The Companions of Doctor Who were a series of original full-length novels related to the long-running BBC science fiction television programme Doctor Who. Published by Target Books in the 1980s, they were the first original novels based on Doctor Who. (Previous Doctor Who fiction had been either short stories in Annuals or novelisations based on television serials.) The books were based on characters who had appeared in the television series as the Doctor's companions, and explored their lives after leaving the Doctor's company.
The first two books were Turlough and the Earthlink Dilemma by Tony Attwood, published in July 1986 based upon the character played by Mark Strickson in the early 1980s, and Harry Sullivan's War, written by Ian Marter, who had actually played Harry Sullivan on the series a decade earlier, published in October 1986. These books sold well, but after a third attempt (a 1987 novelisation of the 1981 Doctor Who spin-off, K-9 and Company) the series ended due to rights disputes between the publishers and the BBC. Other novels would have featured Tegan, the Brigadier, Victoria and Mike Yates.
Famous quotes containing the words companions and/or doctor:
“There was never a man born so wise or good, but one or more companions came into the world with him, who delight in his faculty, and report it. I cannot see without awe, that no man thinks alone and no man acts alone, but the divine assessors who came up with him into life,—now under one disguise, now under another,—like a police in citizen’s clothes, walk with him, step for step, through all kingdoms of time.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“It is said, proverbially, that happy is the doctor who is called in when the disease is on its way out.”
—François Rabelais (1494–1553)