The one thing that I can’t find any mention of in any of the sources I use for these little articles is any indication of Target’s lead-in time- in other words, the timescale from commissioning a particular adaptation to delivery of the manuscript, printing and release. It’s particularly relevant to 1985 as it was after all the year which put a garish and inappropriate question mark over Doctor Who itself, a decision which must have come as a surprise to W H Allen as much as to the fan world at large. However, it’s also interesting in the light of the 1985 release schedule as the stories chosen for adaptation are increasingly from the series’ early years; as these formed the majority of the stories available, there isn’t sufficient evidence to be able to claim this as a conscious decision to move away from what may have been perceived as an ailing current series, but it does mean that the books released form a more interesting bundle than usual.

To start with the figures: nine books released, five by writers adapting their own scripts, one by Ian Marter and three by Terrance Dicks. The stand-out release was kept for last- ‘The Two Doctors’ by Robert Holmes, adapting his own scripts for the only time in his career and strangely enough at the same time that Terrance Dicks was adapting his ‘Caves of Androzani’ and ‘The Krotons’. Although the two-parters remained to be novelised, there’s a strong sense that with ‘Planet of Fire’ and ‘The Caves of Androzani’, Target have finished with the Fifth Doctor and are ready to move on...except that until Season 22 had finished on screen, the only story available was ‘The Twin Dilemma’. With a bit of JNT-style showmanship, the Sixth Doctor’s debut in print was therefore arranged to be ‘The Two Doctors’, adapted by Holmes and placed at number 100 in the range- in retrospect something of a hollow gesture given the series’ position on television at the time, it can only look like a gesture of misplaced confidence.

The other releases do however have much to commend them- Terrance Dicks’s contributions are solid and highly readable adaptations of two Robert Holmes scripts and one of the few remaining stories from the Pertwee era, which is adapted with the relish one would expect from the script editor who helped bring ‘The Mind of Evil’ to the screen. If ‘The Caves of Androzani’ and ‘The Krotons’ are lesser work, they’re both tidy novelisations given a bit of a polish, particularly with regard to character and motivation. Similarly, Ian Marter clearly saw what ‘The Invasion’ could have been and rewrote it in that image. The other two stand-out adaptations, though, take things right back to the series’ earliest years; John Lucarotti’s ‘Marco Polo’ is an amazing work of compression but also a risk for Target to take, and while it doesn’t have the original story’s sense of progression and taking place over time, the importance of having some kind of representation of the serial available in any form in 1985 is considerable. Similarly, ‘The Myth Makers’ is such an original and daring piece of work and yet is carefully placed between two UNIT adventures in the schedule so as to reassure the punters that yes, we are still doing monster stories.

1985 is perhaps the year that the rate at which Target were adapting stories as against the rate that the BBC were producing them really started to bite- although nowhere near as much as it would in 1986, of course. But the policy of trying to persuade the original writers to adapt their own scripts seemed to be paying off, with some real unconsidered gems turning up on the shelves. If the future of Doctor Who on the nation’s television screens was more uncertain than ever, Target’s willingness to take a risk on the historicals and other monochrome stories stands out in sharp contrast.