The UK Sci-Fi TV Book Guide: The Companions of Doctor Who: K9 and Company by Terence Dudley

K9 and Company is a novelisation of the 1981 television spin-off from Doctor Who.

Script Writer
Terence Dudley

Television Details
K9 and Company
50 Minutes / BBC1 / Colour

28/12/81 A Girl's Best Friend

Archive Details / DVD Releases
A Girl's Best Friend has been released on Region 2 DVD in the UK alongside the Doctor Who story The Invisible Enemy (Amazon.co.uk / HMV.com), and on Region 1 DVD in the United States (Amazon.com)

The Companions of Doctor Who: K9 and Company

In the sleepy village of Hazelbury Abbas the Winter Solstice is fast drawing near. It is a time of deep mystery and ancient evil.

Sarah Jane Smith, journalist and former companion to the Doctor, comes to Hazelbury Abbas to start work on her new book. While there she meets Brendan, the young ward of her Aunt Lavinia.

Suddenly Brendan disappears. Has he been kidnapped by the practitioners of Black Magic who are said to live in the village? Is he to be sacrificed to the goddess Hecate on the Winter Solstice?

But Sarah is not alone in her search for Brendan. Across the unimaginable gulfs of time and space, the Doctor has sent her a very special companion: a robotic dog by the name of K9...

Publisher Target Format Paperback Publication Date 1987 ISBN 0-426-20309-7 Original Price £1.95 Country UK

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General Notes

The Sarah Jane Adventures: Invasion of the Bane by Terrance Dicks

Until the announcement of Torchwood in October 2005, K9 and Company was the only BBC-produced spin-off production from Doctor Who.

Set on modern-day Earth, A Girl's Best Friend saw the robotic dog K-9 (written out of Doctor Who earlier that year) paired up with popular Doctor Who companion Sarah Jane Smith and investigating the local witches' coven in the sleepy English village of Hazlebury Abbas. Despite achieving higher ratings than every single episode of the previous season of Doctor Who, this was to be the only episode actually produced.

That wasn't to be the last that was seen of K-9 and Sarah Jane Smith, however, as they swiftly returned to TV in 1983 for the twentieth-anniversary Doctor Who story The Five Doctors.

Fast-forward a further twenty-three years and in 2006 they appeared in School Reunion, an episode of the new Doctor Who television series alongside David Tennant and Billie Piper.

The success of that episode subsequently led to the commissioning of a spin-off titled The Sarah Jane Adventures. Written by Russell T Davies and Gareth Roberts, the sixty-minute Invasion of the Bane was broadcast on BBC One on 1 January, 2007, with a complete ten-part series following later in the year.

Copyright reasons meant that K-9 only appeared in the initial sixty-minute special.
K9 and Company was published as part of the short-lived Companions of Doctor Who series of books — the only other titles being Turlough and the Earthlink Dilemma and Harry Sullivan's War, both published in 1986.

Terence Dudley also novelised his scripts to the Fifth Doctor stories Black Orchid and The King's Demons, produced as part of seasons Nineteen and Twenty respectively. Prior to this his scripts to Four to Doomsday had been novelised by Terrance Dicks.