Doctor Who novelisations

An enjoyable programme on Radio 4 this morning - On the Outside it Looked Like an Old Fashioned Police Box - in which Mark Gatiss, Doctor Who writer and fan, explores the Doctor Who novelisations of the 1970s and 80s published by Target books.

In an age before DVD and video, the Target book series of Doctor Who fiction was conceived as the chance for children to 'keep' and revisit classic Doctor Who. They were marketed as such, written in a highly visual house style. Descriptive passages did the work of the TV camera and the scripts were more or less faithfully reproduced as dialogue.

The books were as close to the experience of watching as possible, and were adored by a generation of children who grew up transfixed by the classic BBC series. Target Doctor Who books became a children's publishing phenomenon - they sold over 13 million copies worldwide. From 1973 until 1994, the Target Doctor Who paperbacks were a mainstay of the publishing world.

You can listen again online for the next seven days.