As I read the latest wave of Target novelisations – taking four of the stories from Ncuti Gatwa’s first series as the Doctor from screen to page – I thought how strange it was to still be publishing these pulpy little paperbacks every year. The Target brand has a storied history: changing hands multiple times, dying and being reborn in various forms over the years, until a big return in the twenty-first century from which it’s remained consistently popular. But if the books were intended to bring Doctor Who stories to an audience without the luxury of streaming, what’s the point of them now?

As Target Books enters its fifth decade and the Fifteenth Doctor gets added to its ongoing legacy, what do we want from a Target novelisation in 2024?

The Target novelisations of Space Babies, 73 Yards, Rogue and The Church on Ruby Road are available now, published by BBC Books and Penguin RH.

In some cases, we already have a novelisation – as with last year’s Christmas special The Church on Ruby Road – adapted to prose by Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson and published earlier this year. It’s hardly the first Target book to reprint an existing Doctor Who novelisations (the James Goss adaptations of Douglas Adams stories spring to mind) but only when the text has been drastically cut down to the svelte, shelf-able length of a Target book. With no cuts whatsoever, The Church on Ruby Road is simply the paperback edition of January’s hardback with new cover art and the Target logo. Nothing wrong with that. As mentioned in my review, it’s a wonderful adaptation of the episode, penned with such care and style that it prompted me to check out Jikiemi-Pearson’s other work. But it made me wonder if the Target range continues to exist simply for the branding. Older fans have fond memories of the Target novelisations and bookish younger fans may be preemptively chasing that feeling. I couldn’t help but wonder if the Target brand now simply an ornamental product of nostalgia and an easy stocking filler?

But then, The Church on Ruby Road isn’t simply a cold conversion of the episode’s script. No writer can resist the temptation to add details that weren’t in the original episode, especially when they know things that were cut for time, budget … Or a licensing issue around the song which launches the emotional through-line of the script. No such problems in prose. Hence the novelisation of Space Babies, adapted by Alison Rumfitt, restoring the TARDIS scene’s needle-drop of Push the Button by The Sugababes and retroactively justifying the episode’s motif. If you treat Space Babies as the first new Target novel in the Fifteenth Doctor era, then this detail sells the joy and energy of a new era, which practicalities robbed from the opening episode of the series. That’s not to say it’s all smiles, with the Bogeyman given a fairytale-like prologue and a string of asides throughout the book to ramp up the feeling of unease, peppering an otherwise campy adventure with an eerie James S.A. Corey vibe that I really enjoyed.

That’s all well and good, but it can’t just be the opportunity to integrate deleted scenes into the story proper, can it? I mean, some writers can get carried away with the freedom to pull in extra details, as I felt is the case with Scott Handcock’s take on 73 Yards. For an episode dripping with atmosphere, this adaptation includes some major diversions into world-building that tear the story away from Ruby’s perspective to indulge in lore dumping. Now, explaining how UNIT went from being all-but defunct in the early Chibnall years to having a branded skyscraper in central London was inevitably something Handcock wanted to delve into and, in his capacity as script editor, he doubtless had Russell T Davies on call to chat with. But it breaks the tension of an otherwise heartbreaking tale of Ruby’s solitude for a run of cameos and exposition. Kate Stewart’s appearance in 73 Yards was a cameo that served the plot: the reassurance of a familiar face showing up and the way that hope sours for the audience just as it does for Ruby. But it’s undermined by showing other characters in Ruby’s orbit who could serve the same function. That said, the way Handcock handles the rift between Ruby and Carla is absolutely devastating and definitely one of those moments elevated by the format.

Three down, one to go … And the conclusions I’d come to didn’t sit right. Maybe it’s just the nostalgic branding, or the expansion of the story, or the capacity to place the story in the wider Doctor Who universe. But I couldn’t help thinking that I was missing something…

Then I read Rogue, transformed by TV screenwriters Kate Herron and Briony Redman into a hefty (by Target standards) 215-page novel. This the crown jewel of this year’s books, as the authors suffuse the text with every sumptuous detail they had in their heads while working on the script. Though it kicks off with Rogue in a daring escape on some alien world, the story really follows the Doctor as he notices and starts to be charmed by the dashing Rogue (as played onscreen by Jonathan Groff). We’ve seen this dynamic the other way around plenty of times, so Herron and Redman saw an opportunity to give the Doctor someone to be impressed by. Between that and the occasional footnote to sneak in extra punchlines (though they weren’t used nearly as often as I’d have liked!), it’s easy to forget you’re reading a Doctor Who novel and not some beautifully warped Charlotte Brontë pastiche.

But that’s not to say Rogue is without the trappings of a Target novel. The cover boasts original artwork focusing on the romance between the Doctor and Rogue, and its extra page count is mostly taken up with things cut from the episode. There’s an whole chapter devoted to the history of the Chuldurs and the hints at Rogue’s tragic backstory are fleshed out in much more detail. So maybe Target exists to give us a bit of everything – the nostalgia, bonus content, easter eggs, but also a thumping good story. All of it.

Finish this sentence. "I buy Target novels to…"

— The Who Shelf (@WhoShelf) October 29, 2024

I asked my Twitter followers and, while there was a healthy turnout for each of the appeals of a Target novel, the clear winner was a good story. So, yes, we do still want novelisations in 2024, but we also want them to stay on Target.

With thanks to BBC Books and Penguin RH.