Doctor Who Annual 1986

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Overview

Release Number 20
Publisher World Distributors
Released in September 1985
Priced £3.25
Format Hardback 64 pages
Featured Doctor: The Sixth Doctor
Featured Companions: Peri
Featured Enemies: The Master

Contents

Text Stories

Comic strip story

  • None

Features

Puzzles

  • None

Additional Notes

  • Unusually, at the expense of new content, this annual featured three full-page colour publicity shots of the Sixth Doctor taken at his costume launch (showing him with the TARDIS, fishing and with a multicoloured umbrella).
  • The author of five of the prose stories (Interface, Davarrk's Experiment, The Fellowship of Quan, Time Wake and Retribution) was John D White, who loved the annuals as a kid and, when he was older, knew he wanted to write for them.[source needed]
  • This was to be the last of the regular Annuals published by World Distributors.
  • Both John Nathan-Turner and the publishers, World Distributors, had become increasingly frustrated with each other, along with the show's 18 month hiatus (resulting in no new Who on television) and, a reported decline in sales the previous year. The decision was reached that the license to publish the Doctor Who Annual would not be renewed.
  • World Distributors did publish a further bumper sized volume (entitled Doctor Who Special: Journey Through Time), which featured reprinted pages from previous Annuals and The Amazing World of Doctor Who book. This was similar to their earlier Adventures in Time and Space volume.
  • It was to be many years before there was another Doctor Who annual. It was not published by World Distributors.
  • For five of the in-between years (1991-1995) Marvel UK (publishers of Doctor Who Magazine) published a regular Doctor Who Yearbook which followed a format similar to the annuals, offering a mix of text stories, comic strip stories and features. These were significantly different from annuals in one respect. They did not review the year in question. Instead, they offered a mix of stories from every Doctor's era.