THE WINNER TAKES IT ALL!

What else can the mythical race of Eternals do to stave off boredom than have the greatest intergalactic boat race you could possibly hope to witness, its crews racing for the grand prize of Enlightenment, and a time and spacial area filled with danger, intrigue, ambition and sabotage.

A gorgeous piece of cover art (by Andrew Skilleter) that adorned Barbara Clegg's adaptation of her classy and memorable Season Twenty story Enlightenment, a true gem of the Davison era, and featuring some great filmed model work for its time.

KILLER SCARECROW!

The decades-old Melkur statue of the Traken Union grove is certainly a mystery for Consul Tremas (Anthony Ainley) and the Doctor, but also an amusement for Tom Baker during filming of his penultimate gem of a story, the all-factors gorgeous studio-based story, The Keeper of Traken.

BACK TO THE UNKNOWN!

Though only a few short years had passed, it must nonetheless have felt like a millennia for WHO fans since the TARDIS had made a trip beyond Earth and into the depths of the galaxy. Colony in Space, showcased in this fine 1971 art from Frank Bellamy for the Radio Times, would prove an enjoyable action romp with a moral message from Malcolm Hulke, featuring good use of The Master, some intriguing aliens, and pacy direction from Michael Briant.

MOON INVADERS!

On the surface of the moon, the army of Cybermen now revealed begin their attack on the humans' Gravitron base, preparing their deadly laser weapon, in this great image shot at Ealing Studios for the final episode of The Moonbase. Note the model Cyberman ship to the right, used for effects filming shots.

BAD ROBOT!

Image: MIRRORPIX archive.

In the universe of Doctor Who you couldn't even walk down a London street during those swinging sixties days without some kind of strange invasion going on! As demonstrated here by the clunky War Machines from the enjoyable four-parter conceived by Ian Stuart Black/Kit Pedler for the near end of the First Doctor's era.

An Earth-based show designed to capture a changing modern audience, The War Machines was a kind of underlying potential template of sorts for the show's ultimate future by 1970.

McCOY AND THE BANNERMAN!

The time for summer fun is over for The Doctor when he's spirit-marched by the galaxy-feared Bannerman mercenaries in a specially posed publicity shot for Sylvester McCoy's debut season love it or hate it, all-location filmed adventure, Delta and the Bannerman. Though I loved the opening episode- full of imagination and humour, the rest of the story leaved a lot to be desired and felt too whimsily lightweight for my own personal tastes.

GETTING (TIME) LASHED!

It had the lowest budget of Colin Baker's overall impressive opening season, and was a story that barely filled its own second fifty-minute episode. Nonetheless, there's a lot of good things to enjoy about Timelash, especially in its first part, and most notably with its villains, comprising the late, great Paul Darrow's Richard III camping-up as Tekker; the strange and unique humanoid alien robot servants, and Robert Ashby's memorable half-human/half-alien reptile- the Borad, whose appearance would, in the Doctor Who universe, inspire the work of TARDIS stowaway H.G. Wells.

Lovely composition design by Aquatics64.

ON TARGET WITH TERRANCE DICKS!

Classic WHO's legendary script editor, story writer, and children's novelist favourite: Terrance Dicks.

In my introductory article for this blog last year, I recalled my earliest memories of watching the series were with the final years of Jon Pertwee's incarnation. Colour TV had arrived in our house by then and this was an exciting monster and action series that caught my fascination every Saturday. But it was the purchase of two Target books in 1974 by my mum in the local bookshop that cemented my interest and love of the original era of Doctor Who. Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters by Malcolm Hulke was the first handed over to my excited hands, the second was Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion from Terrance Dicks, the latter name a legendary one behind the scenes in the creation of the most all-round successful era of the show with Jon Pertwee. But Dicks name was for the next few years of my childhood more synonymous with the Target books rather than the series, which I was really enjoying reading at weekends. The Day of the Daleks, from Dicks, followed, and I absolutely loved it- then came The Three Doctors (whose opening chapters, with the kidnap attempts on our hero, being a memorable highlight), and I realized I needed to get all of of the books in the set as and when. My interest and skills in reading and writing stories in general also intensified quicker than Tommy with his Metebelis Crystal- all thanks to Terrance Dicks. And as Pertwee gave way to Tom Baker on TV, the books further cemented my growing love and respect of the TV series and its rich history. Again, all thanks to Terrance.

Terrance Dicks sadly passed away yesterday (2/9/19) at the age of 84, but boy did he leave a fantastic, creative, inspiring legacy behind him in film, TV and books that fans worldwide will forever be grateful for, part of a three decade publishing dominion for the children's books market the likes of which has never been repeated since.

I hope Dicks old friend in WHO producer Barry Letts is up in that incredible place wherever we all go waiting for him, and that they resume their good old chin wags about life, the universe and beyond...

Thank you, Terrance. We'll miss you...

In honour of Terrance, here are the three classic WHO book adaptations of his that l'd enjoyed the most during my formative years of WHO-dom, and which also set the quality bar for other writers in the range to match.

Cover art by Chris Achilleos.

DAY OF THE DALEKS

As I said, this was one of the earliest Target WHO books I read, and a great story thrillingly told- time travel, the Daleks in charge of a fascinating future Earth, whilst their ape-like servants the Ogrons were smashing everything up in the modern countryside amidst tons of great action. I remember being mildly disappointed with the TV version it was adapted from when it was finally released on VHS all those years ago in the mid-eighties, and how it didn't live up to my mental image of the adventure as realized by Dicks. Thankfully, the BBC DVD 'Special Edition' of the story many years later was to make up for those earlier 1972 deficiencies somewhat, deliberately created by a generation of Target fans to match the spirit of Dicks' adaptation.

Cover art by Andrew Skilleter.

THE FIVE DOCTORS

It's not Terrance Dicks finest adaptation of a WHO story, even from his own work, but the nostalgia factor wins above all else- The Five Doctors proves a lively, page-turning tonic of a story that does exactly what it says on the tin- celebrate twenty years of the show with all the Doctors, monsters and companions it can incorporate, alongside a few missing or unfilmed scenes added to the mix that are great to have (Autons!). Dicks delivers the feel-good factor both on screen and in print with this Anniversary cake literrary treat. And of course, there was the thrill of seeing the paperback on the shelves of the Forbidden Planet 2 bookstore in London a week or two before the show aired, adorned in that lovely glossy silver cover- an early release that was a complete but joyous accident by the publishers.

Did I resist the temptation of reading the book before seeing the TV version, I hear you ask? Well, for the most part- I read the first three chapters or so then stopped.

Cover art by Nick Spender.

INFERNO

With other writers taking over the adaptation range by the mid-eighties, Terrance Dicks schedule was less hectic, devoting much more time to those upcoming adaptations, especially Pertwee ones, that he was able to pick and choose. One of the earliest stories devised for the Third Doctor's s era, and one which Dicks himself had great input into as script editor, Inferno, with its gripping tale of rampant Primord beasties, a genuinely deranged egoist scientist, a Nazi-esque parallel universe and relentlessly building Armageddon, is one of the greatest WHO adventures of all. Beforehand, I knew very little about the tale, but I was immediately hooked and could't put the book down, reading/devouring it over a day and a bit on school day evenings, enjoying the believable and adult hard sci-fi edge tone it had. Thankfully, the TV version which I was able to see via a friends Australian copy (in very good viewing quality, I recall) by 1988 almost lived up to Dick's adaptation in ways that Day of the Daleks hadn't.