THE AUDIOBOOKS… OF DOOM!!!

“The books are old...”

About a gazillion years ago, when I was about ten years old, someone (sadly, I don’t remember who) made a decision that probably changed my life quite significantly (if the amount of tat currently lying around this house is anything to judge by) when they bought me a paperback copy of a book by David Whitaker called “Dr Who in an exciting adventure with the Daleks”. This was one of a series of three reprints of books written at the height of the time when William Hartnell was the one and only Doctor that a small publishing company known as Target Books had decided to re-release to a waiting world. That book was devoured very rapidly and another purchase swiftly followed, a brand new book for the range, “Dr Who and the Auton Invasion” written by Terrance Dicks, and featuring a different Doctor, one more familiar to me, as played by Jon Pertwee who was on the brink of his own televisual extinction.

The 50p which I received sellotaped inside my birthday card from my Auntie Bessie that year was very swiftly spent on “Dr Who and the Crusaders”, a book which, oddly, I never actually finished reading, having convinced myself that some horrible fate would befall me if I ever did. Happily this blip was overcome when I acquired “The Giant Robot” which I took to Switzerland to read on a school trip, and by that point, I was pretty much hooked on the entire complicated world of the changing face of Dr Who.

I can still (more or less) rattle off the order I personally acquired the books in, at least for the first dozen or so, having meticulously made a record of each and every one as I got it all those years ago. Thrilling, exciting, mysterious titles that spoke of adventures that I had never even seen, like “Terror of the Autons”, “The Cybermen”, “Day of the Daleks”, “The Green Death”, “The Doomsday Weapon” and “The Cave Monsters” were all eagerly sought out and purchased with my 50p a week purchasing power. Sometimes one would appear as a gift, like “Genesis of the Daleks” did from my friend’s mum, Mrs Fitton, after I had my tonsils out, and others would magically and unexpectedly appear in the bookshops unannounced and I would be so surprised that I would wake up just to check that “Revenge of the Cybermen” really was still sitting there on my bookshelf. There were the low times too, when I briefly stored them on my windowsill and found that the overnight condensation had damaged my treasured copies of  both “The Time Warrior” and “Horror of Fang Rock”.

With eventually about 150 televised stories to “novelise”, collecting this range went on for a good many years, probably long past the point at which a person of my age should really have been buying what were still generally considered to be “children’s books”. I have some very peculiar memories of sneaking into bookshops to buy the latest releases when I was studying for my degree and hoping that none of my fellow students would see me, or that the shop assistant would catch my eye. I think I’d have been more comfortable buying porn or condoms, if I’m totally honest, and in later years my mind still felt the same awkward sense of shame when I was buying the videos.

The book series itself went through some pretty lean times though, when the monthly treadmill of publishing them seemed to produce some decidedly slim and disappointing volumes. In later years, when the authors of the actual TV episodes were allowed more free reign to adapt and expand upon their own work, some rather excellent adaptations started to appear again, but, for me, it is that first couple of dozen or so releases, which had a genuine air of quality storytelling about them, that I remember so very fondly even now.

Eventually, like many things, life moved on. The TV show disappeared and with it went the chance of any new stories to be adapted. A few titles had slipped through the net due to contractual difficulties, not least because of Douglas Adams becoming a publishing superstar and far too expensive for the small publishing house that was releasing the books towards the end of the releases, so there wasn’t even the opportunity to satisfy my completist desires for a complete run in print. Those same books still sit there, probably still in purchasing order, on some of the bookshelves around the house, mostly concealed by later, more “grown up” literature, but I’m still rather glad that they’re there.

Twenty years or so later, the BBC, in their infinite wisdom, decided to release them onto CD as audiobooks, and, for a long time, like an idiot, I thought “No, not for me. I’ve moved on from children’s books now…” This wasn’t helped by the fact that the first release was those rather excellent first three books (“Daleks”, “Crusaders” and “Zarbi”) from the 1960s in a hugely expensive tin. One day, however, I spotted that tin going comparatively cheaply and thought “What the hell…”, thinking that the nostalgic journey might be worth a punt.

Honestly, I thought they were still rather brilliant. Since then, the old collector gene has resurfaced and I find myself once again collecting them in much the same way as I did with those grubby little 50p pieces in my hand all those years ago. Granted I am now slightly more discerning and don’t get them all, choosing instead to mostly dabble in those books that were amongst that magical first couple of dozen, with occasional others that I remember as having been amongst the better later works. Sometimes I am completely transported back to being that younger me by a few familiar, long-forgotten words, and sometimes I am astonished at how much else floods back when that happens. Equally, the experience can also be very poignant, like when I recently relistened to Elisabeth Sladen’s exquisite reading of “Planet of the Spiders” just days after her death. I even find myself looking optimistically forward to releases like “Day of the Daleks”, “Tomb of the Cybermen”, "The Web of Fear" and “The Tenth Planet”, none of which seem to be even the vaguest twinkle in a producer’s eye as yet, and many of which still date from those earliest years of range when the TV series logo was a reassuringly solid black version.

All the early books adapted from Jon Pertwee stories still send a slight shiver up my spine when I hear those familiar phrases I read and re-read endlessly, all those years ago, and to me, his portrayal remains a rather fascinating character, even if the modern popular consensus is less convinced by this. Meanwhile, the sheer brilliance of Patrick Troughton’s truly magical performance is one I first discovered through the written word, and it remains just as powerful today. Sometimes, when those early Doctors get dismissed in the occasional “Favourite Doctor” polls that I see published, it is those magical paperback books that I am reminded of, because no-one will probably ever understand what it was about them that made those characters seem so alive, so magical and so completely brilliant to viewers of my age who couldn’t even dream of ever seeing the actual programmes they were based upon for ourselves.

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Meanwhile, even now there’s still something hugely magical and engaging about the stories from those very early black and white years of the show from the days when it was just a weekly unfolding “Adventure in Time and Space” that works really well in book form, and I find myself rediscovering how rather wonderful those first Dr Who adventures featuring Ian, Barbara and Susan, and later Vicki and Steven, truly were. It’s something in the unlimited boundless possibilities of the storytelling that is difficult to pin down but always leaves me feeling like I’ve experienced a rather ingenious story, beautifully told, and still, even now, leaves me wanting more.

So, if anyone ever wonders why I’ve spent so much of my “adult” life enjoying what was and is essentially a “children’s programme”, perhaps they should think about whatever it is that they buy for an impressionable ten year old, realise that at that age they are very impressionable, and try to make sure that whatever it is, it’s something that quite possibly will continue to stimulate and astonish them forever.

“...but they chronicle the rise of Castrovalva up to the present day!”