For many people the most accessible detailed record of the on-screen events
of each story is the novelisations. Video recordings are of course the ideal
record, but few have access to even all the surviving episodes, whereas but for
a handful of titles, the complete Doctor Who stories are available on
the book shelf in the form of the Target/Virgin novelisations.
The Doctor Who purist however probably winces at the very thought of
the books being used as a reference source - most if not all novelisations
feature some degree of variation from the televised story, particularly
regarding dialogue, and therefore largely invalidating the books as an accurate
source for quotations.
For the purist, the actual recordings themselves - either video or audio -
are the thing to source in any study of the show; so an accurate scene-by-scene
transcript of the action and dialogue is an invaluable aid, removing the
necessity of fast-forwarding and rewinding to check exactly what it was the
Doctor said in that elusive scene.
The Titan Doctor Who Script Books fulfill precisely this function. In
1987, Titan Books gained a licence from BBC Enterprises to publish the Doctor
Who scripts, and subsequently hired an editor to prepare them for
publication. Veteran Doctor Who fan John McElroy got the position on the
strength of the fact that he had quite independently been preparing his own
groundwork for publishing the scripts.
Although the BBC provide Titan with the scripts for each book, McElroy does
not allow these to be printed wholesale - his intention is to provide a totally
accurate record of the transmitted episodes, and invariably there are numerous
points at which the televised version departs from the scripted action and
dialogue. McElroy retains the wording of the action descriptions wherever this
conforms to what appears on screen, but where it differs, he writes new
descriptions. In addition to the scripts themselves, the books also feature
full cast and crew listings, recording and transmission data, as well as a
'Background' section detailing the making of each story. The early script books
listings and Background were compiled by McElroy's friend and fellow Doctor Who
enthusiast, Jan Vincent Rudzki, but recent volumes have seen this task fall to
Stephen James Walker.
The first book in the series was, fittingly, the first Doctor Who story,
100,000 BC, also known as An Unearthly Child - although McElroy
chose to use a third name - The Tribe of Gum, a working title appearing
on the first episode rehearsal script. A factor in selecting this story as the
first in the script book series had been McElroy's intention to print a
transcript of the pilot episode alongside the transmitted version, since it
differs quite significantly, especially in the dialogue. Shortly before
publication, however, Doctor Who producer, John Nathan-Turner vetoed
publication of the pilot script, claiming that if the episode was not up to
scratch in 1963 then it should not be printed. McElroy was understandably
disappointed at this decision, which was made without his consultation, and
today it seems rather ironic, given that the pilot episode has since been
transmitted on BBC2 and released on BBC Video! The Tribe of Gum was published
in January 1988 with a cover painting by well-known British graphic illustrator
Dave McKean.
Following this first volume, there was a gap of one and a half years before
the second book. Apparently Titan wanted to be sure that the books had a market
before committing themselves to an ongoing series. Once sales of The Tribe of
Gum had been deemed a success, three more titles were commissioned.
The Tomb of the Cybermen was published in August 1989 and was very
well received as of course this story was still regarded as lost forever and
no-one had seen it for years. The scripts were adapted using audio recordings,
and scene descriptions came from the memories of those who recalled seeing the
story in 1967. These memories were unexpectedly put to the test three years
later when the story was recovered and released on BBC Video as might be
expected, there were some discrepancies, in the nonverbal aspects of the story
which unfortunately renders the script book a little less accurate as a record
of the story than McElroy might have hoped for. The Background section however
benefits from the input of script writer Gerry Davis (now deceased), and script
editor Victor Pemberton. The cover was painted by Tony Clark.
November 1989 - the show's 25th anniversary month - saw the publication of
the third book in the series, The Talons of Weng-Chiang. This represented a
departure from the previous two books in that the story was readily accessible
on BBC Video at the time of publication and therefore had potentially less
appeal than the not nearly so readily available stories from the sixties. The
choice of story may have been dictated by the public popularity of Tom Baker's
Doctor and the high regard in which this particular story is held by fandom (it
won the 1977 DWAS season poll). The cover was painted by Duncan Fegredo.
A fourth title was published just one month later, in December 1989. The
Daleks was an obvious choice in the eyes of those who regard the script
books as 'superior' to the novelisations, since the novel differs quite
considerably from the televised version. The story was still a few months away
from a BBC Video release and therefore the novel had been the best reference
source available to most people before the script's publication. The cover was
again by Tony Clark.
Interviewed for the fanzine The Frame in 1989, John McElroy expressed the
hope that the wait for the next book after The Daleks would not be as
long as the earlier gap between the first and second volumes. In fact it was to
be more than two and a half years before the release of the fifth book. This
hiatus appears to have been due to BBC Enterprises not granting permission for
more script books during this time.
When it did arrive, in September 1992, the fifth book was a radical
departure from the previously established scope of the series in that the
featured script was of a story never made. Anthony Coburn's six-part story The
Masters of Luxor had been discovered by McElroy when he contacted Coburn's
widow during preparations for The Tribe of Gum book back in 1987. With no other
record of the story to take into account, McElroy made only minor alterations
to Coburn's script and furthermore detailed these changes in an afterword. The
Masters of Luxor was to have been only the second story of the first
season, and the scripts had been written before the show went into production,
hence Susan was in places referred to as 'Sue' or even 'Suzanne'. McElroy is
probably right to assume that oddities such as this would have been altered by
the story editor had The Masters of Luxor been accepted for production.
The cover painting was produced by Alister Pearson - better known for his work
on Virgin's series of Doctor Who novelisations. Pearson has painted the
covers for all of the script books since this one.
The book heralded a slight design format change for the series, the most
notable alteration being the replacement of the McCoy era Doctor Who logo with
the diamond logo now used by almost all Doctor Who merchandisers.
Subsequently, the two earliest script books were reprinted in this revised
format. The Daleks and The Talons of Weng-Chiang are however
still available in first edition - the fact that they have not sold out after
four years might provide at least part of an answer to why the series was
rested.
The Masters of Luxor, whilst being a stand-alone release in terms of
its unique content, was not an isolated publication, as three more titles have
followed in moderately quick succession. The first of these was The Daemons in
November 1992 - just as the newly recoloured episodes were transmitted on BBC2.
This was, as it turned out, just a fortuitous coincidence, since McElroy had
actually been planning this volume as far back as 1989, citing it in an
interview in The Frame as one of two stories he'd like to do (the other
being The Three Doctors). The Daemons was the first volume for
which Stephen James Walker provided the background section on the making of the
story. Walker's thorough coverage of the subject includes contributions from
Barry Letts and Robert Sloman (the writers) and Christopher Barry (director).
Whilst in light of the attendant publicity surrounding the story The Daemons
proved to be a good choice, the next story to be selected was, equally in
hindsight, not nearly so ideal. The Power of the Daleks was published in March
1993, just a few months ahead of the long-awaited Virgin Books novelisation by
John Peel - and also the BBC Audio Collection cassette. It is unlikely that
McElroy could have anticipated these releases in time to do anything about it
(indeed his choice of story may in part have been dictated by the continued
absence of the novelisation), but Titan Books did at least succeed in being
first to get 'their' The Power of the Daleks on the shop shelves.
Although all six episodes of The Power of the Daleks are missing,
John McElroy did have the audio recordings. In addition he had a full set of
off-screen photographs taken at the time of transmission (the photos had been
previously published in a special issue of the fanzine Dream Watch Bulletin),
with which to adapt the scripts. As with The Tomb of the Cybermen it
will be impossible to know for sure whether the script book is totally accurate
until such a time - if ever - that the actual episode recordings themselves are
discovered. Nevertheless, the book undoubtedly tells the story with greater
detail than the BBC Audio Collection version (as the accompanying narration
will no doubt only convey essential details of the action), and it will also
score over the Virgin novelisation for those purists who like their Doctor Who
stories pure and unsullied by novelists' embellishments and Peel's novel
certainly has quite a few of these.
Ghost Light is the newest script book at present. At first this seems
a rather odd choice of story, given the comparatively recent airing of the
McCoy era. McElroy justifies the release in his introduction with his
expectation that as the seventh Doctor is extremely popular with a large
section of fandom, so ought this book. I have my doubts that this reasoning is
particularly watertight, but the book is a very worthy choice for another
reason. Coming at the end of the book is a section entitled 'Creating Ghost
Light' by the script writer himself, Marc Platt. This lengthy piece goes into
some detail concerning the writing of the story, and includes a number of
script scenes excised from the final version. The book was released in July
1993.
Further titles in the series are said to include The Abominable Snowmen
and The Pirate Planet - both of which are admirable choices, as one is
almost completely missing from the BBC Archives and the other is unlikely to
ever appear in the form of a Virgin novelisation. In time, the script books
have the potential to grow into a valuable and informative reference source for
the devoted writers and researchers of the programme.
Postscript
In the year following the publication of this article, two more script books
were published by Titan: Galaxy 4 in July 1994 and The Crusade in
November 1994. As with several previous books in this series, the cover artwork
for these was by Alister Pearson, Stephen James Walker provided the background
section and the books were edited by John McElroy. The reason behind the
selection of these titles was that, at the time, not even a complete set of
audio recordings were believed to exist for these two stories, making them the
least accessible of all the stories with missing episodes. As McElroy points
out in the introductions to both books, these two books contain the scripts
held by the BBC rather than the transmitted versions usually used for the
script books. The script books for The Abominable Snowmen and The
Pirate Planet mentioned in the article were both scheduled for publication
in 1996 and in the case of The Abominable Snowmen the cover artwork was
produced. However Titan cancelled the range and no further titles were
published after The Crusade.
