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Trivia / Doctor Who Novelisations

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  • Alan Smithee: Stephen Gallagher initially adapted his serials "Warriors Gate" and "Terminus" under the pseudonym John Lydecker.
  • Author's Saving Throw: Some of the books fixed problems in the televised stories:
    • Many (including Paul Cornell) feel that the Master's Heel–Face Turn is handled much better in the novelisation of "Terror of the Autons" than in the televised version. Instead of siding with the Doctor because he has suddenly realised after working with them for months that the Nestenes might turn on him, the Brigadier pulls a gun on him and forces him to comply.
    • The novelisation of "The Android Invasion" is regarded as being superior to the televised story, largely because Terrance Dicks filled in some of the Plot Holes.
    • The novelisations of "The Horns of Nimon" and "Warriors of the Deep" benefit from Terrance Dicks adding a bit of worldbuilding (the former showing how Soldeed met the Nimon and the latter telling us more about the future of 2084 and giving more character motivation).
  • Christmas Rushed: Terrance Dicks' novelisation of "An Unearthly Child" was written at very short notice (about a fortnight) so it could tie into the story's repeat as part of The Five Faces of Doctor Who.
  • Contractual Immortality: Ian Marter wanted to kill Harry off at the end of Harry Sullivan's War, but Target wanted him to live in the hope of a sequel. Sadly, Marter's death prevented this from happening.
  • Development Gag:
    • In the novelisation of "The Daleks' Master Plan", the police officers are named Welland, Blessed, Ellis and Windsor after the actors from Z Cars, a reference to the fact the police station sequence was originally conceived as a Christmas Special crossover with that series.
    • In the novelisation of "City of Death", the Jagaroth ship is named the Sephiroth; "Sephiroth" was the name of the Jagaroth species in early versions of the script. Countess Scarlioni is given the first name Heidi, and the sketch artist is named Bourget; these are the names of the equivalent characters in the early version of the story before it was overhauled.
    • Dalek has Van Statten buying the Metaltron off a billionaire named Hiram Duchesne. This was Van Statten's name in the first draft of the story in which he appeared (The first two having a woman named Eleanor Richards as the human antagonist).
  • Died During Production:
  • Early Draft Tie-In:
    • A retrospective example in the novelisation of "The Massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Eve". John Lucarotti disliked the changes made to his story in development, and years later novelised his first-draft scripts (although he did so from memory rather than having the scripts to hand, creating a third, distinct version of the story).
    • On a similar note, James Goss's first novelisation of Douglas Adams's "The Pirate Planet" is based on the first draft scripts, which are much longer, and very different, from what made it on screen.
    • The novelisation of "The Happiness Patrol" was based on Graeme Curry's rehearsal scripts for the televised version, so a lot of deleted material is reinstated.
  • Fandom Nod: The novelisation of "Shada", written in 2012, gives Skagra a lot of traits common to classic series era fans. For instance, in a scene where he researches the Doctor's identity, he finds it along with such hotly-contested information such as his real name, the exact reason why he fled Gallifrey, and his family members "on Gallifrey and elsewhere" — before declining to read them all because they are all irrelevant and boring, and instead deciding to find out what the Doctor is like as he is now. He then watches some old footage of the Doctor, described in such a way to make it clear that he's just going on an Archive Binge of Fourth Doctor stories ("The Androids of Tara", "The Power of Kroll" and "The Creature from the Pit"), and after each reel he comments on the quality of the story, acting and special effects, calling the first "not exactly a bad video text, just a bland one", and eventually rating the Doctor a "1 out of 10 Time Lord on 2 out of 10 planets" (in a manner similar to how fans rank their favourite Doctors and show eras).
  • In Memoriam:
    • The novelisation of "The Day of the Doctor" was dedicated to John Hurt.
    • "The Star Beast" novelisation was dedicated to a number of prominent Doctor Who fans who had passed away:
      This book is dedicated with love and respect to the memory of the following: Paul Condon, Peter Cooke, Tommy Donbavand, Martin Fairgrieve, Antoni Fletcher-Goldspink, Dave Foster, Stuart Glazebrook, Craig Hinton, Simon Hodges, Martin Holder, Deanne Holding, Jennifer Adams Kelly, Rupert Laight, Shane Lewandowski, Ian Martin, Dominic May, Ian K McLachlan, Stuart Money, Matthew Moore, Stephen Payne, Pol O'Connor-Pryor, Paul Spragg, Sammy Weeks and my old Words with Friends sparring partner Andrew C Smith.
  • Milestone Celebration: 1985 saw the 100th novelisation, Robert Holmes' adaptation of his story "The Two Doctors", with an introduction by John Nathan-Turner.
  • Out of Order: In the early years, the novelisations were written and published according to which stories were considered most popular and suitable, rather than TV broadcast order (the first 73 were originally numbered in alphabetical order of their titles, from "The Auton Invasion" to "The Zarbi"). This led to many sixties stories not featuring well-known villains being novelised very late in the day. The revival series novelisations also forgo TV broadcast order, though popularity appears to be less of a consideration.
  • Post-Release Retitle:
    • In the late '70s, the novelisation of "The Three Doctors" was retitled from Doctor Who - The Three Doctors to Doctor Who and the Three Doctors.
    • A number of novelisations with "Doctor Who and the [X]"-type titles were rereleased in the '90s with "Doctor Who - [X]"-type titles to match the naming format Target used at the time (of particular note are Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters becoming Doctor Who - The Silurians and Doctor Who and the Dinosaur Invasion becoming Doctor Who - Invasion of the Dinosaurs). Oddly enough, one of the novelisations was "The Three Doctors", so its '90s retitle ended up being a return to the original.
    • Under BBC Books, this is averted, with different titles for the same story marking different versions instead (e.g. Doctor Who - The Pirate Planet is a full-length version based on Douglas Adams' first draft scripts, while Doctor Who and the Pirate Planet is an abridged version based on the story as broadcast).
  • Screwed by the Lawyers: An entirely new adaptation of "An Unearthly Child" was written for the 50th anniversary as part of the BBC's audiobook range, to be read by William Russell. Unfortunately, the publisher went into administration shortly before its release, and although another company took over the new version of AUC has never been released even though the CDs were ready to be sent out.
  • Self-Adaptation: Just under half of the novelisations are written by the original scriptwriters. Among other things:
  • What Could Have Been:
    • The short-lived Companions of Doctor Who range was to feature stories focusing on Tegan and The Brigadier.
    • When Ian Marter novelised "The Invasion", he originally wanted to show the Offscreen Moment of Awesome rescue of Professor Watkins as a soldier fibbing, and the rescue as actually having been comically easy. He was persuaded not to.
  • Written by Cast Member: Several novels were written by Ian Marter, who played Harry Sullivan in the TV series. These included two stories he was actually in and the original novel about Harry, Harry Sullivan's War.

Novelisations

    TV stories 

    Junior novelisations 
  • Junior Doctor Who and the Giant Robot by Terrance Dicks
  • Junior Doctor Who and the Brain of Morbius by Terrance Dicks

    Unmade TV stories 
  • Doctor Who - Shada by Gareth Roberts
  • Doctor Who - The Nightmare Fair by Graham Williams
  • Doctor Who - The Ultimate Evil by Wally K Daly
  • Doctor Who - Mission to Magnus by Philip Martin

    Stories from other media 

    Unmade stories from other media 

    Spinoff novelisations 

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