The UK Sci-Fi TV Book Guide: Doctor Who: Novelisations: Third Doctor: Season 10

Third Doctor

Season 10

Doctor Who: 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

The first three Doctor Who novelisations were published in the 1960s by Frederick Muller Ltd, but it wasn't until 1973, when Target Books picked up the reprint rights, that the range of Doctor Who books began to expand.

Beginning with Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion, Target Books would go on to print books based on all but five of the television stories produced between 1963 and 1989, with numerous re-jacketed editions in between.

With the majority of stories novelised, the company, now owned by Virgin Publishing, went on to establish the enormously successful range of New Adventures novels.

The production of the 1996 TV movie, starring Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor, saw BBC Books taking the decision to publish both a script book and novelisation of the story. Shortly afterwards, the decision was also taken that the time had come for Doctor Who fiction to be brought in-house, with Target/Virgin's twenty-four year association with the programme finally coming to an end in April 1997.

Doctor Who: The Three Doctors

by Terrance Dicks

UK
Paperback
Target Books
November 1975

Click here to see back cover

Other Editions
Doctor Who: The Three Doctors

UK / Hardback / Allan Wingate Ltd / 1975

Doctor Who and the Three Doctors

UK / Hardback / Allan Wingate Ltd / 1977

UK / Paperback / Target Books / April 1978 / (No.64)

Doctor Who: The Three Doctors

UK / Paperback / Target Books / August 1991 / No.64

Doctor Who: Wladcy Czasu

Poland / Paperback / Empire / 1994

Doctor Who: Doctor Who: Wladcy Czasu was one of three translations of Doctor Who novelisations to be released by Empire in Poland.

Back Cover Blurb — Target Books (1975)
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.

Back Cover Blurb — Target Books (1978)
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...

Back Cover Blurb — Target Books (1991)
'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...

Television Story
The Three Doctors
Script Writers: Bob Baker and Dave Martin

4 × 25 Minutes / BBC1 / Colour

30/12/72 Episode One
06/01/73 Episode Two
13/01/73 Episode Three
20/01/73 Episode Four

DVD

All four episodes exist in their original format and have been released on Region 2 DVD in the UK, and on Region 1 DVD in the United States.

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

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

Notes

Make Your Own Adventure with Doctor Who: Search for the Doctor cover image

Doctor Who: The Five Doctors cover image

The Three Doctors 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.
The Three Doctors was one of the first occasions in the programme in which characters from older adventures would appear — the Brigadier, Sergeant Benton and the Monk (The Time Meddler / The Daleks' Master Plan) where 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 which had been filmed at Hartnell's home.

This wasn't to be the final time that past Doctors would re-appear, however. The Five Doctors in 1983 would see the first five incarnations of the Doctor appearing, albeit with the late William Hartnell being replaced by Richard Hurndall and Tom Baker only being represented by footage from the unfinished Shada. Two years later and Patrick Troughton would be making 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 and the current TARDIS incumbent, David Tennant, would find himself encountering the Fifth Doctor in the brief, but highly enjoyable, Time Crash, scripted by Steven Moffat.
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 story saw the Time Lords returning the Doctor's knowledge of time travel and giving him with a new dematerialisation circuit for the TARDIS.

Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters

by Terrance Dicks

UK
Paperback
Target Books
January 1977
(Book Number: 8)

Other Editions
Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters

UK / Hardback / Allan Wingate Ltd

Doctor Who: Carnival of Monsters

UK / Paperback / Target Books / May 1993 / No.8

Back Cover Blurb — Target Books (1977)
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...

Television Story
Carnival of Monsters
Script Writer: Robert Holmes

4 × 25 Minutes / BBC1 / Colour

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

DVD

All four episodes exist in their original format and have been released on Region 2 DVD in the UK, and on Region 1 DVD in the United States.

Regular Characters
Third Doctor / Jo Grant

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

UK
Paperback
Target Books
September 1976
(Book Number: 57)

Other Editions
Doctor Who and the Space War

UK / Hardback / Allan Wingate Ltd / September 1976

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

Back Cover Blurb — Target Books
'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...

Television Story
Frontier in Space
Script Writer: Malcolm Hulke

6 × 25 Minutes / BBC1 / Colour

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

DVD

All six episodes exist in their original format and were relased on Region 2 DVD in the UK in October 2009 as part of the Dalek War box set which also included Planet of the Daleks.

Regular Characters
Third Doctor / Jo Grant

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

Audio Book

UK
BBC Audiobooks
4 × CD / Download
4 hours 13 minutes
February 2008

Unabridged reading of the novelisation, narrated by Geoffrey Beevers.

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

UK
Paperback
Target Books
October 1976
(Book Number: 46)

Other Editions
Doctor Who and the Planet of the Daleks

UK / Hardback / Allan Wingate Ltd / October 1976

Dr. Who: Der Planet der Daleks

Germany / Paperback / Schneider-Buch / 1980

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. A second German translation of Doctor Who and the Planet of the Daleks was released by Goldmann Verlag in 1989 as Doctor Who und der Planet der Daleks.

Doctor Who und der Planet der Daleks

Germany / Paperback / Goldmann Verlag / 1989

Doctor Who und der Planet der Daleks was one of eight translations of Doctor Who novelisations to be released in Germany in the late-1980s and early-1990s 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.

Doctor Who: Planet of the Daleks

UK / Paperback / Target Books / July 1992 / No.46

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.

Back Cover Blurb — Target Books (1976)
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.

Television Story
Planet of the Daleks
Script Writer: Terry Nation

6 × 25 Minutes / BBC1 / Colour

07/04/72 Episode One
14/04/73 Episode Two
21/04/73 Episode Three
28/04/73 Episode Four
05/05/73 Episode Five
12/05/73 Episode Six

DVD

Episode Three exists as a 16mm black and white telerecording, with the remaining five episodes all being held in their original format. Planet of the Daleks was released on Region 2 DVD in the UK in October 2009 as part of the Dalek War box set which also included Frontier in Space. Interestingly, the black and white episode has been recoloured using a combination of two entirely different sources — an artificially coloured version produced in the United States, and a version which has undergone the newly-developed colour recovery process which can recover the original colour signal from a black and white telerecording. See the Dalek War article on the Doctor Who Restoration Team web site for further details.

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

UK
Paperback
Target Books
August 1975

Click here to see back cover

Other Editions
Doctor Who and the Green Death

UK / Paperback / Target Books / March 1979 / (No.29)

UK / Hardback / WH Allen / April 1981

Back Cover Blurb — Target Books (1975)
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?

Back Cover Blurb — Target Books (1979)
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
Script Writers: Robert Sloman and Barry Letts

6 × 25 Minutes / BBC1 / Colour

19/05/72 Episode One
26/05/73 Episode Two
02/06/73 Episode Three
09/06/73 Episode Four
16/06/73 Episode Five
23/06/73 Episode Six

DVD

All six episodes exist in their original format and have been released on Region 2 DVD in the UK, and on Region 1 DVD in the United States.

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

Audio Book

UK
BBC Audiobooks
4 × CD / Download
4 hours 16 minutes
September 2008

Unabridged reading of the novelisation, narrated by Katy Manning who played Jo Grant in the television series.

Notes

Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons cover image

Doctor Who and the Planet of the Spiders cover image

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.
The more keen-eyed readers of this page may have spotted that the Global Chemicals of the television series, mentioned in the paragraph 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 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...