In 1973, a fledgling imprint called Target published a selection of books aimed at younger readers. Among them were reprints of three adaptations of Doctor Who stories from the 1960s, which kickstarted a phenomenon in children’s publishing.

I entered 2020 with ambitions to read every one of these original novelisations and reached May without having turned a single page. A chance Twitter conversation finally inspired me to put my plan into action – and a quick Twitter poll decided how I’d go about it.

Due to the way the Target books were released, their own chronology didn’t follow that of the TV show; the first three books were selected gems from the First Doctor, then Target’s own commissions were from the then-current (Third) Doctor, but not every story was selected for adaptation – not at first, at least. The first book offers us a completely new origin story for how Ian and Barbara met the Doctor and Susan; we get two incompatible ‘first’ adventures for Jo Grant; the events surrounding the departure and return to Space Station Nerva are most confusing; and The Massacre on paper bears little resemblance to what viewers would have seen in 1966!

I could have just followed the order of the serials as broadcast and note the contrasting styles across stories adapted sometimes decades apart, but the decision to follow publication order allowed me to see the range grow and evolve over time as it approached these novelisations with different audiences in mind. As the back cover blurbs on Target books used to remind us, the Daily Sketch once called Doctor Who ‘the children’s own programme which adults adore’, but what happens when that child grows up?

… and would I even get to the end of the run?

One way to keep me on track was to write a blog, so I’d have deadlines to keep – and what better title for this than ‘Escape to Danger’, variants of which were used for many chapters across the series. And that’s how this little personal challenge came together.

UPDATE: The actual reading and writing up took me just over a year, thanks to a selection of new addiions to the range. It then took another year for me to work through the schedule pattern of roughly one book a week (doubling up when the entries were short, or there was a public holiday in the UK). The mission to read the Target adaptations of every broadcast story from 1963-1996 was achieved. I even cheekily added my own adaptation of a story at the end, publishing the last entry on 23 November, 2022.

If you’d like to follow my literary pilgrimage, start here!