The Art of... The Krotons

The Krotons was novelised by Terrance Dicks and published in hardback in June 1985, with the paperback version following that November.

The cover art was by Andrew Skilleter, and depicted a lone Kroton against a pattern of hexagons - a design element which runs through the story. 

By using an airbrush, Skilleter is able to give the monster more of a crystalline appearance, as had originally been intended for them. He only had a single B&W image of the Kroton on location for reference.

The novel was reprinted by Star Books in September 1988, coupled with Doctor Who and the Dominators. The Kroton artwork was relegated to the back cover. It had initially been planned that it would be paired with the novelisation of The Seeds of Death, the story which immediately follows it.

The book was reprinted in July 1991, with new cover art by Alister Pearson. This was to act as a tie-in with the VHS release of the story.

We have the same lone Kroton once again, this time armed with one of the dispersal units, and the portrait of Zoe does derive from this story. Jamie's comes from a publicity shot from The Wheel in Space, whilst the Doctor's is from The Invasion, and is given a pixelated appearance to match what the Dynatrope monitor showed, when he was attacked by the probe at the climax to the first episode.

Despite being complete in the archives, the story was released on CD as part of the BBC Audio Collection in November 2008. As with all of these, there is a brightly coloured photo-montage cover. In this case, however, they have decided to focus on a single scene of Krotons attacking the TARDIS (even though only one does so in the actual story). Usually these covers comprise lots of smaller images of characters from the story, as well as the Doctor and companions.

Hexagons feature prominently once again.

The narrator is Frazer Hines, who also contributes an interview.

The VHS, with the Pearson artwork, was released on 4th February 1991. At the time, it was the last of the complete Troughton adventures to be released on video.

The story arrived on DVD in July 2012, with cover art from Lee Binding. As with the VHS it was, at the time, the last complete Troughton story to be released in this format.

David Maloney opted not to go to the expense of incidental music for his story, so the soundtrack was the work of Brian Hodgson and the Radiophonic Workshop only. This was released by Silva Screen in May 2013, using the same artwork as the DVD though with a darker purple background.

There were 24 tracks, mainly from the opening episode.

It was also available on 10" black vinyl, this time with a monochromatic purple-tinted cover

And finally, the Target novelisation was released as an audiobook in April 2020, using Skilleter's original cover art. The reader, as you can see, was Frazer Hines.