Doctor Who Annual 1986 was the twentieth and final Doctor Who annual published by World Distributors. It was released on September 1985.
Overview
- Release Number 20
- Publisher World Distributors
- Released in September 1985
- Priced £3.25
- Format Hardback 64 pages
- Featured Doctor: The Sixth Doctor
- Featured Companions: Peri
- Featured Enemies: The Master
Contents
Text stories
- The Fellowship of Quan
- Time Wake
- Interface
- Beauty and the Beast
- Retribution
- Davarrk's Experiment
- The Radio Waves
Features
- `Behind the Scenes at Doctor Who: Make-Up` interview with Dorka Nieradzik by Brenda Aspley
Additional notes
- Unusually, at the expense of new content, this annual featured three full-page colour publicity shots of the Sixth Doctor taken at his costume launch, showing him with the TARDIS, fishing and with a multi-coloured umbrella (hastily provided to protect the costume from rain during the photocall).
- The author of five of the prose stories (Interface, Davarrk's Experiment, The Fellowship of Quan, Time Wake and Retribution) was John D White, who loved the annuals as a kid and, when he was older, knew he wanted to write for them.[source needed]
- This was to be the last of the regular annuals published by World Distributors.
- Both John Nathan-Turner and the publishers, World Distributors, had become increasingly frustrated with each other, along with the show's 18-month hiatus (resulting in no new Doctor Who on television) and a reported decline in sales the previous year. The decision was reached that the license to publish the Doctor Who Annual would not be renewed.
- World Distributors did publish a further bumper sized volume (entitled Doctor Who Special: Journey Through Time), which featured reprinted pages from previous annuals and The Amazing World of Doctor Who book. This was similar to their earlier Adventures in Time and Space volume.
- It was to be many years before there was another Doctor Who annual. It was not published by World Distributors.
- For five of the in-between years (1991-1995) Marvel UK (publishers of Doctor Who Magazine) published a regular Doctor Who Yearbook which followed a format similar to the annuals, offering a mix of text stories, comic strip stories and features. These were significantly different from annuals in one respect. They did not review the year in question. Instead, they offered a mix of stories from every Doctor's era.
