I think I've stated before - in this long-neglected blog - the fact that I don't really remember all that much before the age of twelve. The odd flash of memory of primary school, the occasional ghastly family gathering, but nothing substantial apart from some key moments that spring to mind when the universe shifts that way.
But it's taken the death of Terrance Dicks, prolific children's author, and writer of many of the Target Books DOCTOR WHO range in the 1970s and 1980s (amongst other credits too numerous to mention) to remind me of just how many vivid, if vague, memories in my life involve the purchase and acquisition of those very books as I collected them, pretty much from the start of the range in 1973, to when it petered out in the early 1990s for lack of new material.
The very first I was given - I don't remember who by, but my mum did work in the Children's Book department at W H Smiths for a time around then - was DOCTOR WHO IN AN EXCITING ADVENTURE WITH THE DALEKS written by David Whitaker and first published in the 1960s alongside two other titles, before being acquired by Tandem Publishing to be re-released in exciting new covers under the Target branding nearly a decade later.
Three books were never going to be enough for this exciting new range, and, with a huge back-catalogue of television stories already accrued, new authors were sought to continue the range, and up popped Terrance Dicks to write DOCTOR WHO AND THE AUTON INVASION which I think I was bought by my mother again, and I was hooked, and a lifetime interest in the programme was seeded by those books, and my own inept attempts to duplicate the exciting covers usually done in those days by Chris Achilleos inspired by the graphic stylings of another hero of mine, Frank Bellamy.
DOCTOR WHO AND THE CRUSADERS came to me next, via (I think) the 50p piece that Auntie Bea used to tape inside my birthday card (although it may have come from one of her rare visits now I come to think about it) - another 1960s re-issue from the pen of David Whitaker and one which, for some reason, I got into my head that I dare not finish because the world would end, or something. I never got around to reading it fully, but the audiobook release - decades later - would finally plug that gap and set aside that ridiculous superstition.
Next up was DOCTOR WHO AND THE GIANT ROBOT, another Terrance Dicks classic, which I remember taking as my book to read on that school trip to Switzerland when I was ten, and it must have been around then, with my DOCTOR WHO scrapbooks already started to be glued together, that I started keeping my rudimentary records of the order I got the books in and, eventually, the date on which I got them.
And what memories are in that list when I think about it now. The astonishing illustrations in those first dozen or so books that somehow surpassed the actual TV images years later that I couldn't have hoped to ever see when the books were coming out so regularly. The awesome story of THE DAY OF THE DALEKS (Dicks again), those mysterious "other" Doctors in fascinating tales like DOCTOR WHO AND THE CYBERMEN (Gerry Davis), my sister nicking my brand new copy of THE THREE DOCTORS to read in the bath before I could read it, being presented with a copy of DOCTOR WHO AND THE ZARBI (Bill Strutton) out of nowhere by my father, and the total surprise - and I remember it astounding me that it seemed to come from nowhere - of finding REVENGE OF THE CYBERMEN for sale in our local Smiths when I hadn't expected it at all.
My first "recorded" issue is GENESIS OF THE DALEKS which was given to me by Mrs Fitton as I was recovering at home from having my tonsils out and missing the end of the school year, and I also remember being ludicrously excited by the spiderweb cover of THE WEB OF FEAR, and remembering that one time that Mr Sellars in the Post Office had a brand new DOCTOR WHO book on his racks (PLANET OF THE DALEKS) transports me back into that shop as if it were yesterday like nothing else can.
A less happy memory was discovering that keeping your precious collection on a windowsill meant that it could be damaged by condensation. THE HORROR OF FANG ROCK suffered the worst for that.
Years passed, and I would make my monthly pilgrimage to get my next book in the series - often helped by regular mailshots that I somehow started to get from Target Books - and devour it in a sitting usually.
Boys wanting to read... That's a neat trick, isn't it...?
Later on, I would receive new copies via a monthly mail order system set up by the DOCTOR WHO APPRECIATION SOCIETY, and later still, I was happy to find a bookshop in the town I went away to get my degree in that stocked the new ones as they came in, so I was able to continue collecting, however furtively, despite my mind supposedly being on "higher" things.
And so, around a hundred and seventy books later, the range finally petered out, not long after the series itself, and I would find other things to collect for a while, but those original DOCTOR WHO Target Books have stayed with me through thick and thin, finally making it onto bookshelves earlier this year after several years in boxes, and for several years before that, high up and inaccessible at the back of a "double banked" bookshelf, all wrapped in plastic in case the bathroom sprang a leak.
I look at them now, some of them slightly battered from reading after reading, all still neatly stacked in purchase order, and I'm so glad I clung on to them. In many ways, these were the books that shaped me, and kindled an interest in me that has led in later years to new friendships and a desire - however unprofessionally - to keep on writing.
So, to whoever decided to go ahead and reprint those three originals, and who saw the potential in bringing out more of them, I can only salute you. And, of course, those incredible authors; David Whitaker, Malcolm Hulke, Gerry Davis, and the incredibly wonderful Terrance Dicks, who were a very special part of my young life.
Martin A W Holmes, September 3, 2019
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