Review: The Doctor Who Book Guide 2nd Edition Volume 1

Alex Skerratt is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

Just about every Doctor Who fan has encountered a Target novelisation at some point in their lives. For example, yours truly got into the show during the wilderness years, so my predicament was different to that facing the readers of the 1970s and 1980s… It wasn’t that the BBC wouldn’t release the episodes on VHS, but that it was deleting titles from the range faster than Pamela Nash with a blowtorch. Such gems as Logopolis and The Caves of Androzani never graced my shelves until the DVDs materialised, so the Target books were a great way of filling those gaps in the space-time continuum.

For the unfamiliar among you, the Target books were truncated novelisations of the BBC TV stories, and they were typically made as pocket-sized paperbacks, providing Who fans with the perfect way of re-experiencing stories that were never likely to be repeated, long before the days of home video / DVD / shameless YouTubing. They are affectionately remembered for their stylized sleeve covers and detailed descriptions; many Target books had the ability to transform low-key serials into cinematic epics!

And now we have The Doctor Who Book Guide 2nd Edition Volume 1, which takes a detailed look at all the paperback releases of the First Doctor, from Target and beyond. It is, in essence, an illustrated reference guide compiled by Chris Stone of the appropriately-named Long Scarf Publications.

And when I say “detailed”, I really mean it – some serious research has gone into this project. For each title, the editor gives information on how many editions were struck, who wrote them, who provided the cover artwork, the ISBN number(s), the original prices, and an estimation of what the books are worth today, depending on their condition. For example, if anyone has a 1981 edition of Terrance Dicks’ An Unearthly Child with the Red Neon logo, you should either move it to the Black Archive forthwith, or post it on eBay, because those bad boys can sell for over £500!

In addition, Chris Stone provides a fascinating insight into the complications surrounding the publication process. For instance, some books were reprinted without variations, so it is hard to tell which copies came first. Then there are issues surrounding re-jacketed books, and Target’s head-scartchingly timey-wimey numbering system, (Time and the Rani is number 128, preceded by The Mysterious Planet at 127, which is also numbered 126 inside the jacket!) I genuinely find this information fascinating, and I am grateful that someone has taken the trouble to document it all – I’m not sure I’d have the patience myself!

Furthermore, the editor has managed to source all of the individual covers, miniscule variations and all – and some of them are unforgivably bad. Who knew that the Japanese version of The Daleks featured a red telephone kiosk and egg-shaped pieces of polycarbide, (the cover artists were given no Dalek reference material to draw from.) And, bizarrely, Tom Baker appears as the incumbent Doctor on the 1975 edition of Doctor Who and the Zarbi… wearing a green cagoule, no less!

Unfortunately, this reference guide is only partly successful for me. Yes, I’m a sucker for the infinitesimal detail and quirky anecdotes, but there aren’t enough of these for my liking. I think if there is to be a volume that looks at the book world in such depth, then it needs to go all-out; tell me what typeface the publishers used, what did the blurbs say, how far did the prose stray from the TV scripts, and what was the chemical composition of The Rescue‘s dust-jacket?! Even mini reviews of each novelisation would be enough to whet my appetite… The editor drifts briefly into this territory with his introduction to Marco Polo, and he offers a very affectionate tribute to the legendary David Whitaker in the run-up to The Space Museum, but I would like to have seen more ‘cutaways’ of this ilk.

That said, there are, indeed, other cutaways, but these are mostly gratuitous. For example, the introduction to The Myth Makers is delivered in the form of a poem, telling the reader nothing of any obvious significance, although it is made up of First Doctor episode titles, so there’s a fun game to be played on a long train journey from Wigan. Whether this kind of thing belongs in a reference guide, though, is another matter. Personally, I found these introductions distracting, and rather dull, although I applaud the editor for trying to add some colour and variety to his work, even if his endeavours are not wholly successful.

So would I recommend this title to anybody? Most definitely, but with reservations. If you have any sort of interest in the Target novelisations, whether passing or fanatical, then I think you will find something to appreciate in this guide. You may have to ignore some of the pixelated illustrations, and you may find yourself scrolling past some of the story introductions, but you will be reading an impressively-researched PDF, and one that is bound to pique your interest in all-things paperback. I am curious to see what the next volumes in this series have to offer.

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