In possibly the biggest update to the site in a single day, we’ve added to the site hundreds of stories across these collectables:
Stories added this Month (May) is now 740!
And we are over 5000 stories in total, 5149!! 
Big thanks to @SheaPM for their help with the Annuals, and @Tian for help adding more comics!
We’re nearly there guys!
Do you own any of these annuals? Discuss below!
Couldn’t wait two days to make next month easier!?
In all seriousness, wow, that’s mad, nearly 15% of the stories on the site added this month
At the moment if I’ve got time I hanker down and do it because I don’t get many chances!
I’m not even sure there are enough stories left to beat my score next month!!
Thank you for your continued work at making this one of the greatest place for Doctor Who.
It appears that you’re missing https://tardis.wiki/wiki/Dalek_Planetarium_(comic_story) from the Dalek Book (https://tardis.wiki/wiki/The_Dalek_Book). Otherwise you have everything from that on there now. From the The Dalek Outer Space Book (https://tardis.wiki/wiki/The_Dalek_Outer_Space_Book), it appears you’re missing https://tardis.wiki/wiki/Dalek_Saturn_Probe_(short_story), https://tardis.wiki/wiki/Top_Secret_(feature) and The Evolution of Planet Skaro (no tardis.wiki link). Beyond these, it appears that you’ve got everything as far as what I’d put in a spreadsheet.
Thanks, will add those!
I’ve added Dalek Planetarium, and Dalek Saturn Probe.
Top Secret is a ‘feature’, not sure I should add that? It doesn’t fit any of the categories…
And Evolution of Planet Skaro - I can’t really add anything not on TARDIS Wiki because I don’t have any information about it. Maybe later if someone has the actual book…
Tardis Wiki currently has pages for 10220 distinct, released pieces of fiction and there are more that don’t currently have pages. I don’t know if all of these would qualify for inclusion on this project, but there are pleanty of stories left.
10,000?!
I wonder what the other 5,000 are then!
It’s hard to say. I imagine a lot of comics (particuarly the older TV Comic and TV Century 21 stuff - for TV21 specifically, Tardis Wiki covers a lot of comics and short stories with varying levels of relevance to Doctor Who, from actual appearances of Daleks, to mentions of a recurring concept that happened to be introduced in another story the wiki covers). The gag comics like Doctor Who?, Nix View (currently largely lacking individual wiki pages), Doctor Whoah! and The Daft Dimension make up a few hundred but I don’t know if you want to include this type of thing. There’s also all of the fringe spin-offs and connected series. Again, I don’t know how wild you plan to go with these. Another potentially large area is the RTD-era web tie-in content. Covering this is an ongoing project on the wiki, but, of what we do cover, there are probably around 100 stories, “features” and games. For the rest, it’s hard to say. The wiki has pages on a lot of largely disconnected pieces of fiction which are hard to string into cohesive series and so are hard to quantitatively out numbers to. If you want to be completely comprehensive, your best bet would be to go through https://tardis.wiki/wiki/Category:Sources_by_decade_of_release and its subcategories - these are going to be much more complete than the wiki’s release date pages as those are updated manually. That would be a very tedious process, though.
The only ones I’ve never managed to get my hands on are the very rare Troughton ones and the pink Pertwee.
Many of them are pdfs on the DVDs.
The stories they tell are often as bizarre as TV Comic.
On Christmas Day, 1968, I received my first Doctor Who annual. It was sitting beneath the Christmas Tree waiting for me, a present from my grandparents. I still remember the cover emerging from the red and green striped wrapping paper, and being confronted with an image that would haunt me for the rest of my days…
In a TARDIS console room that has been plunged into darkness, the Doctor and Jamie prepare to face a squad of Cybermen who are breaking through the Police Box doors. This, to the only-just six year old that I was back then, was the stuff of nightmares… and what exquisite and delicious nightmares they were too. With that cover art, it was as if artist Walt Howarth had bottled the experience of visiting the Haunted House at the fair, and given it to me to own forever.
Eagerly, I flicked through the pages of the annual, looking for the story connected to that cover, only to find that there wasn’t one. It was the only disappointing thing about that book, but over the years I would concoct my own adventure to go with the cover.
Why, you might ask, did that image take such a strong and enduring hold of my imagination the way it did? Putting aside the fact that it is a beautiful and atmospheric work of art, I think it might be to do with my view of the TARDIS back then. To me, the TARDIS was the ultimate safe space. Get through its doors and slam them shut and nothing could get at you… not even my Dad. I won’t dwell on this, as, even all these decades later, it’s painful, but my father was a drunk, and a violent and abusive one at that. By the time I was six, I had already seen real life horrors far scarier than the Cybermen. Which is the reason I spent a lot of time being cared for by my grandparents. Let’s move on…
It was a white Christmas that year, and I spent long periods out in the street with my friends making snowmen and having snowball fights. Whenever I was drawn back indoors to warm up, I went straight back to The Dr Who Annual. To my six-year old self, the book was magical. Really, it was completely wonderful in every way possible. The text stories with their accompanying illustrations kept me greatly entertained while the comic-strip about the TARDIS shrinking to sub-atomic size was simply mind-blowing.
If you take the time to read the story, please don’t look at it through 21st century eyes. Try and see it through the eyes of a 1960s’s kid who’s age was still numbered in single-figures. Yes, as a grown-up you can chuckle at the dodgy science and the overly earnest message, but if so you really miss out on the magic. Actually, there was a fair bit of shrinking going on in this annual, as the Doctor and his companions were reduced in scale in two text stories, The Celestial Toyshop and The Microtron Men.
Nothing lasts forever. One day when I was in my late teens, I returned home from a trip to Blackpool (where, yes, I’d been visiting the Doctor Who exhibition), to find that my childhood home had burned down and with it all of my possessions. I was left with only the clothes I was wearing, something that provided a life-lesson that I have never forgotten. For a while I stopped collecting, well, anything. What was the point of keeping boxes of pristine Marvel and DC comics, for example, if they could simply vanish in a puff of smoke. People are more important than things, I decided, and I was right.
Except, that things can remind you of people. Hold that thought.
I did go back to collecting Sci-Fi related merchandise, but it was so gradual that I wasn’t aware of it until one day, when a friend told me that my bedroom looked like Odyssey 7, our then local Sci-Fi and Comic shop. With a wry smile, I acknowledged the truth of the matter while at the same time trying to keep my collection in its proper perspective.
Decades later, In 2023, my friend James was looking longingly at the copy of Lungbarrow sitting on my bookshelf and told me that was his ‘grail’ item of Doctor Who merchandise. “What’s yours?” he asked and I immediately answered that it was the 1969 Doctor Who annual. The funny thing was, though, I didn’t want it because of my love for Doctor Who, I wanted it because of my much stronger love for my beloved and much-missed grandparents. While I would occasionally look longingly at a copy on eBay, I had never been able to justify the silly money a good condition copy tends to go for. No, I’m not talking about the sort of money that would pay off your mortgage, but over a hundred quid for a really nice example (no torn pages, no inscriptions, no moustaches scribbled on Victoria’s upper lip by someone’s kid brother and definitely no cat-vomit). It was at this point that James asked the entirely innocent question that would come to haunt me.
Well,” said James, matter-of-factly, “Why don’t you sell your copy of ‘Lungbarrow’ and spend the money on the 1969 annual? It’s about the same amount… In fact, you might wind up with a few quid spare to buy the 1970 annual too.”
“Well, because… erm.”
That thought haunted and tormented me for a good few weeks. Should I sacrifice Lungbarrow for an annual that would mean so much more to me?
The answer was no. Instead, I sold off my collection of Watchmen comics, which I’d enjoyed greatly when they were published but now found that I had no sentimental attachment to whatsoever. After that it was just a matter of waiting for the perfect edition of the 1969 Doctor Who annual to appear on eBay, selling for a fair price and containing no cat sick.
Obviously it wasn’t the same copy that I had owned as a boy, but when the annual arrived in the post, it was like receiving a present from my Nana and Grandpa. And I swear, whenever I pick up that annual, I feel a delightful chill in the air and I can smell the snow outside - even on the warmest of summer days.
Christmas Day, 1968 is only ever a dream away.
Snowball fight anyone?
That was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever read.
Thank you for sharing.
Second that.
Love your writing style, too. @Doctor_Roo It strangely remind me of reading a magazine when I was in elementary school.
