We're onto Patrick Troughton's tenure as the Doctor now. Don't worry, I'll get back to the real silliness soon.
I've had some lovely feedback from the previous posts and it's much appreciated. As I've said already, this is just a 'little' personal project I'm doing in my spare time to practice my Photoshop skills. I've not been at this long and am still learning. You can probably spot my early efforts in the designs and how some of the later covers become a little more sophisticated. I like this as it gives them more variety and some of the design tropes don't become repetitive when viewing the stories in broadcast order.
At the time of writing this, I still have one from season five and half of season six to complete. Hopefully I won't get bored by it and the project unfinished. I have a very short attention span for these sort of things. With a bit of luck I'll have finished it by the weekend and can get back to the really silly stuff again...
Thank you for bearing with me.
...and straight after season two comes season three.
When Target reprinted the original three novelisations, they commissioned new artwork from artist Chris Achilleos. His covers were very much in the style of comic book artist Frank Bellamy's cover for the Radio Times which promoted the Jon Pertwee story 'Day of the Daleks'. Colourful comic strip artwork against a white background with a stippled 'banknote' portrait of William Hartnell thrown in. The photo reference of Hartnell that Achilleos used on both 'Doctor Who and the Daleks' and 'Doctor Who and the Zarbi' was the same for each - a detail from a shot of the Doctor being menaced by the Celestial Toymaker from the adventure of the same name.
In the early days, we didn't really care that such 'mistakes' were made - picture references from the wrong stories being used on the wrong covers. Indeed, we didn't even know of the pictures' origins in the first place. But these days, we are a little more fickle. Put it down to old age.
I've set the record straight now and used that shot of William Hartnell on my cover for 'Doctor Who and the Celestial Toyroom'. I may be lax in keeping to this rule on other covers but I felt it necessary to do for old times' sake...
Time moves quickly on and here is the second season of Doctor Who all dolled up as 70s style Target books. As some of you may have noticed, I've given many of them alternate titles. Back in 1973, the Radio Times published a special magazine to mark the show's tenth anniversary. Contained within this colourful extravaganza was a lavishly illustrated episode guide to every Doctor Who adventure up to that point - and a few yet to come!
The titles for many of William Hartnell's were not those we have come to know and love over the years. Instead of using the name given by the production team (and, at the time, unpublished and unbroadcast), the Radio Times elected to refer to each story by the title of its first episode. Thus 'The Keys of Marinus' became the lurid 'The Sea of Death', 'The Dalek Invasion of Earth' became the somewhat bleaker 'World's End' and so forth. At the time, we young fans did not know any better. We just revelled in the colour photos from 'The Celestial Toyroom' and how hot all the companions from the sixties looked in their special RT photoshoot.
For this little project, I've gone back to that time and used similar titles for my Target covers. Hopefully, it gives them a little period charm and doesn't irritate the pedants who seem to think that '100,00BC' is any better a title than 'An Unearthly Child' for serial A. It might be more accurate as far as the faded original BBC paperwork is concerned but all it does nowadays is make it sound like a naff 21st century blockbuster movie that time has now forgot.
Season three will follow shortly - once I've finished drooling over all those lovely colour photos from 'The Celestial Toyroom'.
This is a little project I started a month or so back. The idea was to take unusual images from the early years of Doctor Who and meld them with the original design that Target books used for their novelisations back in the mid-seventies. It did get a bit out of hand with some of the designs becoming more complex and breaking the Target style guide. But - at the end of the day - the whole point was to have a bit of fun and recreate the feeling of the original Target books.
I'll be posting the covers on a season-by-season basis. As is my want, I didn't produce the covers in a strict chronological order so there's not any kind of progression of styles as the seasons unfold. Hopefully this will add to the variety of the cover designs.
Sorry for the slight delay... but I've been replaced by a Zygon replicant.
That's the truth.
You'll have to face the consequences.
(See what I did there?)
We're onto Patrick Troughton's tenure as the Doctor now. Don't worry, I'll get back to the real silliness soon. 
At the time of writing this, I still have one from season five and half of season six to complete. Hopefully I won't get bored by it and the project unfinished. I have a very short attention span for these sort of things. With a bit of luck I'll have finished it by the weekend and can get back to the really silly stuff again...
