Artwork has played an important part in the history of Doctor Who. The series has always heavily relied on on-screen visual imagery, but capturing that visceral, elemental essence of the television show was something quite rare in the 1960s and 1970s. This was a time when, if you were a fan, there was no way of replaying episodes of the series, of recapturing those visual cues and ideas. Pre-Blu-ray, pre-DVD, pre-VHS, pre-internet, pre-Doctor Who Magazine even, the world of the Doctor Who fan of the 1960s and 1970s was desperately barren of visual reference. Even seeing photographs from anything other than the current series of Doctor Who in newspapers and magazines was a pretty rare occurrence all those years ago.
So, back in the 1960s and 1970s, Doctor Who artwork took on a greater significance than perhaps it does today. Iconic images such as Frank Bellamy’s Doctor Who artwork for Radio Times, or Chris Achilleos’s Doctor Who Target novel covers still set the pulses racing for fans of a certain generation. And arguably, in the 1970s, some of the greatest-ever examples of Doctor Who art were given away free with your breakfast cereal...