Gerry Davis was the author for the novelisation of The Tenth Planet, having been its original co-writer. He had already penned the first of the Cybermen novelisations, based on The Moonbase.
Whilst Doctor Who and the Cybermen had been a fairly straightforward adaptation, for this book Davis elected to make a few changes.
He moved the date to 2000AD, and instead of an old Western it is a James Bond movie which Ben sees. The description of Roger Moore fighting in a kung-fu school lets us know that this is specifically 1974's The Man With The Golden Gun. He also changes the regeneration scene - with the Doctor taking to a bed-like device covered with a canopy - and adds the same "Origins of the Cybermen" prologue from his earlier book.
The cover is by Chris Achilleos, and actually featured in the first Doctor Who Monster Book some three months before the novel's release date.
The book was published in 1976. A reprint in 1978 used a blue logo, and amended the background to a simpler purple block, omitting the rays of light emanating from Mondas at the top of the artwork.
This was the first of the Target books not to have the Doctor's image on the cover. He is relegated to the back, as this was part of a short run of books to have additional artwork on the reverse.
The 2012 reissue - the one with the foreword by Tom MacRae - did away with a coloured background altogether, placing the Cybermen and planets against a plain white backing.
The book was reprinted again in 1993, this time with totally new artwork from Alister Pearson, and using the Oliver Elmes McCoy logo:
The Tenth Planet was not released in VHS form until 2000, by which time they were using photomontage covers. Once again The Celestial Toymaker provides the Hartnell portrait, and the profile shot as used on the Achilleos cover is coupled with the full length photograph as used by Pearson to depict the Cybermen.
We have a wintry landscape, but whoever put the cover together seems to think that they have trees at the South Pole...
A video release had been planned earlier, which would have featured Michael Craze describing the events of the missing episode. This material was recorded - at the Museum of the Moving Image Behind the Sofa exhibition - but the release was then shelved when a rumour began to do the rounds that Part 4 was about to be returned to the archives.
Andrew Skilleter produced the above artwork for the abortive VHS. The Doctor image is taken from a photograph from The Web Planet, wearing his Atmospheric Density Jacket.
The story was released onto DVD, quite late in the range, in October 2013. The cover art comes courtesy of Lee Binding.
It was made available first as part of the "Regenerations" box-set, which included the surviving regeneration stories for every Doctor up to Tennant's first stint. The full length photo of a Cyberman is used once again, along with a mix from the Ealing filming.
The Region 1 release once again allows more of Binding's artwork (above) to be seen - whereas the Region 2 version is very cramped thanks to the roundel design which takes up the top third, and the various graphics.
Being only partially complete, The Tenth Planet had its soundtrack released as part of the BBC Radio Collection in January 2006. The linking narration was by Anneke Wills.
An overly cluttered photomontage cover includes images from other stories - Polly from The War Machines and the Doctor and Ben from The Smugglers. Our old friend the full length shot of the Cyberman in the snow, is there - with a weird tornado emanating from his gun - as is the profile image, top left. The cover is then padded out with more Cybermen from the Ealing filming. Cutler and the astronauts are somehow also squeezed in. Sometimes less really is more...
The novelisation was released as an audiobook in 2018. The reader is Anneke Wills again, and Nick Briggs provides the vocals for the Cybermen. (Personally, I prefer to hear the voices of the original TV versions of Daleks, Cybermen and Master in my head, so don't hold with this sort of over-writing of history).
For the cover, they have decided to use the later 1978 reprint version, with the solid purple backdrop at the top of the image.
Finally, the music from the B&W era has been released in different formats over the years, especially as Space Adventures Vols 1 & 2. In December 2002 a compilation of just over 13 minutes of the stock music from The Tenth Planet was released on the Ochre Records label. One of the group shots from Ealing provides the cover image.
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