Mark Gatiss Presents Doctor Who Documentary

BBC Doctor Who

An evocative look at the early Doctor Who books.

Written and presented by Mark Gatiss, 'On The Outside It Looked Like An Old Fashioned Police Box' is a special one-off radio documentary looking at the Doctor Who novelisations published by Target in the 1970s, 80s and 90s.

Before the dawn of Home Video and whilst DVDs were still a laughable feature on Tomorrow's World, the only way viewers could have anything approaching a full 'copy' of a Doctor Who adventure would be to get hold of a Target novelisation. These were often penned by the show's script writers and boasted striking and stylised covers. They proved immensely popular and the series ran for around twenty years, gathering millions of readers for whom the books offered the only way to catch up with the Doctor's early exploits.

Mark Gatiss is already familiar as the writer of The Unquiet Dead and The Idiot's Lantern and he starred as Richard Lazarus in series 3's The Lazarus Experiment. But it was Mark's knowledge and enthusiasm as a fan of Doctor Who which proved invaluable for this examination of yesteryear's must-reads. He's joined by - amongst others - Executive Producer Russell T. Davies and script editor Gary Russell who recall their affection for the Target range which ultimately expanded to a library of over 150 titles.

On The Outside It Looked Like An Old Fashioned Police Box was produced by Simon Hollis and is available in the UK on BBC iPlayer for a limited period of time.

Listen now on iPlayer.