This post was originally published on my (now-defunct) Substack newsletter on 20/10/23.

Oh, and you can read Part One right here.

Molly Marsh introduced herself as “a comedian, a Doctor Who podcaster, and as far as ###### ####### is concerned, a man.” Her talk entitled ‘I Will Not Forget One Line of This’ was the maddest, strangest, and most personal of all the talks given that day: a heartfelt tribute to fandom and memory. Molly recounted a story about her father, a massive Star Wars (and Doctor Who!) fan, misremembering how the theme tune went to the “classic” 1980s animated spin-off show, Ewoks. Only Molly Marsh would spend the opening half of her Doctor Who lecture talking exclusively about the theme tune to Ewoks. (No, I’ve never heard of it before either. But if you meet me IRL, I will gladly sing to you what she sang to us – because it’s now stuck in my head forever.) Molly said she would never forget the crestfallen feeling when both herself and her father learnt how the theme tune actually went. How the memory cheats.

This experience isn’t limited to Star Wars fans though; Doctor Who fans get to have fun misremembering things as well. Molly discussed how 1981’s ‘The Five Faces of Doctor Who’ season affected the fans’ perception of past Doctors, even though we now know that not all of Troughton’s stories are like The Krotons. But that doesn’t matter, because there’s only one good Classic Who story and it’s called City of Death; everything else is just a happy memory.

Molly also mentioned how the Target novelisations set expectations too high or recounted the story differently, such as the differences highlighted by Fountain earlier on, which would just lead to disappointment when the televised version is revisited. But maybe we should count ourselves lucky. After all, surely it’s far better to read The Space Pirates than to watch it? Thank God it is missing from the archives then – we don’t need to remember The bloody Space Pirates. And whilst we’re on the subject of junking, why couldn’t The Talons of Weng-Chiang join it in the BBC skip? Molly had no choice but to sneak out the back before the audience started a lynching, as they were clearly rattled by all her scorching Hot Takes.

John McLay gave us a taste of an upcoming exhibition in Weston-Super-Mare that will be dedicated to ’60 years of Doctor Who art’ over the years. He also provided with a potted overview of the record of Lost and Found Target art, almost reminiscent of Sue Maldern’s role as the first BBC archivist and who took the first audit of the extant archive of Doctor Who’s TV episodes. However, his main presentation slide will ultimately be remembered as That Slide That Kept Appearing at The Wrong Moment, which I think happened at least three or four times throughout the day.

We then had a substantial break from individual speakers and switched over to panels instead. The first of these was an interview conducted by Sean Longmore, who chatted amiably with Target artist Jeff Cummins. He showcased six of his cover arts, including one for The Tomb of the Cybermen which has ‘the wrong Cyberman’ on the cover. Cummins also said he liked drawing the faces of all the Doctors because of their facial lines.

The second panel was conducted rather wonderfully by Christel Dee as she interviewed Albert dePetrillo, the editorial director for BBC Books, and Michael Stevens, who runs the Doctor Who audio range. They spoke about how the Doctor Who audiobooks began in 2005 and these efforts were spurred on by the success of Stephen Fry reading the Harry Potter audiobooks. They were also aware that they had inherited the Target book range, but the rights issue was complicated enough that it was easier for them to approach the older books as new acquisitions instead, which lead to some new versions that were exclusive (at least, initially) to the audiobook range.

The third panel was meant to be an interview with author Nigel Robinson by BBC Books editor Steve Cole, but as already established he was unavailable that day. So, what we got instead was James Goss, Steve Cole and, in a surprise appearance, new Doctor Who script editor Scott Handcock all trying to figure out what they were allowed to say, if anything, about upcoming things. This essentially amounted to thirty minutes of beating around the bush, albeit a rather humourous one. But we did manage to learn a few things from it.

Firstly, we learnt that James Goss had seen a rough cut of all three of the 60^th anniversary specials in order to help him novelise the third special entitled The Giggle. But what Goss enjoyed far more was watching the sad look on Gary Russell’s face as he had to leave after watching only the first one, since he is novelising the first of the specials, entitled The Star Beast. Secondly, we learnt that James Goss had not realised that the upcoming novelisation of The Evil of the Daleks written by Frazer Hines was based not on the original 1967 broadcast of the serial but rather the 1968 repeat broadcast instead; the shocked look on his face was utterly priceless. And finally, we also learnt, and were repeatedly reminded, that “Julie Gardner is an excellent shot.”

After the final break of the day, Rob Shearman gave us a talk entitled ‘Dalek of the Fendahl’ about how he became a Target author. Shearman revealed that the first Doctor Who novelisation he read was Image of the Fendahl because a) it had the least convincing cover art of Tom Baker’s face, and b) a schoolfriend of his told him that Douglas Adams wrote all of the Doctor Who novelisations under pseudonyms. Shearman also grew up believing that some stories were important enough to be novelised whilst some others were not, and found himself both appalled yet delighted when he found differences to the television story, such as Ian Marter’s treatment of the death of Adric in Earthshock.

Shearman also admitted to not really understanding why they started making Target novelisations of episodes from the revived era; after all it’s not like the episodes weren’t readily available on DVD and iPlayer. He even challenged Steven Moffat on this when he told him that he was writing a novelisation for The Day of the Doctor. But once he read the final book he changed his mind; he now felt he understood what the purpose of the new Target books were. So when Rob came to novelise Dalek, he decided to change details he no longer liked such as the setting of the year 2012 and the hairdryer joke in the final act, whilst adding new short stories providing background to several supporting characters.

Matt Hills provided us with a more academic talk, analysing how David Fisher created his own ‘Season 17.5’ through the novelisations of The Creature from the Pit and The Leisure Hive. Hills argued that Fisher used these books as an opportunity to react against the house-style of their respective script editors, Douglas Adams and Christopher H. Bidmead, in order to find a middle ground that was neither overly comic nor overly scientific. This meant that The Creature from the Pit had more frivolous bits removed, such as the Doctor’s ‘Teach Yourself Tibetan’ book, and instead inserted more serious bits such as the Typhonian reproductive cycle. Vice versa, The Leisure Hive had certain directorial choices removed, such as the long opening shot of Brighton becoming just two short sentences, and more comical details added in, such as the Foamasi Bureau of Investigation (aka the FBI).

This was followed by George Hewitt with a talk entitled ‘In an Exciting Adventure with The Narrative Voice.’ He taught us about the concept of ‘quasi-objectivity’, a term coined by the literature critic Michał Głowiński, meaning that you can’t trust everything the narrator says in a first-person novel as their experiences are warped by their emotional responses. It is rare for the Target novelisations to utilise the first-person voice, and so this talk provided a neat case study into this particular type of perspective.

Hewitt provided two examples of this ‘quasi-objectivity’. The first was from Doctor Who In an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks by David Whitaker when Ian, the book’s narrator enters the TARDIS for the first time; the fear and discomfort he feels when he’s effectively kidnapped by the Doctor. The second came from The Day of the Doctor by Steven Moffat, which features no less than seven different Doctors, all narrating in the first person. In particular, Hewitt highlighted how one chapter is retold three times from each of the perspectives of the Tenth, Eleventh and War Doctors, with different details added or omitted for each incarnation.

Last but by no means least, Matthew Kilburn gave us ‘Battle in the Projection Room’: a discussion about Gerry Davis’s first three contributions to the Target range. Kilburn said that there appeared to be a clash of visions for the Target book range between Davis and Dicks. It seems that Davis saw himself as much an authority figure in how Doctor Who should be written and so decided to write his novelisations in his own way, at times going against the house-style established by Dicks and Hulke. Davis would also clash with his successor Robert Holmes over the scripts for Revenge of the Cybermen.

Kilburn presented a number of examples from Davis’s prose that suggested this tension between him and Dicks. In Doctor Who and the Cybermen, Davis writes that Ben and Polly come from the 1970s rather than the 1960s as established in the TV show, suggesting he felt it was more important that they functioned as voices of the immediate present rather than remain consistent with the show’s continuity. His description of the Doctor has some elements of Troughton and some elements of Pertwee, as if Davis has created his own generic timeless Doctor, despite Troughton himself being on the cover. He even claims that Jamie only manages to survive in the future because he is thick!

But perhaps the most prominent legacy of Davis’s novelisations in the prologue which states that the Cybermen come from Telos, which differentiates them from the Cybermen seen in their debut story, The Tenth Planet, who are from Mondas, leading to Capaldi’s specific wish to battle the Mondasian cybermen in his last series finale, World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls.

Ten speakers, three panels and one host provided us with an informative, educative and entertaining day celebrating the Target books. We all showed our appreciation and thanks to James Goss, for organising the day, and he in turn thanked everyone who helped make the event possible. What a lovely way to end the day. Perhaps we can all come back together again next year to celebrate the 51^st anniversary? That would be nice. But hey, at least we’ve got plenty of reading to be getting on with in the meantime.

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Note: Once again, everything in this blog is written from my own perspective. I’d like to thank everyone who provided me with notes of the day’s events and who answered my queries about their talks as I want this to be as accurate as possible. All errors are my own. If there are any corrections that need to be made, please do let me know.