Target novelisation
Novelisations of Doctor Who television stories (and later, two audio stories and incomplete scripts) were published by Target Books from 1973 onwards and later from Virgin Books, still under the Target imprint up until 1994.
History
The first three novelisations, published in 1973, were reissues of books first published in 1964 and 1965; new adaptations appeared starting in 1974 with Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion, an adaptation of Spearhead from Space. The list below shows the first publication only (in the UK) of each television based novelisation. Release numbers are based on later editions for most of the early releases. For commercial reasons, the books did not adapt the series in chronological order and tended to adapt the more popular and less obscure stories.
The final standard Target release was The Pescatons in 1991, after which several more volumes were issued by Virgin Publishing under the same format as their New Adventures and Missing Adventures lines of original Doctor Who novels. Internally, though, they were still identified as Target novelisations.
Ultimately, the range adapted the complete "canon" of the First, Second, Third and Seventh Doctors. Target was unable to come to an agreement to publish adaptations of the Fourth Doctor stories The Pirate Planet, City of Death and Shada, the Fifth Doctor story Resurrection of the Daleks the Sixth Doctor serials Revelation of the Daleks. Fan-written novelisations for these last stories have been circulated. Novelisations of The Power of the Daleks and The Evil of the Daleks, again, because of rights issues appeared long after the main Target sequence had ended, as longer, much complex novelisations written by John Peel.
After Target was retired in 1994, there have only been a handful of novelisations published by other imprints, usually based upon spinoff productions. No novelisations have been commissioned based upon the 2005 revival series, but several have been published based upon episodes of The Sarah Jane Adventures.
In July 2008, backstock of 27 Target novelisations were distributed at random with copies of Doctor Who Magazine Issue 397.