On The Outside It Looked Like An Old Fashioned Police Box

BBC Press Office

Tuesday 23 June
11.30am-12.00noon BBC RADIO 4

Doctor Who writer and fanatic Mark Gatiss presents a feature exploring the hugely popular Doctor Who novelisations published by Target books in the Seventies and Eighties.
In an age before DVD and video, the Target book series of Doctor Who fiction was conceived as the chance for children to "keep" and revisit classic Doctor Who stories. They were marketed as such, written in a highly visual house style.

Descriptive passages did the work of the TV camera with the scripts more or less faithfully reproduced as dialogue. They were as close to the experience of watching as possible and were adored by a generation of children who grew up transfixed by the classic BBC series.
Target Doctor Who books became a children's publishing phenomenon selling more than 13 million copies worldwide. From 1973 until 1994, the paperbacks were a mainstay of the publishing world. From humble beginnings they grew into a list running to 156 titles, shaping the reading habits of a generation.

Presenter/Mark Gatiss, Producer/Simon Hollis
BBC Radio 4 Publicity