The Serious Moonlight

1978-79: Season 16 of Dr Who airs, made up of 6 stories depitcting the quest for the Key to Time.

Late 1979: The novelisation of The Ribos Operation is published by Target Books, written by Ian Marter.

1980: The Target novelisations of the last four Key to Time stories are published, all written by Terrance Dicks. They aren't even all the Target books written by Dicks in 1980, he wrote five others. Man was a machine that turned TV into books.

2011 & 2012: David Fisher, the original TV author of The Stones of Blood and The Androids of Tara, writes 'novelisations' which are only published as audiobooks by AudioGo.

2017: BBC Books publish a novelisation of The Pirate Planet, written by James Goss. It was the last Key to Time story to be novelised due to various legal reasons connected to original author Douglas Adams, and the 2010s saw a bunch of Adams' Dr Who scripts novelised. This version was based more on the story's first drafts than its finished version.

2021: As part of the recently revived Target novelisation line, The Pirate Planet is rereleased. This edition is rewritten to be closer to the TV story.

2022: The previously audiobook-only Stones of Blood and Androids of Tara are publised as Target novelisations, a few years after David Fisher passed away.

I actually love this. I want modern televised remakes of *episodes* to get in the sea (The War Games In Colour, this means you), but modern novelizations are an idea whose time has come and I can definitely see a role for them alongside the classics.

I don't know if The Power of Kroll is saveable (it's Robert Holmes' weakest entry in the series, and it's not close), but if anyone can pull it out as a novel it's probably Robert Shearman. Here for this.

James Goss I'm a little more cautious of. I like what he did with City of Death and The Pirate Planet (both rich comedic sources that he rendered faithfully but not without drama); I am curious to see what he does with Ribos (another, far superior, Holmes contribution). Armageddon is ripe for being saved - on TV, it's bloated (probably 20 minutes of the 6 episodes are the time-looped Marshall firing his missiles over and over), cheap, meandering, silly, boring, and wastes good actors on terrible roles, but I'd want it to be revamped as a dramatic classic on which to end what could have been an epic saga of the Key to Time. I'm a bit afraid Goss will just ramp up the camp, which is the easy choice (and certainly a valid direction to go, just not my preference). If he handles it like City, I think we're in good hands. (I haven't read any of his NewWho stuff, I'm sure it's amazing but it just doesn't exist to me.)

i was in office yesterday with the finance team and they were playing the 'would you rather' game (you can see a bit of a previous round below the giraffe) so i decided it was an appropriate time to discuss the giraffe.