Black had WOTAN tap Ian Chesterton's phone line to explain how it came to know so much, by way of explaining some plot holes in the broadcast story. He also stretched the Norse / Wagnerian imagery by having one of the War Machines named as Valk - from Valkyrie, the daughters of Wotan.
In 2016, for convention attendees, Pearson revisited this artwork to add an image of Dodo below Hartnell's head, just to the right of the Tower. The Doctor portrait derives from a publicity image taken during the rehearsals for An Unearthly Child. The artist has excluded the spectacles which Hartnell was wearing in the source photograph. The War Machine comes from the standard publicity shot of the prop on location near the Post Office Tower.
It is used on the photomontage cover for the VHS release, which arrived in June 1997. In the later stages of the VHS releases, the covers had settled on this design of cover.
The Hartnell portrait comes from The Celestial Toymaker, whilst Ben and Polly feature from one of their introductory publicity shots. It and the War Machine photograph feature on the back cover as well.
Unusually, this video came with bonus material. It begins with the June 1966 Blue Peter item, in which Christopher Trace examined War Machine No.9 in studio, and after the final episode we had credits for the restoration of the story, also covered in notes on a fold-out section of the VHS sleeve. We also got to see material trimmed from the film footage - showing the operators hastily vacate the Machine after the battle with the soldiers at Covent Garden, as fire threatens the prop.
The other War Machine image derives from press shots taken on the streets of West London, where the prop interacted with children, police officers and dog walkers.
And finally, 2013 saw the release of Sounds From The Inferno on vinyl. This was produced by Hysterion on 7" vinyl for Record Store Day and purports to feature music by John Smith and the Common Men. It is actually music by Johnny Hawksworth, who was responsible for the library tracks used in the Inferno Club scenes in The War Machines. It was limited to only 1000 copies.
The DVD was released in August 2008 in the UK, with the US version following that November.
If you were paying close attention to the interviews in the recent finale instalment of Doctor Who: Unleashed, you might have seen the above image hanging on the wall of one of the interviewees. It comes from company Hero Collector and can be purchased as an art print. It's done in a distressed pulp-paperback style.
Despite the story existing in its entirety in the archives, The War Machines was also released as a soundtrack by BBC Audiobooks. We have the usual garish photomontage cover, with that War Machine photograph employed multiple times. The images of the Doctor, Ben and Polly actually come from a single publicity image taken for Episode One of The Smugglers, of the trio in the TARDIS.
The Post Office Tower is shown at a very odd close-up angle, so you'd hardly register it as the Tower at first glance. And, just in case you didn't know this story's location, we have silhouettes of Big Ben and the dome of St Paul's.
Anneke Wills narrates and provides a bonus interview. It was released in August 2007.
The novelisation was adapted for audiobook treatment, using the Pearson / Way artwork, in March 2019. It's one of those releases where the reader has nothing to do with the actual episodes - in this case Michael Cochrane, who played Lord Cranleigh in Black Orchid, and Redvers Fenn-Cooper in Ghost Light.
Doctor Who Magazine only rarely ever gave a cover over to a single story, unless it was a photographic one. A handful of stories got rather nice artwork covers when the publication got round to covering them in the Archives section. Issue 185 in April 1992 featured The War Machines on its cover.
This was the work of Alister Pearson once again. The Hartnell portrait comes from a publicity shot from The Savages.
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