Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Radio Appearance

Folks might be interested to know that I'm interviewed talking about the old Doctor Who Target Books on a radio documentary being broadcast on Tuesday 23 June, from 11.30am to 12 noon. 'On the Outside it Looked Like an Old Fashioned Police Box' The PR reads as follows: "Mark Gatiss, Doctor Who writer and fanatic, presents a feature exploring the hugely popular Doctor Who novelisations of the 1970s and 80s published by Target books. In an age before DVD and video, the Target book series of Doctor Who fiction was conceived as the chance for children to 'keep' and revisit classic Doctor Who. They were marketed as such, written in a highly visual house style. Descriptive passages did the work of the TV camera; the scripts were more or less faithfully reproduced as dialogue. They were as close to the experience of watching as possible and were adored by a generation of children who grew up transfixed by the classic BBC series. Target Doctor Who books became a children's publishing phenomenon selling more than 13 million copies worldwide. From 1973 until 1994, the Target Doctor Who paperbacks were a mainstay of the publishing world. From humble beginnings they grew into a list running to 156 titles, shaping the reading habits of a generation." I've also heard that Russell T Davies, Gary Russell, Terrance Dicks, Philip Hinchcliffe, Chris Achillios, Caroline John and Anneke Wills are taking part. So give it a listen if you're around, or it should be on the BBC iPlayer afterwards.

2 comments:

chris burgess said...

David --

When I first read about it, I was going to ask you if you're being featured on that show. Great to know you are, should be fantastic given the subject. Hope it was fun to record your bit. =)

Paul said...

Hi David, it's been a while, how are you?

I'm really looking forward to this. Anything about Target gets my instant attention. I notice that there is going to be a semi-regular series about them on upcoming Who DVDs. I hope you'll be involved in them too...

P