The Day of the Doctor

Target novelisation Doctor Who - The Day of the Doctor

Author	Steven Moffat
Published	2018
ISBN	978 1 787 53133 3
First Edition Cover	Anthony Dry

Back cover blurb: When the entire universe is at stake, three different Doctors will unite to save it. The Tenth Doctor is hunting shape-shifting Zygons in Elizabethan England. The Eleventh is investigating a rift in space-time in the present day. And one other - the man they used to be but never speak of - is fighting the Daleks in the darkest days of the Time War. Driven by demons and despair, this battle-scarred Doctor is set to take a devastating decision that will threaten the survival of the entire universe... a decision that not even a Time Lord can take alone. On this day, the Doctor's different incarnations will come together to save the Earth... to save the universe... and to save his soul.

• The Game Is On by Stacey Smith?

The Game Is On by Stacey Smith? 24/3/26

Throughout my childhood in Australia, looking for Doctor Who novelisations was one of the greatest pastimes I knew. I'd search everywhere possible, just in case.

I loved these books. However, I loved the hunt even more. Trawling new and second-hand bookstores, just on the offchance of finding something, was magnificent fun. It was invariably successful, too. Well, finding the books was. Affording them was a different matter, as I grew up poor and had very little money.

In the eighties, I got a summer job in a factory that paid about $2.50 an hour. Except I didn't see it that way. To me, it paid one Doctor Who book per hour. That was a fantastic way of getting through a mind-meltingly dull job. I'd while away the days thinking about the Target book numbering (I had it memorised by the end of the summer) and planning my next trip to a bookstore. It was the only thing that kept me sane. Finally, in my last year of high school, I completed my collection (and possibly my life) with An Unearthly Child. That seemed weirdly appropriate to end on.

Of course, there were other books to collect later on. The New Adventures followed, then the Missing Adventures and so forth. I adored reading them, but there wasn't the same sense of search. I bought each one as it came out and later had a standing order at a bookstore. They would call me whenever the latest book arrived. Which was great; it just wasn't thrilling the way that hunting for the novelisations had been.

Even later, there was the internet, which took any last vestiges of fun out of the game. If you want something, you simply order it and it turns up at your house. Ho hum.

Except, in 2018, four extra Target novelisations turned up. I was travelling in Asia when they first came out, because I'm now a professor on sabbatical who (nominally) lives in Canada, not some working-class kid in Australia. So I knew of them but figured I'd get around to ordering them some months later when I was home. My travels then took me to Sydney for a visit home. I was on a date when she suggested visiting a bookstore. (Words can't describe how amazing that sentence would have been to me in the eighties.)

Lo and behold, there was The Christmas Invasion and Twice Upon a Time. I'd totally forgotten about these Target books, but here were two of them staring me in the face. But weren't there two more?

Suddenly, the game was on. It had been 30 years since the heyday of my novelisation foraging, but baby I was back! Literally so, because I just happened to be in my hometown again.

I found Rose pretty quickly. Not quickly enough that I hadn't already read Twice Upon a Time first. After reading Rose, I devoured The Christmas Invasion. Because who needs to go in order with these things?

That left one more. A book I'd heard good things about. A novelisation of one of my favourite TV stories that was bumper length, a la Fury From the Deep. By Steven Moffat, no less.

I search high and low. The joy was delicious, but the luck was poor. I figured I could always order the missing one online when I got home, but I desperately didn't want to do that. Eventually, I was in Dymocks, the same bookstore where I'd bought many a novelisation in the eighties. Having checked the most likely place for novelisations and only seen the other three, I wandered off to a different section.

I should tell you that completing my novelisation collection wasn't the last joy I ever found in a bookstore. No, there's another kind, one that's indescribable if you haven't had the good fortune to experience it: looking for your own book.

I do this all the time. Having written a bunch of them now, my aim isn't to buy books, it's to find out if a particular bookstore is carrying one of mine. This is just as delicious a thrill as the previous one. My publishers told me to ask the bookstores to let me sign any copies they stock. Which isn't what the search is about for me, but it does add some focus. I even found a copy of Who's 50 in a bookstore in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which proves that you really never know.

So I'm doing the egotistical author thing and looking around for any of my books in Dymocks. And, hurrah, I find a copy of The Doctors Are In. It was in the "performing arts" section, where books about TV shows are often stocked.

Sitting there, right next to my book, was a copy of The Day of the Doctor.

Misfiled with the non-fiction books, in the very same Dymocks I used to frequent --- and right next to my very own book that was written by me oh my god I'm not worthy. Angels may have descended from heaven while singing and playing harps, I'm not sure. My search was over. My life complete. Again.

It doesn't hurt that The Day of the Doctor was a fantastic read. It's not only the best of the four, it may well be the best novelisation of all. Moffat's prose is stupendous, with layers and tricks and extra scenes and little bits of cleverness throughout. In short, it's everything you could possibly want from a novelisation and then some. Which is lovely. But the fact that it was the culmination of the kind of hunt that I'd thought lost forever was just sublime.

They say you can never go home again. They never said you weren't allowed to search for it.