Peter Ling novelised his own story for Target. It was published in hardback in November 1986, with the paperback following in April 1987. The cover art is by David McAllister.
A couple of years ago I ran two posts - my favourite Target artwork, and my least. This one featured on the latter list. My reasons were twofold: I wasn't too keen on the pink / yellow colour scheme (the spine was purple), and - more importantly - I didn't like the generic paintings of the characters. I always prefer to see representations which match the ones actually seen on screen wherever possible - even if these are stand-alone books which can be enjoyed in their own right. The characters chosen are also the least memorable / representative of the story, appearing only very briefly. As they don't really represent the story as a whole, I'd argue they could be said to be misleading for the casual buyer.
The Gorgon is the most striking image, but I prefer the blank-eyed statue version as seen on screen.
D'Artagnan, by the way, is actually his brother-in-arms Porthos, as played by Frank Finlay, from the 1974 movie The Four Musketeers. (Check out the StudioCanal Vintage Classics DVD cover).
The TARDIS is a generic 1980's image, also used on the novelisation of The Savages by the same artist.
The novel was re-released in August 1990, using the VHS artwork below.
That VHS release came in May 1990, with cover art by Alister Pearson. Against a pentagon design we have a central portrait of the Doctor, surrounded by some of the characters from the Land of Fiction - the unicorn, a Clockwork Soldier, Rapunzel, a White Robot and Medusa. Rather than leave it an entirely monochrome image, Pearson has elected to add some colouring to Rapunzel, who is positioned centre bottom. As the Gorgon, unicorn and White Robot are all colourless figures anyway, this makes artistic sense. Giving the soldier a bright red coat would have upset the balance.
The Australian version has a broad band along the bottom with the parental guidance details, cutting off the feet of the White Robot and Clockwork Soldier - and the red text regarding the star is over to the left, over the robot's legs.
The DVD was released in the UK in March 2005, with a photomontage by Clayton Hickman. This concentrates on the Clockwork Soldiers alone, though one would have expected the White Robots to be the more iconic figures (or another assembly of different characters). The Master and Doctor flank an image of the TARDIS breaking apart. Presumably the Soldiers determined the overall reddish colour scheme.
The mixed group is what the US Region 1 release went with. It uses the same pair of portraits of the Doctor and Master as the Region 2 cover, more prominent and this time flanking Jamie and Zoe, with some of the other miscellaneous characters taking up the top half.
This arrived on 6th September 2005, a period when the American discs often had different covers to the UK / Australian ones.
Finally, the novel was released as an audiobook in August 2009, using McAllister's artwork. The reader was Derek Jacobi - who, of course, had played an entirely different Master on screen in 2007.
The change of logo, and hence colour palette, does make the artwork just a little more bearable.
No comments:
Post a Comment