Doctor Who spin-offs
The series features John Barrowman, playing former Ninth Doctor companion Jack Harkness, police officer Gwen Cooper, computer expert Toshiko Sato, medic Owen Harper and "support man", Ianto Jones.On 24 April 2006 The Independent, the Daily Star and The Times confirmed, following past rumours, that K-9 would be featured in a 26-part animated children's series, K-9, to be written by Bob Baker.It was a special in two parts, running about 12 minutes in total, which featured all surviving Doctors (including Tom Baker in his first appearance as the character since 1981), and more than a dozen former companions.This 7-minute "mini-episode" starred David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor and Billie Piper as Rose Tyler, and filled in a gap between the episodes "The Parting of the Ways" and "The Christmas Invasion".[18][19] The US Dalek pilot was released on audio by Big Finish Productions in 2010 as part of the Lost Stories series, with actress Jean Marsh reprising the role of Sara.There was some discussion about spinning off the characters of Henry Gordon Jago and Professor George Litefoot from the 1977 serial The Talons of Weng-Chiang into their own series, but this was not taken forward on television (although it has been produced on audio).Further foreign editions of the novelisations appeared from the 1970s, with the books being translated for readers in the Netherlands, Brazil, Turkey, the US (where the texts were slightly tweaked to eliminate unfamiliar Anglicisms), Japan, West Germany, Portugal, France and Finland.By 1994, when the final Target book was published, all but six of the broadcast Doctor Who serials had been novelised, as well as a radio serial (Slipback), stories slated for the "missing season" but never produced due to the 18-month hiatus in 1985–1986 (The Nightmare Fair, The Ultimate Evil and Mission to Magnus), the spin-off K-9 and Company, and even a 1976 children's story record (The Pescatons), which has the distinction of being the final Doctor Who book published under the Target imprint.Although novelisations became more elaborate in later years, the early books usually followed a set formula and were for a time restricted to a maximum page length as they were considered children's literature.The Ghosts of N-Space, a second radio serial featuring Jon Pertwee produced in the mid-1990s was novelised, as were several non BBC spin-off video productions such as Shakedown (as one section of a larger original novel) and Downtime, adding an air of official sanction to them.However, soon after his tenure with Doctor Who ended, the author had gained considerable popularity because of his The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy franchise and became (depending upon the source of information) either too busy or too expensive (or both).Also during the 1990s, Marvel Comics commissioned the writers of the various original novels under Virgin's New and Missing Adventures lines (see below) to write short pieces entitled "Preludes" which were run in Doctor Who Magazine.In 2006, BBC Books launched an annual series of Doctor Who novellas as part of the government-sponsored "Quick Reads Initiative" which were shorter stories (generally less than one hundred pages) intended to promote literacy in younger readers.In 1989, Target launched another short-lived series of "original" novels, this time titled The Missing Episodes and based upon serials commissioned for but never produced for the cancelled 1985–1986 season.Again, only three books were published, the first being The Nightmare Fair by Graham Williams in May 1989, followed by The Ultimate Evil by Wally K. Daly in August 1989, and Mission to Magnus by Philip Martin in July 1990.Virgin Publishing's line of original novels, the New Adventures, featuring the Seventh Doctor began in July 1991 with Timewyrm: Genesys by John Peel, and were billed as telling "stories too broad and deep for the small screen".Virgin, meanwhile, continued the New Adventures line for several years afterward, focusing upon the Doctor's former assistant, Professor Bernice Summerfield who had been the first companion created specifically for literature, rather than for television.These books (sometimes referred to informally as The Adventures of Benny Summerfield) gained their own fan following and featured appearances by other characters created specifically for the literary world of Doctor Who.As of the beginning of 2012, the three titles announced are Shada by Gareth Roberts (a novelisation of the unbroadcast television story by Douglas Adams), The Wheel of Ice by Stephen Baxter and Harvest of Time by Alastair Reynolds.Creators who have worked on the DWM strip include such notables as writer Alan Moore and artists Dave Gibbons, Mike McMahon and John Ridgway.[35][36] Married writing team John Reppion and Leah Moore, together with artist Ben Templesmith, scripted one-shot The Whispering Gallery, which was released in February 2009.[37] This initiated a series of one-shots which included The Time Machination, by Tony Lee and Paul Grist, in May 2009, and Autopia, by John Ostrander and Kelly Yates, in June.Two short-lived spin-off series, Miranda from Comeuppance Comics and Faction Paradox from Mad Norwegian Press, have also appeared, both featuring characters who had debuted in Doctor Who novels.The first spin-off of this nature was Wartime, a half-hour film produced by Reeltime in the late 1980s and starring John Levene as Benton, a UNIT soldier who appeared on Doctor Who in the early to mid-1970s.Jan Chappell played Lisa Deranne, captain of the solar racing yacht Tiger Moth, whose shakedown cruise is interrupted by a Sontaran attack squad furiously searching for a Rutan infiltrator.In November 2016 they want to release White Witch of Devil's End, a Reeltime Pictures independent drama starring Damaris Hayman as Olive Hawthorne, who made her original appearance in Doctor Who in the Jon Pertwee story "The Dæmons".Doctor Who and the Daleks in the Seven Keys to Doomsday was written by Terrance Dicks and directed by Mick Hughes and ran at London's Adelphi Theatre over the 1974–75 Christmas season and was expected to tour England until April 1975.Although all of these adventures were intended as purely audio and were later released on CD, as webcasts they were accompanied by a slideshow of partially animated illustrations drawn by artist Lee Sullivan.Death Comes to Time was also released as a special MP3 CD with interactive content, including an option to view the illustrations as well as other bonus material such as cast and crew interviews that were originally available online.In the middle of 2003, BBCi initiated plans to bring webcast production back in-house, producing the all-new adventure Scream of the Shalka by Paul Cornell, starring Richard E. Grant as the Ninth Doctor and Derek Jacobi as the Master.