The Dr Who Annual 1974 happens to be the only one from that decade that doesn’t include a roll-and-move game. Unfortunately, there’s rather less originality on offer in the book’s fictional adventures…

By JONATHAN MORRIS

Jon Pertwee as the Doctor, on the unique TARDIS set seen in The Time Monster (1972). Pictures from the same photoshoot were used on the cover of The Dr Who Annual 1974.

From 1971 to 1973, the Doctor Who format was unusually consistent. The Doctor was exiled to contemporary Earth, where he worked for UNIT. He answered to Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, was assisted by Jo Grant and fought the Master.

This was convenient for World Distributors, because it meant that their Doctor Who annual, prepared many months before publication, would still be up to date when it was received as a gift on Christmas morning. Admittedly, the 1973 annual (published in the summer of that year, despite being cover-dated 1974) still has the Doctor based on Earth and assisted by Jo, despite the fact that, on TV, his exile had been lifted and Jo had disappeared up the Amazon. But it still reflects the current state of the TV series, perhaps more closely than other Doctor Who annuals, as we’ll see.

As was usually the case, the annual’s stories were written by in-house writers, all of them uncredited. However, it’s pretty clear on this occasion that it was the work of at least four. The text doesn’t seem to have been copy-edited for consistency, so each writers’ idiosyncrasies are retained. For example, the author of Out of the Green Mist and Galactic Gangster writes UNIT as "U.N.I.T." and often writes "doctor" without a capital, the author of Listen – the Stars writes UNIT as "Unit", and the author of The Fathom Trap doesn’t hyphenate Lethbridge-Stewart while the others do.