The Tom Baker Years - Classic Doctor Who novels rebranded...

This is some more housekeeping. Regular visitors to this blog will know that I've now produced new retro-style book covers for all of Tom Baker's Doctor Who adventures. 

As is my want, I've not put them on the site in chronological order for the simple reason I did not create them in an specific order.

This post contains links to all of the seasons... in their proper order!!!

Season twelve - Robot to Revenge of the Cybermen

Season thirteen - Terror of the Zygons to The Seeds of Doom

Season fourteen - The Masque of Mandragora to The Talons of Weng Chiang

Season fifteen - The Horror of Fang Rock to The Invasion of Time

Season sixteen - The Ribos Operation to The Armageddon Factor

Season seventeen - Destiny of the Daleks to The Horns of Nimon

Season eighteen - The Leisure Hive to Logopolis

Classic Doctor Who novels re-branding - season eighteen

I have to be honest that I did consider a new branding of the novels to coincide with the new direction that Doctor Who took with its eighteenth season but I felt it would only detract from the continuity of all of the Tom Baker covers I've now done. 

These are the final ones... all 41 stories have now been dissected and Photoshopped into alternate covers. 

Hopefully, I'll start tackling the 80s shortly... but not today. My head hurts and I need a mug of tea and couple of paracetamol! 

Classic Doctor Who novels re-branding - season fifteen

Graham Williams takes over as the new producer of Doctor Who but the covers remain the same... 

Classic Doctor Who novels re-branding - season sixteen

Moving back a year, here's the classic Key to Time season. 

I'm quite pleased with all of these for a change. There's a nice mix of silliness and drama in all of these covers.

I will also point out that the 'thing' that is menacing the rig on The Power of Kroll cover is a screen capture of Kroll - suitably re-tinted and blown up in Photoshop. It isn't anything else whatever you may think... 

Classic Doctor Who novels re-branding - season seventeen

I'm flitting around with these. Not to be awkward. It's just that I don't create them in any order. I tend to do them when I have either some minor inspiration or an unusual picture turns up. 

Anyhow, here's season seventeen.

And don't ask why I haven't included Shada...

Classic Doctor Who novels re-branding - season fourteen

Here's season fourteen... I have to be honest. I've probably upped the gruesome level on some of these and they probably wouldn't have been produced by a kids publishing company like World Distributors but what the heck...

I've also broken one of my own rules and fixed the problem with the giant rat in The Talons of Weng Chiang with a proper one - abeit with a bit of Photoshop trickery... 

Apologies for that.

Classic Doctor Who novels re-branding - season twelve

This is just a bit of housekeeping... 

When I did some covers for Tom Baker's first season of Doctor Who, I had the absurd and off-kilter idea of producing them as a series of World Distributors colouring and activity books - the sort that were very prevalent at the time. You can see them here.

Now I've gone and done the thirteenth season as more traditional novels - though still published equally absurdly by World Distributors - the OCD in me decided that those original designs needed modifying to fit the new scheme, 

Here they are - all tidied up. There's also a new version for Revenge of the Cybermen as the main pic in the old one was too bizarre even for a 70s novel cover... 

Classic Doctor Who novels re-branding - season thirteen

I had hoped to take a break from doing these. They were something to do in the downtime over the holiday period. However...

I caught a glimpse of the anti-matter monster from Planet of Evil online. It's the pic of the studio costume BEFORE it was fed into the Top of the Pops video effect filter and was sent to menace Tom Baker in the final production. The creature appears to be made from a grey silk-like material in actuality. I thought I'd have a go at trying to re-create the final effect in Photoshop.

And one thing led to another and I ended up mocking up a 70s style cover for the story... 

Rather than go with the old Target branding, I've taken the liberty of dipping into another alternate universe where popular annual and colouring book publishers, World Distributors, took over the novelisation line. (A bit unlikely I know - even for the seventies - but these alternate universes that pop up in my office are somewhat weird anyway...) 

I ended up doing the whole of season thirteen in the end... 

Classic Doctor Who novels re-branding - Season seven

Okay. So I missed out season seven of Doctor Who in my recent re-branding of the old Target novels. 

There was a very good reason for this. 

Sadly nobody noticed, so I'll keep it to myself.

Here are the missing covers anyway...