You’ll be able to read the Doctor Who 60th Anniversary novelisations just days after broadcast!
The BBC have unveiled the covers for the three Target Books adapting this year’s 60th Anniversary specials. The art comes once again from Anthony Dry and Stuart Crouch. In honour of the diamond anniversary, though, there’s a twist this time, with each one set against a dark blue starry background rather than the traditional beige. They mostly uses images now familiar from promotional photos and trailers. But they do add at least one new bit of information. Harking back to a tradition begun in The Runaway Bride, it looks like Wild Blue Yonder will feature the Doctor and Donna adding another madcap form of transport to their list.
Meanwhile, for the first time ever, each episode’s novelisation will be available as an eBook the Thursday after it airs.
- The Star Beast: 30th of November
- Wild Blue Yonder: 7th of December
- The Giggle: 14th of December
Physical copies of the novelisations will be on bookshelves from the 11th of January 2024.
The three authors tackling the new novelisations have been responsible for some of the Doctor and Donna’s greatest adventures
Gary Russell has adapted The Star Beast. Russell is the author of no less than 20 novels set in the Doctor Who universe. These include novelisations of the 1996 TV Movie, and of four stories from The Sarah Jane Adventures. He also wrote Beautiful Chaos, featuring the Tenth Doctor, Donna and Wilf which many regard as a high point of the New Series Adventures novel range.
Mark Morris adapts Wild Blue Yonder, having previously written five Doctor Who novels, including Tenth Doctor and Donna book Ghosts of India. The Fourteenth Doctor’s final adventure, The Giggle, will be the twelfth Doctor Who novel by James Goss. He’s particularly celebrated for his Target Books novelisations of Douglas Adams’ TV stories City of Death and The Pirate Planet. The two have been some of most warmly received Targets of modern times. Meanwhile, among his countless scripts for Big Finish, he also wrote the Tenth Doctor Adventures Death and the Queen and No Place, starring David Tennant, Catherine Tate, and Bernard Cribbins.
Doctor Who returns on the 25th of November with The Star Beast on BBC One in the UK and Ireland, and Disney+ worldwide
