Doctor Who - Season Twelve on Target

I've done some more retro Target book covers. Actually, I've done quite a lot more retro Target book covers. 

As you can see from my earlier ones for Flux, I'm quite taken with the second redesign that debuted with Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons. It features a cutdown version of the then series logo and a (usually) white border that the artwork occasionally bled out of - building on the pop art/Frank Bellamy style of the previous ones.

I did the 80s stories first but in the interests of some semblance of continuity, I'll begin with Tom Baker's first season which I only completed a month or so ago.

If you've enjoyed these, you can find them available on RedBubble on a selection of products including T shirts, mugs and more. Follow this link.

Doctor Who Trump Card Game Redux

Back in the late 70s, the British toy firm Jotastar produced a set of trump cards based on Doctor Who. I had a set. I seem to recall I purchased it at a gift shop at Butlin's Holiday Camp in Weston-super-Mare. Now, the quality of Doctor Who merchandise at the time wasn't exactly at its peak. But this pack of forty cards were something else. The instructions gave the game a more verbose title "Doctor Who and the Legendary Legion Trump Card Game" (Note the absence of the word 'Top'). The so-called legion turned out to be a selection of heroes and heroines from history that included four cowboys, Sherlock Holmes and Thor. Not too sure if they consulted a historian for their "legionnaires"! In amongst their number was the eponymous Doctor Who and, predating its sentience in the much later 'The Doctor's Wife', the TARDIS. 

It was in the selection of villains that the set really started cooking with gas. Culled from all of the first four Doctors' eras. these included: Sensorites, Cybermen, Gellguards, Davros, Mechanoids and the Wirrn amongst others. There were also Ogrons and Sea Devils but confusingly, their names had got mixed up.

 The illustrations were somewhat perfunctory. I can only assume the uncredited artist had been told to concentrate on making them colourful as opposed to accurate. The Ogron/Sea Devil was turquoise and looked more like a balding dog whilst the Sensorites were resplendent in their bright orange jump suits. Some of the artwork seemed familiar too... (Where's my Weetabix cards?) I remember noticing that the drawing of Sherlock Holmes heralded from a US Marvel Comics adaptation of 'Hound of the Baskervilles'.

Game play was the same as the branded Top Trumps game. The major difference being that you had three choices of attack instead of four. "Mental Ability", "Weapons" and "Special Powers" - the latter meant that many of the historical figures were a little low in that area. 

You can tell that, despite having a veritable archival smorgasbord of old monster, I was disappointed by the set. Compared to the actual official Top Trumps, they looked pretty shit to be honest. No snazzy plastic keep case to store them in. Jotastar pushed the boat out with a flimsy cardboard box decorated with a doodle of a seemingly blind Tom Baker. 

Fast forward to the present day... A bit bored last weekend so I delved into my file of unfinished projects and ideas. I had wanted to produce a new Doctor Who Monster Book - visually based on the old 1976 one but updated to feature series 11 and 12 of the current run. That would take too much time and involve the fag of writing which I usually abhor. Then the Jotastar trump card game came to mind... Brilliant. I can do that... and maybe even make the illustrations a bit better with new series stuff. So that's what I did over the past few days. Here is a new set of cards in the style of the 70s originals. It would be nice to be able to actually produced a genuine set but costs would no doubt prohibit that. You'll just have to settle for these images. 

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Doctor Who - Season Nineteen on Target

Never really been a fan of season nineteen... Maybe it's the fact that Peter Davison wasn't Tom Baker. Or that the Doctor spends most of the season bewildered and running away from danger. Or that once you know the Cybermen are the threat, Earthshock is a pretty dull affair. And then there's Time-Flight... 

It came as quite a shock that I produced this little set of retro Target books for the season. Bright, colourful and vivid renditions of the dullness that was the nineteen run for the series. 

(See what I did there. Run? Cricket?? Ah, well...!)

Some of these covers are available as 'exploded' versions on RedBubble.

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Doctor Who - Season Eighteen on Target

 ...and here's the eighteenth season of Doctor Who as a pack of old target novels. I think you'll agree that the one for Meglos is possibly taking the piss a little... 

Some of these covers are available as 'exploded' versions on RedBubble.

If you've enjoyed viewing this page, then you can show your appreciation by purchasing my a coffee via my Ko-fi account here. Thank you.

Back to Target Books...

As I've said before, I started doing faux Doctor Who Target book covers as therapy when I was off work ill back in 2015. Eventually I'd done one for every single broadcast story (of varying degrees of quality) and it became a regular task to add to that collection with each new series. 

Anyhow, for some reason known only to my subconscious, I did a handful of covers for Sylvester McCoy's first series. (Actually, it might have been at the time because this season was announced as the next Blu-ray collection. Can't recall to be honest.)

It was the beginning of the year and we were in the middle of another restrictive lockdown so my anxiety levels were wobbling a bit. Needless to say I needed to occupy myself... 

So I ended up doing all the seasons from seventeen to twenty-six in the same style - a bit of Chris Achilleos at first combined with unusual colour choices for the stories. I had a bit of fun along the way but nearly all of them were serious attempts at producing something that was both a throw-back to a particular style of the early novelisations and something a bit different for each story. 

Since I'm rather late uploading these covers, I'm going to add them to the blog in order of seasons rather than in the order that I created them, starting with the seventeenth. I hope you like them. 

Some of these covers are available as 'exploded' versions on RedBubble.

If you've enjoyed viewing this page, then you can show your appreciation by purchasing my a coffee via my Ko-fi account here. Thank you.

Old Doctors, New Annuals...

Here's a selection of new annual covers using the classic Doctors. Each of the covers is based on the design for that year. 

I did this as a belated follow-up to the popular thirteenth Doctor on classic annuals that I did a few years ago. The link to them is here. 

Surprisingly, I haven't received any trolling from the so-called 'NotMyDoctor' faction this time. 

Well, not for these anyway... 

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Thank you.

Dr Who LPs for Worlds Records Shop Day 2019!

I see they are releasing two classic Doctor Who soundtracks on vinyl for Record Store Day this year. Well, they seem to do something like this every year now. The covers for Galaxy Four and Destiny of the Daleks are online now and look very nice and artistic... if a little bit TOO modern for my tastes. Naturally I like harkening back to the past and that rebellious, pseudo-punk cover that was produced to accompany the original release of Genesis of the Daleks by BBC Records back in 1979. 


Here's two designs what I have done that keep to the style of that original design classic...

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Doctor Who Season Eighteen on Target Book Covers with the Neon Logo

Sorry I haven't added to the blog in the past month. I will rectify that over the next day or so with a few updates. 

In the mean time, I've returned to some Target book covers. Season eighteen is due out on blu-ray shortly. I won't quote the current date as it may still change again. I did some new covers for the previous season releases so thought I'd do a few more for the next one. I did them quick over a couple of days and I hope you like them. 

The one thing I was reminded of when doing these was how bloody dull the photos from Warriors' Gate are despite the final production being so gorgeously visual. You win some, you lose some. 

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.