First off, apologies for the ads at the top of the page, they were discreetly at the bottom but seem to live up there now... Doctor Who fans are a creative bunch, and you can find many websites featuring fan-created book and video covers of the original stories. I think, however, you will find this particular site a little bit different. It features galleries of book covers for stories that haven't been written! With me so far? Earlier this year, I created a book cover for a Second Doctor story that has been germinating for a while, and before long I was thinking, "Oh, wouldn't that make a great cover..." until I'd built up the archive you can now see on the pages listed below.

I've never been much good at writing stories, especially complex, full-length ones, but like every fanboy I've played Fantasy Doctor Who, imagining particular Doctor/companion combos in particular historical or futuristic settings, or creating my own multi-Doctor scenarios. A few of these designs have inspired me to maybe develop the ideas, but mostly they're exercises in atmosphere and genre which I think capture different elements of the series we know and love. There's a few fanwanky covers that I did purely because they would never in a million years get seriously commissioned, and one or two are just plain spoofs.

For some Doctors, inspiration came easier than others. I love the Third Doctor, and Barry Letts' era of CSO kuh-razy-ness is synonymous with early '70s pop culture, which led to a few spoof crossover covers as well as some more 'authentic' ones; and I grew up with the Fifth Doctor and his dysfunctional bunch of time-travelling brats, so had no problem envisaging them in various settings. For some of the other Doctors, the covers are a bit more generic - fortunately William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton have such strong faces that they always make for a powerful image.

The continuity placements for each cover are in the style until recently used on the back covers of the novels, and are mostly arbitrary and in some cases tongue-in-cheek, which will either amuse or annoy depending on how you feel about the comic strips and annuals being treated as 'canon' (who cares, it's just a bit of fun!)

I hope that you will enjoy looking at these covers. Feel free to email me at gallifreyan@btinternet.com to tell me which ones are your favourites, or if you would like me to create a cover for any fan-fic of your own! Alternately you can leave a message on my Guestbook - click the link at the bottom of this page. Sorry about the popup windows!

UPDATES

New covers added

Happy new year! Added Big Finish-style complimentary covers for TO THE DALEKS A DAUGHTER, ART DECADE, AFRICAN NIGHT FLIGHT, and RAAGA.

A bonanza of covers - happy fortieth anniversary! MARTIAL LAW, DEAD RINGERS, SYNTHESPIANS and NIGHTMARE IN GREEN added 22nd November 2003

THE QUALITY OF MERCY added 28th October 2003

DIABOLUS EX MACHINA, SAD SONG, THE BLACK ISLAND and THE VAMPIRE MUTATIONS added week ending 25th October 2003

As I've continued to do these covers, I've learnt quite a bit about composition and the technical side. I normally use Adobe Photoshop on my iMac, but as that's been in mothballs, these covers were made using Corel PhotoHouse, which is a bit more rudimentary, and some of the earlier designs are a bit rough around the edges as Corel doesn't have quite as many funky extra bits as Photoshop, but I think some of the later designs are more proficient as I've gone on to learn to work around Corel's limitations. The background images were sourced from various sites around the internet (thank goodness for Google image search) - too many to credit, but as this is for fun only, I don't think I'm in breach of any copyright. Most of the pictures of Doctors, companions, and soforth were obtained from Doctor Who Image Archive, Steve Preston's DoctorWho Picture Gallery, Tragical History Tour and Enduring Image

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