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.
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
by Gary Russell
- UK
- Paperback
- BBC Books
- May 1996
Back Cover Blurb
LATE DECEMBER, 1999: the brink of a new millennium. An anachronistic British Police Box materialises in San Francisco's Chinatown amid a hail of bullets which find an unintentional target - a strange man who walks out of the Police Box. Despite the best efforts of Dr Grace Holloway, the unknown traveller dies and his body vanishes. And soon another stranger appears, claiming to be the same man inside a different body; a mysterious wanderer in time and space known only as the Doctor.
But the Doctor is not the only time-traveller in San Francisco. His oldest adversary, the Master, is there as well, desperately trying to steal the Doctor's newly-regenerated body. Before long, the Doctor is faced with a choice: to save his own life, or the billions of people who have no future unless the Master is stopped. If only the Doctor could remember how...
LATE DECEMBER, 1999: the brink of a new millennium. An anachronistic British Police Box materialises in San Francisco's Chinatown amid a hail of bullets which find an unintentional target - a strange man who walks out of the Police Box. Despite the best efforts of Dr Grace Holloway, the unknown traveller dies and his body vanishes. And soon another stranger appears, claiming to be the same man inside a different body; a mysterious wanderer in time and space known only as the Doctor.
But the Doctor is not the only time-traveller in San Francisco. His oldest adversary, the Master, is there as well, desperately trying to steal the Doctor's newly-regenerated body. Before long, the Doctor is faced with a choice: to save his own life, or the billions of people who have no future unless the Master is stopped. If only the Doctor could remember how...
Television Story
Doctor Who
Script Writer: Matthew Jacobs
27/05/96 / 90 Minutes / BBC1 / Colour
Doctor Who
Script Writer: Matthew Jacobs
27/05/96 / 90 Minutes / BBC1 / Colour
DVD 
The TV movie was released on video prior to transmission in the UK and was issued on DVD in 2001. Rights problems currently prevent it from being released on DVD outside of the UK, although it is dual coded for Region 2 and Region 4, so fans in New Zealand and Australia should have no problems in playing the disc.
Regular Characters
Seventh Doctor / Eighth Doctor
Familiar Faces / Returning Characters
The Master
Seventh Doctor / Eighth Doctor
Familiar Faces / Returning Characters
The Master
Notes
- The 1996 TV movie was the only television Doctor Who story to be written by Matthew Jacobs. The script to the story, titled Doctor Who: The Script of the Film, was released by BBC Books at the same time as the novelisation.
- This was the first Doctor Who book to be published by the BBC, and the only novelisation of a television story never to see print as a Target book.
- Depite the relative failure of the television movie, the character of the Eighth Doctor was to live on in comic strips, original novels and audio dramas.
The Doctor Who Magazine comic strip featured the Eighth Doctor until early 2005, and the Radio Times included a half-page comic strip, written by Gary Russell, until the end of 1996.
The Eighth Doctor's first appearance in an original novel occurred in April 1997, when Virgin Publishing released The Dying Days as the final volume in their New Adventures range of books. BBC Books started publishing their own Eighth Doctor Adventures in June 1997, beginning with Terrance Dicks' The Eight Doctors. This range continued through to June 2005, when the new television series made the range redundant.
And finally, although the 1996 TV movie is the only story in which Paul McGann appeared on screen as the Eighth Doctor, he has since recorded a number of audio plays for Big Finish Productions, including a series of eight episodes produced for the digital radio station BBC7. - An abridged audio version of the novelisation, read by Paul McGann, was released on double cassette by BBC Worldwide in 1997. It was re-issued in 2004 on Tales from the TARDIS: Volume Two — an MP3-CD from BBC Worldwide.
