These five Who books are all from 1967-68 stories, but from different ends of the chronology of publication. The first of these was in fact the very last of the official novelisations produced by Target/Virgin, in 1993; the other four were among the first five Second Doctor books, published between 1974 and 1978 by Target. Having been underwhelmed by my last clutch of Who books reviewed, I'm happy to report that all of these are good stuff.

( 27) Doctor Who - The Evil of the Daleks, by John Peel )
( 28) Doctor Who and the Tomb of the Cybermen, by Gerry Davis )
( 29) Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen, by Terrance Dicks )
( 30) Doctor Who and the Ice Warriors, by Brian Hayles )
( 31) Doctor Who and the Web of Fear, by Terrance Dicks )

So that's it for the Jamie/Victoria combination. While Victoria, apart from in Doctor Who and the Tomb of the Cybermen, is the screamiest girl companion since Susan, the affectionate interactions between the Tardis crew are almost (but not quite) as entertaining on the page as on the screen.

All five of these books are medium good, and four of them are important as the perspective through which fans of my age first encountered the Second Doctor. The best of them is certainly Doctor Who and the Web of Fear, which wraps up one line of continuity (the Yeti and Travers) while setting up another (the Brigadier and UNIT). But all are worth adding to the serious Who fan's library. (The same can't be said for the other two novels of this run, alas.)

Five novelisations of Second Doctor stories, all originally broadcast in 1967. None of them specially good, and a couple which are pretty dire, but all very quick reading for my commute.

( 22) Doctor Who - The Highlanders, by Gerry Davis )
( 23) Doctor Who - The Underwater Menace, by Nigel Robinson )
( 24) Doctor Who and the Cybermen, by Gerry Davis )
( 25) Doctor Who - The Macra Terror, by Ian Stuart Black )
( 26) Doctor Who - The Faceless Ones, by Terrance Dicks )

In summary, your life will not be incomplete for lack of having read any of these! These are the five books featuring Ben, Polly and Jamie in the regular cast; it is remarkable how much more interesting Polly is as a character than the other two. Shame she didn't stay longer.

And so I reach the end of the first phase of this insane project, the last two novelisations featuring William Hartnell's incarnation of the Doctor.

( 17) Doctor Who - The Smugglers, by Terrance Dicks )
( 18) Doctor Who and the Tenth Planet, by Gerry Davis )

So, that's it for the First Doctor novelisations. The best ones are David Whitaker's original Doctor Who and the Daleks, Ian Marter's Doctor Who - The Rescue and Donald Cotton's Doctor Who - The Romans, with honorable mentions to the other four by those three authors, John Lucarotti's Doctor Who - Marco Polo and the three Dalek novelisations by John Peel. None of them is quite the real thing though: Hartnell's performance was so strongly visual that it is impossible to catch on the printed page. The only way to really get a flavour of early Who is to watch it.

On to the Troughton era now...

4) Doctor Who - The Massacre, by John Lucarotti
5) Doctor Who - The Ark, by Paul Erickson
6) Doctor Who - The Celestial Toymaker, by Gerry Davis and Alison Bingeman
7) Doctor Who - The Gunfighters, by Donald Cotton
8) Doctor Who - The Savages, by Ian Stuart Black
9) Doctor Who - The War Machines, by Ian Stuart Black

Feeding my unhealthy fascination with the First Doctor's companion Dodo, I borrowed wwhyte's copies of the Target novelisations of her stories and found them pretty easy to get through. They are all between 120 and 150 pages long, and not particularly taxing. I read them in sequence, but in fact there is little real sense of continuity between them; fans will find more to tickle their obsessions in the four spinoff novels featuring Dodo, whose collective pagecount certainly exceeds that of the six discussed here.

( Doctor Who-The Massacre )
( Doctor Who-The Ark )
( Doctor Who-The Celestial Toymaker )
( Doctor Who-The Gunfighters )
( Doctor Who-The Savages )
( Doctor Who-The War Machines )

In conclusion, I found these books a pretty easy read when feeling generally somewhat run down. They do feed into my thoughts on Dodo as a character, but I will save that for another day.