Somewhat surprisingly, it wasn't until 1988 — the penultimate year of Doctor Who's original television life — that the first script book based on the series was released. Even more surprising for many fans was the fact that for the first time a Doctor Who story would see print from a company other than WH Allen/Target, who had been publishing novelisations and factual books based on the series since 1973.

The story chosen to launch Titan Books' range of Doctor Who scripts was 100,000 BC, published under the title The Tribe of Gum. Written by Australian writer Anthony Coburn, this was the very first script to be produced for the television series way back in November 1963.

Titan's irregular series of releases eventually ran to ten volumes — the final title published, in November 1994, being The Crusade.

However, while Titan's script books had enabled fans to experience the occasional story which had been out of circulation for decades — the novelisation of Power of the Daleks only being published four months after the release of the script book — it really was a missed opportunity as only the scripts to The Masters of Luxor, The Crusade and Galaxy 4 were as originally written. All others in the series were edited to reproduce exactly what was spoken on screen. Rather a silly decision as, by this time, the BBC had started to release the programme on video...

No further scripts were published until May 1996 when BBC Books decided to capitalise on the new Paul McGann TV movie by issuing a script book to accompany the novelisation and obligatory video release.

Things then fell silent again until 2001 when BBC Books released The Scripts — Tom Baker 1974/5, the first in what was hoped would be a series of hardback volumes, each of which would contain the scripts to a complete season of the television series. Unlike the Titan script books, this also included scenes which were edited prior to transmission and comprehensive background notes which were based on Andrew Pixley's in-depth articles which had previously been published in Doctor Who Magazine.

Unfortunately, despite reports that a volume containing the scripts to Season 7 was planned, the series wasn't to continue beyond the initial volume.

The next Doctor Who script book was to arrive on shelves in 2005. With the new TV series starring Christopher Eccleston proving a huge sucess, BBC Books released The Shooting Scripts, which collected together all thirteen scripts that had been produced for Season 27 of Doctor Who earlier in the year. Sadly, like the earlier Tom Baker 1974/5 volume from BBC Books, the book failed to sell in sufficient quantities for a second volume to be released.

Most recently, four of Russell T Davies' scripts from 2007/8 were included in draft form in The Writer's Tale, a massive 512-page hardback tome from BBC Books which chronicled Davies' thoughts on writing via his email correspondence with journalist Benjamin Cook.