Publication Details
Although Target endeavoured to commission the original scriptwriters to novelise their own stories, this was not always possible. As a result, many books in the Target line were written by Terrance Dicks. During the late 1970s to early 1980s, Target, which classified the novelisations as children's fiction, imposed a page limit of 128 pages. Some books (particularly several by Dicks) even fell short of this limit. By the late 1980s, however, the page cap had been lifted, although John Peel was still required to split his novelisation of the epic 12-episode The Daleks' Master Plan into two volumes because the manuscript was too long.
Target began numbering its novelisations from 1983, with almost all of the first seventy-three books being numbered as reprints came out. The first new book to be numbered was Time-Flight. Target's numbering did not initially reflect original publication order (which would have placed David Whitaker's Doctor Who and the Daleks book first), but rather was conducted in alphabetical order, so that the novelisation of The Abominable Snowmen was numbered "1". The numbering likewise had no connection with production or broadcast order. Due to print delays and last-minute reordering of publication schedules, some of the later books were released out of numeric order.
In 1988–1989, W. H. Allen's Star label published a number of the Target novelisations in a format of two novelisations in one book. The pairings were:
- The Dalek Invasion of Earth and The Crusade
- The Gunfighters and The Myth Makers
- The Dominators and The Krotons
- The Mind of Evil and The Claws of Axos
- The Dæmons and The Time Monster
- The Seeds of Doom and The Deadly Assassin
- The Face of Evil and The Sun Makers
Read more about this topic: List Of Doctor Who Novelisations
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