Doctor Who Discovers (series)
- This article refers to the real world book series. For the in-universe book series of the same title, see Doctor Who Discovers.
Doctor Who Discovers was a short-lived series of large format stapled paperback titles from Target Books published in 1977-78.
Content
Although not strictly speaking part of the series the title The Doctor Who Dinosaur Book, published in 1976, established the format. Each book featured the Fourth Doctor relating historical and scientific information to the reader as he explored the subject in the TARDIS.
Each of the books included a pull-out poster stapled to the centre, depicting the cover artwork by Jeff Cummins.
Priced at 75p, the books each had a print run of 40,000 copies, apart from the final instalment Doctor Who Discovers: Strange and Mysterious Creatures which had a reduced print run of 10,140 copies.
Cancellation
The series was intended to run to 24 titles, but only five titles were released in the series, with The Miners, Inventors and Pirates due next for publication before the range was cancelled due to poor sales.
In-universe
An in-universe reference to these books appears in BFA: The Kingmaker. In the story, Doctor Who Discovers was a series of books actually written by the Fourth Doctor during his time working with UNIT. As in the real world, only five books were published, despite more being planned. The cover art for the audio release depicts Doctor Who Discovers using the same cover-art format (and Doctor Who logo) as the real-life books, only it shows a fictional volume entitled Historical Mysteries.
