Christopher Eccleston's first series as the Doctor was my starting point at producing 'new' Target book covers. I should point out that it wasn't my original intention to do one for EVERY televised story. I was off work on extended sick leave and needed something to do instead of mindlessly devouring the BBC's daily pescription of Homes Under The Hammer and Bargain Hunt. So I started this blog - originally with the aim of reproducing some of the funny stuff what I wrote for some Doctor Who fanzines back in the 90s which I still considered a bit amusing. I had also dabbled in Photoshop during 2013 - producing a selection of six or so fake pieces of vintage DrWHO merchandise - including William Hartnell's Book of Outer Space and a DrWHO promotional box of Kellogg's Porky Pops. These were all cobbled together and posted intermitantly on the blog that I'd decided to call "Andydrewz's Pages" for no other reason than I quickly needed a name and a varient on my ancient email address seemed like a quick solution. I'd always admired the early Target book covers - especially the ones that marked the introduction of the gate logo (that's the diamond logo without the diamond). These were the more cartoony and dynamic covers that were done originally by Chris Achilleos and later Peter Brookes. The first one I did was one for the Matt Smith story Cold War. I've no idea why I picked that one. It was crap anyway... and has not seen the light of day ever since it was consigned to a file on my old mac. Crude is too kind a word for it. (The one on the blog currently is NOT that version.) Anyhow, I decided to do the Eccleston adventures. There was 13 of them and I had access to all the press stills from them.
The results were variable and can still be seen here. The End of the World was a parody of Achilleos' Revenge of the Cybermen whilst The Unquiet Dead was plain risible and was changed several times before it was finally posted on the blog. I still hate that cover. I also condensed the two-parters into single volumes which, in hindsight, was a mistake.
I received some nice feedback about them via the blog and decided to embark on the following series... taking breaks now and then to produce some silly might-have-been merchandise. The blog blossomed...
Flip forward to today or rather last Monday. Someone asked me to do a new cover for one of the Eccleston stories. I had offered them my old cover from three years ago but, looking at it, I realised how crude it looked. So I redid it... And it came out quite well.
So I've spent this week going back to 2005 and completely re-doing the Eccleston covers. Some of them are similar to the originals (well, the one for Rose is at least!) whilst others are completely new. And I've taken the opportunity to do covers for ALL thirteen episodes as opposed to doubling up the two-parters into single volumes.
They're all here now. I hope you like them. If nothing else, the whole exercise has reminded me of how awful the publicity stills for series one were - especially The Empty Child.
