The box containing the Master's ashes is described as containing little more than two crystallised eyes and residue - hypnotic even in death.Notably, mention is made of a church organ taken from Cheldon Bonniface, a village visited twice in New Adventures novels PROSE: Timewyrm: Revelation and PROSE: Happy Endings and a koi pond filled with gumblejack. In particular, many Big Finish Productions audios posit the Seventh Doctor well-ensconced in the telemovie's console room. Stories in other media have contradicted this. The Seventh Doctor seems quite settled in his surroundings. Though possible, there's no on-screen evidence the interior has been recently changed. In particular, the early part of the book suggests the Seventh Doctor has only just changed the TARDIS interior. The first chapter and a half goes into more detail about aspects of the TARDIS and how and why the Doctor got the Old Master's remains.In the scene where the Doctor is shot, one of Lee's fellow gang members is explicitly female in the book.In any event, this novelisation does differ from the final film more than the average Target novelisation did from its source material. It is hard to know, however, exactly which differences come from genuine ignorance of the final casting or costuming, on-set revisions of the script or which may have been Russell's embellishments that would have survived in the text even if Russell had seen the film first. As a result, the novel differs from the movie. If only the Doctor could remember how.Īccording to the introduction of the book, Russell wrote the adaptation based upon an early version of the script that wasn't the final one. Before long, the Doctor is faced with a choice: to save his own life, or the billions of people who have no future unless the Master is stopped. His oldest adversary, the Master, is there as well, desperately trying to steal the Doctor's newly-regenerated body. And soon another stranger appears, claiming to be the same man inside a different body a mysterious wanderer in time and space known only as the Doctor.īut the Doctor is not the only time-traveller in San Francisco. Despite the best efforts of Dr Grace Holloway, the unknown traveller dies and his body vanishes. An anachronistic British Police Box materialises in San Francisco's Chinatown amid a hail of bullets which find an unintentional target - a strange man who walks out of the Police Box. Late December, 1999: the brink of a new millennium. Publisher's summary 1996 BBC Books edition The book is further significant for being one of the few Doctor Who adaptations to be in British shops well prior to the debut of its parent episode on BBC One. This is especially true of some of the descriptions of the minor characters.

For this reason, the novel contains, as Russell predicted, things which 'differ from what we all see on screen'. Its tight publication schedule meant that Russell wrote it with, as he put it in his foreword, 'precious little visual reference'. It was also the first novelisation not appearing under the Target or Virgin labels and the first novelisation to be completed before the filmed version was.

It was the premiere release of a Doctor Who novel by BBC Books, which would completely take over the Doctor Who publishing license from Virgin by late 1997. The book was significant for a number of reasons. On the front cover it is entitled Doctor Who, but on the spine, it is Doctor Who - The Novel of the Film.Īn altered version of the novelisation was published again by Target Books on 11 March 2021 under the new title of The TV Movie. Though for copyright purposes known as simply Doctor Who, the book has a cover which sends ambiguous signals about its title. It was written by Gary Russell published by BBC Books in conjunction with the film's broadcast in the United States, Canada and Great Britain on. The Novel of the Film was a novelisation of the 1996 TV movie, Doctor Who. You may be looking for the novelisation as it exists within the DWU or the 2021 novelisation.

Doctor who pocklocking the phonebox