There's a rather wonderful publication out now from those nice people at Panini's official Doctor Who magazine that celebrates 'The Art of Doctor Who'. In amongst sundry interviews and features is a piece or two chronicling the many cover designs of licenced merchandise over the years.
Sadly there are no illustrations featuring the rare unreleased items that I have uncovered* in the Doctor Who back catalogue over the past year.
Here, for your convenience and possible pleasure, is a complete (ish) list of the VHS and DVD releases that never were.
The BBC's Early Attempts at Doctor Who DVDs - a selection of complete covers including blurb for the earliest DVD range.
Doctor Who - The Original VHS Branding - Full covers from the mid-eighties of three specially edited titles from the fledgling BBC Video.
More Early Doctor Who VHS Branding - A selection of designs that blended in other successful best sellers for BBC Video.
Doctor Who Video Nasties - Three Tom Baker tales are released into the early eighties video-nasty market with serious consequences for the credibility of their content.
Great Unreleased Doctor Who Merchandise of the 20th Century - part six - The earliest attempts by by BBC Enterprises to release Doctor Who episodes to the (very rich) general public in the early seventies.
The Devolution of Doctor Who on VHS - How the design of Doctor Who video sleeves changed over the years making an example out of Peter Capaldi's first adventure 'Deep Breath'
* By which I mean 'invented'.
Yes, it's that time of the month where I post more Target book covers for the current series of Doctor Who.
These are Peter Capaldi's first run as "Dr. Who" (his words!) and bring my little project up to date.
Sadly we are at that period where the bods at WHAllen are no longer able to use the likenesses of the current Doctor on the cover so have to make do with finding elements in the actual stories to sell their products.
I've no idea why there's an issue with using the Doctor's face. Some suggest that the actor was unhappy with his artistic likeness being used whilst others suggest that the licencing fee for his image became too expensive.
There are others that postulate the theory that the legal bods - having seen Peter Capaldi in 'The Thick of It' thought it was a real documentary and are too frightened to approach the actor for permission...
Whatever the reason, a mock up of the twelfth Doctor's debut novel featuring his face was commissioned and proofed but, in the tradition of Target books, will not be revealed until a late date... possibly in some magazine article or lavish book about the history of these novelisations.
UPDATE Target: Capaldi - part one (supplemental) - click here.
Doctor Who will return in "Doctor Who and the Magician's Familiar"
Doctor Who fans have never had it so good. Yes, there are the old fogies who yearn for the classic series and the time when no one except them watched the series. But in these enlightened times, we can give thanks for all the wonderful things available to us fans now that 'Doctor Who' is the most important thing on the planet.
Time was, anything was merchandised and published with the Doctor Who logo on it. There was very little quality control on it from the BBC. I heard a rumour that back in the 1980s, the producer John Nathan Turner vetted everything that was released commercially and checked their authenticity to the series rigorously. Having seen some of the stuff (and even purchased some of it) from the era, we can all safely say that that is a myth - like further missing episodes turning up. JNT's pet dog Pepsi probably had more say in what could be released than he appears to have had.
In the 1980s, Doctor Who Target novelisations were a publishing phenomenon. Phenomenon in that no one in the publishing world could quite understand why there were so many and how on Earth a company could make them pay.
The books provided fans the chance to relive recent (and occasionally old) episodes in prose form before the age of Sky plus and TV on demand. Visually these books suffered in the mid-life with poorly chosen photographic covers and a lack of any Doctor other than the current one posing on them. Sometimes the photos appeared to have been cut out using a pair of 'Play School' scissors and stuck to a piece of day-glo card - whichever was available to the work experience guy at the time. All in all, visually they went through a pretty shit period.
I'd hate to think what would've happened if the current Doctor Who success happened in the early 80s as opposed to today....
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| A BOOK: Yesterday |
