The Art of... The Chase

The Keys of Marinus had been a story which featured a whole host of characters, monsters and locations - but the novelisation had a boring, and quite irrelevant, image of the TARDIS in space on its cover. The Chase is the next comparable story, but fortunately they have opted for a cover which reflects the diverse elements which make up the plot.

The book was written by John Peel - a fan who became a friend to Terry Nation and collaborated with him on a factual book about the Daleks as well as novelising some of his TV stories. 

It was published in July 1989, and the artist is Alister Pearson.

He opts to divide the cover into colourful segments, each containing some element of the story, alongside a portrait of the Doctor (from a publicity photograph from The Web Planet). The Dalek on the right derives from a photo taken during the Camber Sands location filming.

In central position is a Mechonoid, with its city above, and at the bottom we have a sailing ship (representing the Mary Celeste sequence) and a Mire Beast from the desert world Aridius.

An earlier draft had more elements:

The final shape is mainly there, but we also have the Empire State Building, an Aridian, and Dracula in front of the ornate fireplace. This version was deemed a little too cluttered.

The story was released on VHS in the UK in 1993, as part of the 30th Anniversary celebrations. It came as half of a Dalek double video set, in a special collectors tin, alongside Remembrance of the Daleks. The lid and sides of the tin were identical in all versions, but there were photographs from four different Dalek stories on the base for collectors. 

At the time it was the earliest Dalek story still to be released on video. Coming in a tin, it only had a cardboard slip-cover, with monochromatic artwork by Andrew Skilleter that concentrated solely on the Mechanus part of the story.

The DVD followed in March 2010, as part of another double set. This time The Chase was coupled with the story which immediately preceded it - The Space Museum. The outer case featured only photomontage artwork from the Dalek story. They have again tried to squeeze in several story elements, including the Mary Celeste, but this time the Empire State Building manages to make the cut. Ian and Barbara also feature on the cover for the individual disc - it is their final appearance after all - but they are omitted from the outer box cover, as you can see below on the Region 1 version.

The Chase was included on The Collection - Season 2 on Blu-ray in January 2023.

The booklet had a monochrome photomontage of scenes from the story, and the story's disc featured a pair of Daleks with a Mechonoid.

The edited version of Genesis of the Daleks may have been the first story to be released on vinyl, but the very first episode to be released on LP was the sixth instalment of The Chase. This was issued by Century 21 Productions - Gerry Anderson's company, which was also gave us the Dalek Chronicles comic strips and which provided a lot of advertising for the first Dalek movie.

This mini-album was released in 1966, and initially came with the Eric Winston Orchestra version of the theme music, and with the BBC TARDIS sound effect. It was quickly re-released without either of these, but with the Barry Gray Orchestra version of the theme music instead. One version features a blue background on its cover, whilst the other has a purple one.

Finally, the audio version of John Peel's novelisation was released in 2012, read by Maureen O'Brien. Nicholas Briggs voiced the Daleks. Interestingly, the title was amended to Daleks: The Chase - presumably to stress the fact that it was a Dalek story (despite there being one on the cover). Unless you use "The Mutants" as the title for their very first story, it is one of only two Dalek stories of the Classic era not to have them named in the title (the other being the single episode, prequel story Mission to the Unknown).