page size, when it would have been nice to get some big full page images of the artwork. I'm hoping that the DWM Special Edition will have some of these. A couple of years ago another SE was devoted to The Art of Doctor Who, and this had a section on the book covers which included some lovely big versions of the paintings. Another thing The Target Book never really covered were the internal illustrations which featured in the early days. If the books themselves were the only way of reliving never-to-be-repeated stories (as we thought then, in the pre-VHS, DVD and Blu-ray days), then these images were our only visual reference beyond what we could vaguely remember from watching the episodes on their original broadcast (in pre-DWW days).
The Target book range is all but deleted now, although you can pick copies up second hand all over the place, so for younger readers a quick recap as to why they remain so important to older fans.
Back in the mid-1960's we had 'Dalekmania', when the programme generated a lot of merchandising primarily based around the Daleks rather than the Doctor himself. It was only natural that the first Dalek story would be novelised, and this was undertaken by the programme's script editor David Whitaker as Doctor Who In An Exciting Adventure With The Daleks. Yes - that was the book's title. It was published by Frederick Muller Ltd roughly one year after the story had been seen on screen. It proved very popular, spawning some paperback reprints, and the production team were asked if some other stories could be novelised. Only two other titles were released - Doctor Who and the Crusaders, again by Whitaker, and Doctor Who and the Zarbi, by Bill Strutton. The latter was, of course, his novelisation of The Web Planet. All three had half a dozen or so internal illustrations.
In the early 1970's the programme's popularity was on the increase thanks to the move to colour and Jon Pertwee's arrival. The new publishing outfit Target, which was aiming for the children / teen market, bought the rights to the three 1960's books and republished them in paperback, with striking Chris Achilleos artwork on the covers. The first book's title was simplified to Doctor Who and the Daleks. Again the books sold very well, so it was only natural that Target would approach the current production team - Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks - about adapting some more. They were happy to oblige - so long as it was their stories which were prioritised. Dicks saw this as an opportunity to get some extra income and so agreed to write some himself, whilst also approaching the writers of the TV stories to novelise their work. Even Letts himself got involved, writing Doctor Who and the Daemons. On TV this had been broadcast under a writer's pseudonym. Malcolm Hulke contributed Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters (The Silurians), and Brian Hayles contributed Doctor Who and the Curse of Peladon. Robert Holmes wasn't interested in adapting his work, so Dicks wrote Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion (Spearhead from Space).
You'll notice that a number of stories had their titles changed to make them a little more descriptive of the plots. The rather dull sounding Colony in Space became Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon, for instance, whilst The Moonbase became simply Doctor Who and the Cybermen.

It wasn't just the titles that were changed, however. Some writers took the opportunity to add to their plots, giving background detail to characters or even changing plot elements entirely. As such, the novels don't always match exactly with the televised programmes. This started right at the beginning when Whitaker decided to have a whole new introduction for the characters of Ian, Susan and Barbara, making his Dalek story their first meeting with the Doctor on Barnes Common rather than in a junkyard in Totters Lane. The real origins story - An Unearthly Child - wouldn't see print until October 1981, when JNT suggested it be released to tie in with the package of repeats he had organised - "The Five Faces of Doctor Who". Whitaker's Dalek novel also featured a glass Dalek which leads the race - something which we wouldn't see on screen until 1985. As Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon was the first novel to be issued featuring Jo Grant, it also has its opening changed to make this her first story.
Eventually every story (bar a couple) was novelised by Target - the missing ones being TV works by Douglas Adams and Eric Saward. These gaps have recently been filled, or are about to be.
Terrance Dicks ended up writing the majority of the novelisations, though many of the 1960's writers were happy to return to their TV works after many years. This has led to a number of older fans claiming that Terrance Dicks taught them how to read. I wouldn't go quite that far myself (Dick and Dora and Spot the Dog might have something to say about it), but Dicks certainly helped a great many people improve their reading.
So, for fans of a certain age, the Target novels have a real nostalgia factor - which is why I certainly will be buying this week's DWM Special Edition. I grew up with the books, and I love the artwork. You'll recall that back in 2016 I went to see the small exhibition of Target book cover art at London's Cartoon Museum - see my post elsewhere on the blog.