If you roll back and mix the decades to the 1970s, Doctor Who fans had no streaming, no Blu-ray, DVD, VHS, Betamax; these were all things of the future with which to relive old episodes of Doctor Who, to watch again and again. If you had a tape recorder there was always the audio recordings; remember sitting with a microphone right up against the TV speaker, all family members told to be quiet for those 25 minutes on Saturdays? This was soon to change when in 1973, the newly formed Target book imprint republished three Doctor Who novels that had been originally released in the 1960s. They sold and sold well; so well in fact that Tandem, the publishing company, wanted their Target imprint to produce more – and more they did produce. From 1974 through to the early 1990s another 153 novels were published. Sales were in the millions. However, all good things come to an end and eventually all the TV stories that contractually could be novelised had been. Time moves on, and Doctor Who fans moved on – to the aforementioned Betamax, VHS, you know the story.
Target books became, for a while, a fond memory and a series of items to be found in charity shops and propping up car boot sales countrywide. When in 2005 Doctor Who in a new incarnation literally exploded back on to the TV screens, DVDs followed – but as for books of the televised stories? No, not a chance it seemed; no Dalek, no Silence in the Library, no The Girl in the Fireplace and no prose resolution as to whether The End of Time really was The Parting of the Ways; none were In preparation.
The return of Doctor Who to our TV screens has created a hitherto unspoken nostalgia for times past and the glory days of those wonderful pocket-sized books, often published monthly, a fix that was difficult to contain. It’s not impossible when attending a convention or comic con, to spy a fellow Doctor Who fan of a certain age, amble up and say the word “Kklak!” or “A wheezing, groaning sound”; the instant looks of recognition between pleasant open-faced new friends is a deep mutual understanding of the word novelisation and what can be achieved in 128 pages.
Doctor Who book fans were universally surprised and delighted when it was announced that in April 2018 five new Target books were to be published – and that two would be written by ex-showrunners and original scriptwriters Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat, Rose and The Day of the Doctor respectively, helped along by Jenny T Colgan novelising The Christmas Invasion and Paul Cornell the most recent episode Twice Upon a Time, plus James Goss reworking his 2015 novel of City of Death into a novelisation that fits effortlessly into all things Target.
For Target book enthusiasts, having two of the original scriptwriters tackling their own works can only be good news and in a recent Q&A session conducted on behalf of BBC books, both Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat eloquently spoke about the joys of Target Books in those wild and crazy penny chew days of the 1970s.
“I loved them!” enthuses Russell. “I’ve still got them all on a shelf here in my office! They were the only official records of an adventure. And they were so mysterious detailing stories we thought we would never see again. I can probably tell you where I was, which shop I was in when I bought it, for every single one of my Target novels.”
Steven agrees. “Every time I’d go to a bookshop – and I was a keen reader – I’d head straight to the Doctor Who book section. Because I’d stared at all the book covers I already owned with such intensity, they were carved into my brain like wounds – so I could tell from right across the shop, by the tiniest variation in colour or artwork, if there was a new one on the shelf, and if there was my heart would leap. Going back a bit I longed for there to be Doctor Who books! One year I was on holiday in Cornwall, in a little town called Mevagissey, and in a shop called Dunns there was a solitary rack of books which I’d always walk round and round, looking for something to read – then one day my Dad grabbed my arm and pointed to the bottom row of paperbacks. Doctor Who and the Daleks, Doctor Who and the Zarbi and Doctor Who and the Crusaders. I was so happy!”
Paul Cornell, Jenny T Colgan and James Goss also reminisce about all things Target.
“The Target range was tremendously important to me,” explains Paul. “My local Librarian would hold the hardbacks for me without asking. I’d take my Book Tokens; my most precious presents every Christmas and birthday and cash them in on the newest paperback. I’d also use the form in the back of the books to send off for others. Actually the Target Brand also had other books that sounded exciting like Tim Dinsdale’s Story of the Loch Ness Monster and I read all of Agaton Sax. Target and especially Doctor Who got me into reading, everything else I did comes from that.”
Jenny picks up the tale. “I don’t remember the first Target book I read, I do remember my favourite, which is State of Decay, I borrowed it from the library again and again. They were the only access to Doctor Who I had. It’s almost impossible to explain that to my kids and to overstate their importance to me.”
James Goss continues the positive theme. “We live in a world where all the books and video you need is on your phone but there is still something magnificent about the Target novels, they can fit in a jacket pocket, they can go anywhere … they’re so much bigger on the inside. My first book was The Visitation, found at a seaside postcard shop on a hurdy-gurdy along with views of Porlock Weir. Read it a dozen times, amazed that such a thing existed. I went back two days later and discovered The Monster of Peladon which I read a dozen times or more. When I discovered there were others, even more titles than the Narnia series, they became vitally important. The local bookshop had a permanent order on the new books for me; I went in all the time to check if new titles were in. In those days,” remembers James, “you had no real idea what the cover was, maybe a blurry black and white picture in Doctor Who Magazine. So, each cover would be a surprising riot of madness, a juggling harlequin on Black Orchid, a giant crab on The Macra Terror, those Cybermen marching through those stars in The Wheel in Space, they do that a lot the Cybermen, often on some of the covers stopping mid-space walk, to point out an object of interest to each other!”
From Targets past to Targets present, when the initial idea was mooted and the world novelisation was uttered, surely no one thought about saying no?
Steven remembers, “I knew nothing of the plans as this all started around the time I was preparing to leave as showrunner. The biggest surprise was that I actually wanted to novelise The Day of the Doctor. I had a hell of a time on that script, I had no idea I wanted to revisit it!”
“I was very excited!” continues Russell. “I wanted to test myself. I was interested to find out what the process would be like and to look back on a piece of work after a gap of thirteen years was fascinating.”
“It was too lovely an offer to say no to,” says Paul, “and Steven asked me specifically if I would novelise Twice Upon A Time.” Jenny elaborates further, “I had one of those ‘I don’t know how busy you are at the moment’ emails from BBC Books which is always exciting and when I found out what it was I was just delighted, the easiest Yes ever. I was specifically asked to do The Christmas Invasion which I totally adore.” James Goss has a slightly different take on it; “I’d already written mine so I thought ‘Ha! Money for old rope, I’ll be done by teatime…’.”
Both Russell and Steven had their own scripts to work from and the novelisations were born.
“It was tricky,” Russell begins. “I wanted to capture the essence of the TV episode but I didn’t want to repeat it, anyway I’d long since lost the scripts! I found a transcript online, and someone found me a copy of the very first draft. I didn’t always look at them. I was a bit more freefalling, or rather, I wanted to add stuff to most of the dialogue because I knew fans would know a lot of it off by heart already, so there had to be new things to discover. A novelisation means new stuff, sheer newness, new action, new dialogue and new insights. A fan these days might have seen Rose a dozen times so I felt honour bound to add things that could only be found inside the pages of the book. And I know what fandom feels like, there’s nothing we love more than discovering something new about something old!”
“I just sort of started,” says Steven. “I had a few ideas of how it might translate, but really, as with any writing, I just sort of dived in. I found the shooting script on the hard drive, and was shocked to see how much I’d altered it during filming. Quite often, I’d have to watch the DVD and transcribe useful bits of dialogue, because I found I had no written record of really quite important scenes. Then of course, you find parts that don’t quite work in prose. The shock of seeing David and Matt together, John Hurt as the Doctor, surprise appearances by Tom Baker and Peter Capaldi, you have to find a way to make those moments work in a book, without surprise guest stars, which is a challenge.”
Jenny T. Colgan continues. “With The Christmas Invasion, I worked from an early draft script, the shooting script and the transcript, taking what I liked from each of them and adding my own scenes and takes on things. I found it much easier than writing an original novel, it’s writing with all the hard work taken out as Russell had already done the plotting, storyline and monsters! I got to play with the relationships between the characters. It was absolutely a joy.”
Paul concurs. “I worked from the original script which had about half an hour more of material than ended up on TV though no more The Tenth Planet material. In the book there are quite a few more character scenes, and there’s even a poem by Steven!” As for the differences between original novel and novelisation, “In some ways it’s easier because you have material in front of you to work with, in some ways it’s harder because there’s a responsibility to the original writer and to the TV version.”
And James and his teatime deadline? “Several weeks later and by then the tea was stone cold, I discovered cutting it down and reformatting it was really difficult. I re-read a few Target novels and realised just how good a job Terrance Dicks, Malcolm Hulke and everyone did in being so vivid and brief. I made sure I followed the unities, twelve chapters, and three chapters per episode. I went through a stack of Target books and grabbed chapter titles from them.” James elaborates on the eventual Target novelisation of City of Death. “I did toy with writing it from Count Scarlioni’s point of view but it just didn’t work well enough. A shame really, as he’s spent thousands of years planning very carefully and then a lunatic in a scarf turns up, steals his best ideas, the Mona Lisa and his wife, while a schoolgirl builds him a much better time machine in the cellar. It’s all so unfair. Scarlioni really put the hours in. However,” James concludes, “with a novelisation when all the hard work has already been done for you by Douglas Adams, everything else is really very easy and when I originally wrote the book I worked from a slightly longer rehearsal script that proves that a lot of the brilliant, mad beauty of the story really is there on the page, but the polish to the witty dialogue came in the studio. The rehearsal script proves that the thing really was written in a weekend, its all about how the Mona Lisa is a canvas. Between then and recording, someone has gone off and checked an art book and realised the Mona Lisa is painted on wood!”
The five novelisations are now published and on the shelves of bookshops up and down the land. As for the future?
“That’s me done, I am now a Target author,” Paul Cornell is adamant. “I don’t need to be one again. I’d like to see someone else tackle Father’s Day or the novelisation of the adaptation of Human Nature.”
“Oh, God, I want us to do them all!” exclaims Jenny. “I have set out my stall. I would love to do Silence in the Library. It is my favourite of Nu Who and I love writing River so much. Russell should do The Stolen Earth, Steven The Eleventh Hour, Paul The Family of Blood (again!) and they should get Richard Curtis to do Vincent and the Doctor and sell it for Comic Relief. You can see I’ve done my research!”
James? The Pirate Planet? “I had no trouble with The Pirate Planet novel coming in at 90,000 words as there was so much new material in Douglas Adam’s first draft. Getting that down to 30,000 would be a real challenge, but, I suppose, you could do something that much more resembled what you got on screen. That might be great fun.”
“I really loved writing Rose,” concludes Russell. “It was the first episode that aired back in 2005; I think it’s more important to consider something new now.”
“Hugely enjoyed writing the book,” Steven sums up. “So, yes, I hope to get another go at prose in whatever form.”
The Target range of Doctor Who books continue. The novelisations like the TV show are now into their fifth decade and somewhere the grand master of the 128-page story, Terrance Dicks will be watching Buddha-like over the latest additions.
“If he doesn’t have them already, it’s a national scandal!” laughs Jenny. Paul agrees. “I hope he’ll be getting sent them by BBC Books! But if he doesn’t I’ll make sure!”
As for the contribution Terrance Dicks made, the final word goes to Steven. “Back then, Terrance Dicks would give us perfect, prose replicas of the originals scene by scene, line for line, brilliantly done.”
Absolutely celebrate the old but Target the new. Fantastic!
City of Death, Rose, The Christmas Invasion, The Day of the Doctor and Twice Upon A Time are published by BBC Books at £6.99.
