Doctor Who - Season Fourteen on Target

Now this for me is the apex of classic Doctor Who quality. The series' budget was certainly never spent better on a season where - in their own ways - each story is a classic. 

From the glorious rich renaissance atmosphere of 'The Masque of Mandragora' to the seedy grim London of 'The Talons of Weng-Chiang', the series never really hit the consistent quality that it had here - before or after. 

And the ratings reflected this with the series hardly out of the weekly top twenty. 

I could go on forever acknowledging the genuine scariness of 'The Robots of Death' and the shocking revelatory thrills of 'The Deadly Assassin' (especially THAT episode set in the matrix!!) But this is a blog that shows of my measly art. 

So here are six retro Target interpretations of the greatest season of 20th century Doctor Who!

Most of these designs are available printed on stuff like T shirts, clocks and shower curtains from RedBubble. The link is here>>>

Doctor Who - Series thirteen on Target

This is late! 

I should've posted this last year in the week following the final episode of the series. These are the six covers I produced for series 13. It would be interesting to see how Target would've handled this back in the day - six short novelisations (more profitable) or a single big one (probably more logical for a six part story).

As for the episodes, I really enjoyed this series. Some great visuals, a far ranging story packed with colourful characters and some great twists along the way. It certainly corrects the issues I have with the last two series.

The negatives are fiddly nerd things. Not enough Kate Stewart (in fact, why the heck was she even there?). The timeless child storyline had no real pay off as the Doctor is still running from her past rather than facing up to it. Chris Chibnall seems to have a real issue with the Doctor he created. By all means, make her more fallible but don't make her a failure - especially on a personal level. Hopefully, this will be addressed in her final two episodes... but I've an awful feeling the regeneration will hinge on the unrequited love between her and Yaz rather than tackling her dodgy past with Division.

As for the covers, I adopted the mid 70s style for them. I'm a great fan of these comic strip/pop art pieces. Ones like Peter Brookes' 'The Green Death' et al with a smattering of Kirby, Bellamy and Achilleos. 

Again, the lack of dynamic photographic source material hampered the compositions - especially for the first one. Some of these were done after the episode aired which I don't like doing. The spontaneity of using just the visuals from photos to create the design rather than picking out characters and incidents from the stories is something I prefer... and was no doubt a factor in the original Target artists' creations back in the day. 

I hope you like them.

Just to catch up, here's my covers for the following two specials 'Eve of the Daleks' and 'Legend of the Sea Devils'. I'll probably return to the Sea Devils story once the show airs later this year.

As always, if you enjoy my stuff and want to show your appreciation, drop me a coffee via my Ko-fi page here.

Chumbleymania Forever!!!

I did some Chumbley merchandise a few years ago and I regularly return to them as the subject of alternate merchandise. There were part of a regular troop of alien robots that were seen as attempts to duplicate the success of the Daleks during the early years of the series. Needless to say, like the Mechons, the War Machines and the Quarks, they failed to make much of an impact. They haven't been awarded the honour of a figurine by the Doctor Who Figurine Collection. Shame! 

Here's a few more items from an alternate universe where the Daleks were overtaken by the success of the cute little robots from Rilla. 

If these examples of fan sadness have moved you to pity, then you might like to purchase a new warming cup of coffee for the poor soul who created them. You can do this via his Ko-fi profile. The link is here.  Thank you.

Target: Whittaker - Alternate Covers

As a supplement to the previous Target: Whittaker posts, here's a collection of Target covers I did for Doctor Who's series 12 either before decent visual material became available or after when I decided to do some variants. 

Hope you like them. Some of these weren't uploaded to Twitter. 

If you liked these covers maybe nip back a few posts and take a look at the others I've done for series 11 and 12. You can also show your appreciation for them buy buying me a coffee via my Ko-fi account. Click the link for more details and to also see a gallery of my best stuffs. 

The Trial of the Time Lord original 70s Target book covers...

This seems to be a bit of a habit now - producing new Target book covers for Doctor Who seasons as they are announced as brand spanking new blu-ray sets. 

The much lamented Trial of the Time Lord season was officially named as the next box set a few weeks back and (luckily) I had a few ideas up my sleeve for this short season from 1986. I thought my original 70s Target designs for some of Jodie Whittaker's episodes worked quite well so I went back to those early works of art for this little set.



If you liked this post (or indeed, any of the 400 odd others I've done over the years), why not buy me a coffee at my Ko-fi profile. The link is here

Proper Target-style Covers For Those Two Eric Saward Dalek Novels...

I think it's safe to say that the covers for Eric Saward's novelisations of his two classic Doctor Who serials have not exactly been popular with their potential market. 

I had avoided doing some alternative covers for them as there are some very good ones on the net already. But since I had the templates out and I'd had loads of requests (well, two anyway!) to do some, I knocked these up over an evening last week. 

They are done in the style of Target books from around the period that the original stories were transmitted in the mid-eighties.

 

If you liked this post (or indeed, any of the 400 odd others I've done over the years), why not buy me a coffee at my Ko-fi profile. The link is here.

Haynes Manuals from TV's Doctor Who...

It seems you can't do anything these days without there being a Haynes manual for doing it... 

In the world of fiction, there's ones for everything from the Millenium Falcon to Captain Scarlet's SPV... 

But no Doctor Who ones...!

Yes, there's plenty of T shirt mock-ups of covers for Dalek and TARDIS manuals but no actual books. 

At least not yet!

Since the Dalek and TARDIS ones have already been done to death, here's a selection of more obscure ones...

Early Ninth Doctor Novels For Elderly Doctor Who Fans...

In 2005, the BBC, fearing that the radical new series of Doctor Who starring TV's Christopher Eccleston as more contemporary "Northern" Time Lord would alienate elderly fans, commissioned a set of three novels depicting familiar monsters and villains from the beloved Hartnell era in brand new adventures with the ninth Doctor. 

They were never published as it was a silly idea.

The Doctor Who Woman Book - Fixed and Re-done...

I don't usually go back and redo things.

Oh alright I do. I lost many of the original Photoshop files of my early work when my old PC went down the creek a few years ago so I had to redo a number of them from scratch when I came to create postcards and populate my RedBubble shop with stuff folk can actually buy. Or not, looking at the sales figures.

However, I made a huge mistake (even by my standards) on my Doctor Who Woman Book last year by using totally the wrong version of Futura on it. I didn't notice at the time. There's a point where you make a mistake so often it starts to look right and it also affected some of my later Target Book covers. I was grateful to the lovely (and always helpful) Clayton Hickman for pointing it out but not so happy that I'd missed such a glarring error.

Anyhow, here's a revamped version of The Target Doctor Who Woman Book. The gags are the same rather desperate ones that were in the original, just the fonts have been changed to protect the dignity of the design hack behind them.

Click the images to make them a bit more legible.