Feature by Alistair McGown
Gail Bennett’s cover art for the UK edition of Search for the Doctor featured the Sixth Doctor (as played on TV by Colin Baker) and K9.
Have you ever longed to climb aboard the TARDIS and enter another dimension? Meet the Doctor and join him in outwitting his enemies? Well, now’s your chance! All you need is a pair of dice, a pencil, a little bit of luck and all your wits about you. Ready?”
So ran the cover blurb on half a dozen Make Your Own
Adventure game books, all featuring the Sixth Doctor and published in 1986. Adventure game books, bringing complex, collegiate roleplaying games to younger audiences, became a phenomenon in British children’s publishing when The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson, first appeared in August 1982. Telling a story with points of decision embedded in the narrative, aided by dice throws, it sold two million copies, spawning a series of popular Fighting Fantasy game books from Firetop Mountain’s publisher, Puffin.
Inevitably, others jumped on the bandwagon. Editor Clare Dannatt approached BBC Enterprises on 8 May 1984 with a proposed Doctor Who range of what she called Plot-As-You-Go books. Though interested, BBC Enterprises quickly discovered that Doctor Who producer John Nathan-Turner had already agreed to a similar informal approach from Severn House; the deal was officially confirmed on 26 June.
Severn House Publishing had first entered the Time Lord’s world with The Doctor Who Technical Manual, an illustrated reference book written by Mark Harris for commissioning editor Barbara Levy and issued in hardback in April 1983. It established an important link with Nathan-Turner, who wrote a brief introduction to the book. Accordingly, Nathan-Turner would act as consultant editor on Severn’s new game book range, aiming to employ as many writers from the TV series as possible.