Doctor Who: Novelisations: Third Doctor: Season 10

Novelisations: Third Doctor

Season 10
The Three Doctors
Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters
Doctor Who and the Space War
Doctor Who and the Planet of the Daleks
Doctor Who and the Green Death

Season 11

Archive Status / DVD Releases

All but one of the 26 episodes from Season 10 exist as original 625-line PAL colour recordings. The odd one out is Episode Three of Planet of the Daleks which only exists as a black and white 16mm telerecording.

However, due to the way in which black and white telerecordings of some colour programmes had been made, it was believed that the colour signal was still actually present in the film recordings, albeit inaccessible. In late 2008 it was revealed that a long-standing project to extract and decode the colour sub-carrier from such telerecordings had finally born fruit, enabling the Dad's Army episode Room at the Bottom to be broadcast on BBC Two in colour for the first time since it's original transmission in 1969.

By a complete coincidence, plans were already in place for Episode Three of Planet of the Daleks to be artificially re-coloured for its DVD release by a specialist company in the United States, using the existing colour episodes as a guide. With the development of the new colour recovery process, it was therefore possible to use the best of both processes to enable the story to be completed in colour.

All five stories from Season 10 have been released on DVD in the UK and the United States, with Frontier in Space and Planet of the Daleks being released together in the Dalek War box set. Carnival of the Monsters and The Three Doctors have been released twice in the UK, most recently in the second and third Revisitations box sets, which included completely new restorations of the stories. They have subsequently been released individually in the United States. All releases are subtitled.

Revisitations: Volume 3 / The Three Doctors: Special Edition
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Revisitations: Volume 2 / Carnival of the Monsters: Special Edition
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Dalek War
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The Green Death
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Doctor Who: The Three Doctors

by
Terrance Dicks

Buy a Copy... NOTE: Target Books would routinely re-use the old ISBN when the Doctor Who novelisations were re-released with new cover art, so anyone using the Amazon links below should bear this in mind when ordering a second-hand copy.

HARDBACK
amazon.com amazon.co.uk Allan Wingate

PAPERBACK
amazon.com amazon.co.uk (1975) Target Books
amazon.com amazon.co.uk (1978/1992) Target Books
amazon.com amazon.co.uk (2012) BBC Books

EBOOK
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UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOK
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Front Cover Back Cover

Country UK
Format Paperback
Publisher Target Books
Publication Date November 1975
Original Price 35p
ISBN 0426109384
Cover Artist Chris Achilleos A novelisation of the 1972/3 television story The Three Doctors, featuring the Third Doctor and Jo Grant.

Back Cover Blurb
Jo glanced up at the Doctor
'Things must be pretty serious then.'
'They are Jo. Very serious indeed. The whole of the Universe is in danger!'

The most amazing WHO adventure yet, in which Doctors One, Two and Three cross time and space and come together to fight a ruthlessly dangerous enemy — OMEGA. Once a Time Lord, now exiled to a black hole in space, Omega is seeking a bitter and deadly revenge against the whole Universe...

DOCTOR WHO scripts — awarded The 1974 Writers' Guild Award for the best British children's original drama script.

Other Editions

Doctor Who: The Three Doctors
UK | Hardback | Allan Wingate Ltd | 1975 | £2.25 | 0855230533

Doctor Who and the Three Doctors
UK | Paperback | Target Books | April 1978 | 60p | 0426115783 | (No.64)
A new paperback edition of the novelisation, with new cover artwork from Jeff Cummins. Later Target reprints would be numbered No.64 in the Doctor Who Library. Famously, the book was retitled for this edition, becoming Doctor Who and the Three Doctors. So that'd be...The Four Doctors?!

Jo glanced up at the Doctor. 'Things must be pretty serious then.' 'They are Jo. Very serious indeed. The whole of the Universe is in danger!'

The most amazing DOCTOR WHO adventure, in which Doctors One, Two and Three cross time and space and come together to fight a ruthlessly dangerous enemy — OMEGA. Once a Time Lord himself, now exiled to a black hole in space, Omega is seeking a bitter and deadly revenge against the whole Universe...

Doctor Who: The Three Doctors
UK | Paperback | Target Books | August 1991 | £2.50 | 0426115783 | No.64
A new paperback edition of the novelisation, with new cover artwork from Alister Pearson. For the first time in over a decade, the book would actually be sensibly titled — see above for further details.

'I FORBID IT. YOU CANNOT ALLOW THE DOCTOR TO CROSS HIS OWN TIME STREAM AND MEET HIS EARLIER SELF. THE FIRST TIME LAW EXPRESSLY FORBIDS IT.'

Exiled from his own world, trapped for millenia in a universe of anti-matter, Omega has long planned his revenge on his own race, the Time Lords, and on the entire Universe...

In order to prevent an unthinkable catastrophe, the Time Lords break the First Law of Time and send the Doctor's previous selves to help...

Doctor Who: Wladcy Czasu
Poland | Paperback | Empire | 1994 | 8386126019
Wladcy Czasu was one of three translations of Doctor Who novelisations to be released by Empire in Poland and re-used the Alister Pearson cover artwork from the 1991 Target Books edition. The book was translated by Juliusz Witold Garztecki.

Doctor Who: The Three Doctors
UK | Paperback | BBC Books | May 2012 | 978-1849904780 | £4.99
One of a second batch of six classic Doctor Who novelisations re-released by BBC Books the same month, each of which was modelled after the first Target editions and used the original artwork, in this case by Chris Achilleos. Each volume also contained a new background chapter about the characters and situations and an introduction — in the case of The Three Doctors the latter was by Alastair Reynolds. To round things off, all six books had the logo in gold foil.

Doctor Who: The Three Doctors
eBook | BBC Digital | May 2012
Digital edition of the book re-released the same month in paperback by BBC Books.

Television Story
The Three Doctors
4 × 25 Minutes | BBC1 | Colour

30/12/72 Episode One Bob Baker and Dave Martin
06/01/73 Episode Two Bob Baker and Dave Martin
13/01/73 Episode Three Bob Baker and Dave Martin
20/01/73 Episode Four Bob Baker and Dave Martin

Regular Characters
Third Doctor / Jo Grant / Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart / Sergeant Benton / Captain Yates

Familiar Faces / Returning Characters
First Doctor / Second Doctor / Omega

Notes

Cover image: Doctor Who, The Five Doctors, Target Books (1983)

Cover image: Doctor Who, The Two Doctors, Target Books (1985)

Cover image: Doctor Who, Arc of Infinity, Target Books (1983)

The Three Doctors was one of three Doctor Who novelisations which made available on tape by the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB). All three titles were released in 1981 and were narrated by Gabriel Woolf — best known to Doctor Who fans as the voice of Sutekh in Pyramids of Mars, and more recently as the voice of the Beast in the 2006 episode The Satan Pit. None of three readings was ever released commercially.
The Three Doctors was one of the first occasions in Doctor Who in which characters from older adventures would re-appear — the Brigadier, Sergeant Benton and the Monk (The Time Meddler / The Daleks' Master Plan) were the only previous examples. In this case it was decided to celebrate the series' tenth anniversary by bringing back the two previous actors to have played the lead role. Sadly, the ill health of William Hartnell meant that the First Doctor was restricted to several short scenes shown on the scanner screen in the TARDIS.

This wasn't to be the final time that past Doctors would re-appear, however. The Five Doctors in 1983 saw the first five incarnations of the Doctor appearing, albeit with the late William Hartnell being replaced by Richard Hurndall and with Tom Baker represented by footage from the unfinished Shada. Two years later and Patrick Troughton would make his third return appearance, starring alongside Colin Baker in The Two Doctors.

Also worth mentioning — if not watching — is the 1993 sketch Dimensions in Time, which was produced for Children in Need and which featured Doctors Three to Seven. Fourteen years later, the Tenth Doctor would find himself encountering the Fifth Doctor in the brief, but highly enjoyable, Time Crash, scripted by Steven Moffat, and again done for Children in Need.
The character of Omega would later re-appear in Arc of Infinity, the first story of Season 20 in 1983. In the books, the character would also feature in David Martin's Search for the Doctor, the first in the Severn House series of Make Your Own Adventure books.
After three years stranded on Earth (mainly due to budgetary considerations) the conclusion of The Three Doctors sees the Time Lords returning the Doctor's knowledge of time travel and giving him a new dematerialisation circuit for the TARDIS.

Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters

by
Terrance Dicks

Country UK
Format Paperback
Publisher Target Books
Publication Date January 1977
Original Price 50p
ISBN 0426110250
Cover Artist Chris Achilleos

A novelisation of the 1973 television story Carnival of Monsters, featuring the Third Doctor and Jo Grant.

Later Target reprints would be numbered No.64 in the Doctor Who Library.

Back Cover Blurb
The Doctor and Jo land on a cargo ship crossing the Indian Ocean in the year 1926. Or So They think.

Far away on a planet called Inter Minor, a travelling showman is setting up his live peepshow, watched by an eager audience of space officials...

On board ship, a giant hand suddenly appears, grasps the Tardis and withdraws. Without warning, a prehistoric monster rises from the sea to attack...

What is happening? Where are they? Only the Doctor realises, with horror, that they might be trapped...

Other Editions

Doctor Who: Carnival of Monsters
UK | Paperback | Target Books | May 1993 | £3.50 | 0426110250 | No.8 A new paperback edition of the novelisation, with new cover artwork from Alister Pearson.

Television Story
Carnival of Monsters
4 × 25 Minutes | BBC1 | Colour

27/01/72 Episode One Robert Holmes
03/02/73 Episode Two Robert Holmes
10/02/73 Episode Three Robert Holmes
17/02/73 Episode Four Robert Holmes

Notes

Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters was one of three Doctor Who novelisations which were made available on tape by the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB). All three titles were released in 1981 and were narrated by Gabriel Woolf — best known to Doctor Who fans as the voice of Sutekh in Pyramids of Mars. None of them were released commercially.

Doctor Who and the Space War

by
Malcolm Hulke

Buy a Copy... HARDBACK
amazon.com amazon.co.uk Allan Wingate

PAPERBACK
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UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOK
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Country UK
Format Paperback
Publisher Target Books
Publication Date September 1976
Original Price 40p
ISBN 0426110331
Cover Artist Chris Achilleos
Book Number (No.57)

A novelisation of the 1973 television story Frontier in Space, featuring the Third Doctor and Jo Grant.

Later Target reprints would be numbered No.57 in the Doctor Who Library.

Chris Achilleos's cover art was one of two pieces reproduced in David J Howe's large-format book Timeframe: An Illustrated History (Doctor Who Books, 1993) to represent Season 10 of the television series.

Back Cover Blurb
'Doctor!' screamed Jo. 'Look at that thing. It's coming straight at us!' A small, black spaceship, about a mile away, was approaching rapidly.

It had no lights, no markings. But some instinct told Jo that the tiny craft meant danger.

The year is 2540, and two powers loom large in the Galaxy — Earth and Draconia. After years of peace, their spaceships are now being mysteriously attacked and cargoes rifled. Each suspects the other and full-scale war seems unavoidable. The Doctor, accused of being a Draconian spy, is thrown into prison. And only when the MASTER appears on the scene do things really begin to move...

Other Editions

Geoffrey Beevers reads this thrilling novelisation of a classic Doctor Who adventure

'Doctor!' screamed Jo. 'Look at that thing. It's coming straight at us!'

A small, black spaceship, about a mile away, was approaching rapidly. It had no lights, no markings. But some instinct told Jo that the tiny craft meant danger.

The year is 2540, and two powers loom large in the Galaxy — Earth and Draconia. After years of peace, their spaceships are now being mysteriously attacked and cargoes rifled. Each suspects the other and full-scale war seems unavoidable. The Doctor, accused of being a Draconian spy, is thrown into prison. And only when the Master appears on the scene do things really begin to move...

Geoffrey Beever, who played an incarnation of the Master in the classic BBC TV series, reads Malcolm Hulke's complete and unabridged novelisation, based on the TV adventure Frontier in Space and first published by Target Books in 1976.

'BBC Audiobooks has chosen well with its books and has taken the right approach with its readers... they benefit from new music and sound effects'
Doctor Who Magazine

Doctor Who and the Space War was also included as part of the The Doctor Who Omnibus from Book Club Associates in 1977.

Television Story
Frontier in Space
6 × 25 Minutes | BBC1 | Colour

26/02/72 Episode One Malcolm Hulke
03/03/73 Episode Two Malcolm Hulke
10/03/73 Episode Three Malcolm Hulke
17/03/73 Episode Four Malcolm Hulke
24/03/73 Episode Five Malcolm Hulke
31/03/73 Episode Six Malcolm Hulke

Regular Characters
Third Doctor / Jo Grant

Familiar Faces / Returning Characters
The Master / The Ogrons / The Daleks

Notes

Unusually for this era of Doctor Who, Frontier in Space leads directly into the following adventure, Planet of the Daleks. It was also the very last television story to feature the original incarnation of the Master, played by Roger Delgado. Although it was originally planned that Delgado would make one last appearance as the character, he was killed in a car crash in Turkey before anything could be put in place. The character would eventually re-appear in The Deadly Assassin in 1976, played by Peter Pratt.
Frontier in Space was the only television story in which the Draconians would feature, although they would later be used in Mindgame and Mindgame: Trilogy, two spin-off video dramas produced by Reeltime Pictures in the 1990s.
The Ogrons had been introduced in 1972's Day of the Daleks, and this was the second and final occasion they would feature in the television series. Gareth Roberts decided to explore their society in rather more depth in his 1994 novel The Romance of Crime.

Doctor Who and the Planet of the Daleks

by
Terrance Dicks

Buy a Copy... NOTE: Target Books would routinely re-use the old ISBN when the Doctor Who novelisations were re-released with new cover art, so anyone using the Amazon links below should bear this in mind when ordering a second-hand copy.

HARDBACK
amazon.com amazon.co.uk Allan Wingate

PAPERBACK
amazon.com amazon.co.uk Target Books

ABRIDGED AUDIOBOOK
amazon.com amazon.co.uk BBC Worldwide

Country UK
Format Paperback
Publisher Target Books
Publication Date October 1976
Original Price 45p
ISBN 0426112520
Cover Artist Chris Achilleos
Book Number (No.46)

A novelisation of the 1973 television story Planet of the Daleks, featuring the Third Doctor and Jo Grant.

Later Target reprints would be numbered No.46 in the Doctor Who Library.

Back Cover Blurb
Jo peered through the panel and saw — nothing. Yet someone had entered the cabin. She could hear hoarse breathing and stealthy padding footsteps. A beaker rose in the air of its own accord, then dropped to the floor...THE INVISIBLE ENEMY

After pursuing the Daleks through Space, DOCTOR WHO lands on the Planet of Spiridon, in the midst of a tropical jungle...and finds more than Daleks. Vicious plants spitting deadly poison, invisible Spiridons attacking from all sides and, in hiding, a vast army waits...for the moment to mobilise and CONQUER.

Other Editions

Dr. Who: Der Planet der Daleks
Germany | Paperback | Schneider-Buch | 1980 | 3505072540 Dr. Who: Der Planet der Daleks was the first of two Doctor Who translations to be released by Schneider-Buch in Germany in the early-1980s. The book was translated by Angela Djuren, with cover art by David Hardy and the illustrations by Herbert Hom. A second German translation of the book was released by Goldmann Verlag in 1989.

Doctor Who und der Planet der Daleks
Germany | Paperback | Goldmann Verlag | 1989 | 3442236220
Doctor Who und der Planet der Daleks was one of six translations of Doctor Who novelisations to be released in Germany between 1989 and 1990 by Goldmann Verlag, with all but one being Dalek stories. Doctor Who and the Planet of the Daleks had previously been released in Germany in 1981 under the title Dr. Who: Der Planet der Daleks, although this was a completely new translation by Bettina Zeller. The book re-used the original Chris Achilleos cover artwork.

Doctor Who: Planet of the Daleks
UK | 1 × Cassette | BBC Worldwide | June 1995 | £5.99 | 0563388269
An abridged reading of the novelisation, narrated by Jon Pertwee. This was the first of six abridged audiobooks based on the Target novelisations which would be released by BBC Worldwide in the 1990s. The audiobook was later included on the Tales from the TARDIS: Volume Two MP3-CD, released by BBC Audiobooks in July 2004.

Alone with the injured and unconscious Doctor, Jo Grant ventures onto the planet Spiridon to find help. But in the lush undergrowth there lurks disease, poisonous plants, invisible enemies and, most sinister of all, an army of Daleks waiting in secret for the signal to mobilize...and conquer.

Doctor Who and the Planet of the Daleks was also included as part of the Doctor Who and the Daleks Omnibus from Artus Publishing in 1976, and in the Dalek Omnibus hardback from WH Allen in June 1983.

Television Story
Planet of the Daleks
6 × 25 Minutes | BBC1 | Colour

07/04/73 Episode One Terry Nation
14/04/73 Episode Two Terry Nation
21/04/73 Episode Three Terry Nation
28/04/73 Episode Four Terry Nation
05/05/73 Episode Five Terry Nation
12/05/73 Episode Six Terry Nation

Regular Characters
Third Doctor / Jo Grant

Familiar Faces / Returning Characters
The Daleks

Notes

Planet of the Daleks was the first story since The Daleks in 1963 which had actually featured the Thals — the other race of inhabitants from the Daleks' homeworld, Skaro.
Unusually for the times in which Doctor Who and the Planet of the Daleks was released, it was published just a month after Malcolm Hulke's novelisation of Frontier in Space, the story which had preceded it on television — useful for regular readers as Planet of the Daleks led on directly from the events of Frontier in Space. Target Books' policy of releasing stories had been rather more muddled up to this point, with even the novelisations of Revenge of the Cybermen and Genesis of the Daleks earlier in 1976 being released back-to-back but in the wrong order.

Doctor Who and the Green Death

by
Malcolm Hulke

Buy a Copy... HARDBACK
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PAPERBACK
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UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOK
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Front Cover Back Cover

Country UK
Format Paperback
Publisher Target Books
Publication Date August 1975
Original Price 35p
ISBN 0426106744
Cover Artist Peter Brookes
Illustrator Alan Willow

A novelisation of the 1973 television story The Green Death, featuring the Third Doctor and Jo Grant.

Back Cover Blurb
The Green Death begins slowly. In a small Welsh mining village a man emerges from the disused colliery covered in a green fungus. Minutes later he is dead.

UNIT, Jo Grant and DOCTOR WHO in tow, arrive on the scene to investigate, but strangely reluctant to assist their enquiries is Dr Stevens, director of the local refinery Panorama Chemicals.

Are they in time to destroy the mysterious power which threatens them all before the whole village, and even the world, is wiped out by a deadly swarm of green maggots?

Other Editions

Doctor Who and the Green Death
UK | Paperback | Target Books | March 1979 | 60p | 0426115430 | (No.29)
A new paperback edition of the novelisation, with new cover artwork from Alun Hood. Later Target reprints would be numbered No.29 in the Doctor Who Library. Alun Hood's cover art was one of two pieces reproduced in David J Howe's large-format book Timeframe: An Illustrated History (Doctor Who Books, 1993) to represent Season 10 of the television series.

The Green Death begins slowly. In a small Welsh mining village a man emerges from the disused colliery covered in a green fungus. Minutes later he is dead.

Unit, Jo Grant and Doctor Who in tow, arrive on the scene to investigate, but strangely reluctant to assist their enquiries is Dr Stevens, director of the local refinery Panorama Chemicals.

Are they in time to destroy the mysterious power which threatens them all before the whole village, and even the world, is wiped out by a deadly swarm of green maggots?

Television Story
The Green Death
6 × 25 Minutes | BBC1 | Colour

19/05/72 Episode One Robert Sloman and Barry Letts
26/05/73 Episode Two Robert Sloman and Barry Letts
02/06/73 Episode Three Robert Sloman and Barry Letts
09/06/73 Episode Four Robert Sloman and Barry Letts
16/06/73 Episode Five Robert Sloman and Barry Letts
23/06/73 Episode Six Robert Sloman and Barry Letts

Regular Characters
Third Doctor / Jo Grant / Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart / Sergeant Benton / Captain Yates

Notes

Cover image: Doctor Who, Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons, Target Books (1975)

Cover image: Doctor Who, Genocide, BBC Books (1997)

Cover image: Doctor WHo, Doctor Who and the Planet of the Spiders, Target Books (1975)

Doctor Who and the Green Death was the only one of Malcolm Hulke's seven Doctor Who novelisations which was not based on a script which he had at least partially written for television himself.
The Green Death was the final story to feature Jo Grant (Katy Manning), who had been in the programme since Terror of the Autons in 1971. The character left to marry Clifford Jones, who had helped in the battle against BOSS and Global Chemicals in The Green Death.

Although she wouldn't be seen again in the television series, the character would later appear in numerous Third Doctor novels from both Virgin Publishing and BBC Books, as well as making a one-off appearance in the Eighth Doctor novel Genocide, in 1997.

More recently, Jo, still portrayed by Katy Manning, made a welcome re-appearance on screen in Death of the Doctor, a 2010 story from Season 4 of The Sarah Jane Adventures, a story which also starred Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor.
The more keen-eyed readers of this page may have spotted that the Global Chemicals of the television series, mentioned in the note above, is actually Panorama Chemicals in the back cover blurb. The simple reason for this change was that it had been discovered after the television story had been produced that there was a genuine company named Global Chemicals, although it was presumably not run by an insane computer...
After having promised to take Jo to Metebelis 3 in Carnival of Monsters, the Doctor finally makes the journey himself in The Green Death. Taking one of the famous blue crystals, he just manages to escape with his life. At the end of The Green Death he gives it to Jo as a wedding present, but that wouldn't be the end of the matter, however. In his final story, Planet of the Spiders, the Doctor receives a package from Jo which contains the crystal. Events subsequently lead the Doctor back to Metebelis 3 where he eventually receives a massive dose of radiation, leading him to regenerate once more...