...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 Instead of using the name given by the production team (and, at the time, unpublished and unbroadcast), the Radio Times elected to refer to each story by the title of its first episode.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?)
Wasn't Barbara Wright wonderful... so sensible and so down-to-Earth... except when she attempted to change the course of Aztec history. But she did it with the best of intentions!
Fans of Doctor Who were quite rightly well-chuffed when the fledgling Target books announced a new series of 'original' novels featuring The Assistants of Doctor Who back in the primeval seventies - one dedicated to the further adventures of TV's sixth favourite history teacher.
Sadly only one was published (and even that was only available in selected outlets).
The 'Assistants' range of novels was shelved until the eighties when Target decided it needed to inflict 'Turlough and the Earth Link Dilemma' on the world.
And the rest is history.
Thank God!
...and straight after season two comes season three. 
