By what name is the planet Xxbrmm now known?

By what name is the planet Xxbrmm now known?

We've already done a video going through a box of assorted Target books, but there's all sorts of stuff in our collection with rather vaguer connections to 'Doctor Who', some of which we haven't even read after owning it for more than 20 years...

Last night's video demonstrated this quite well, with a variety of books that range from a copy of 'The Discontinuity Guide' that has had its innards repaired with Sellotape, to a pristine 'Peter Davison's Book Of Alien Planets' that has seemingly never been held in our hands.

The latter is one of those books you really only picked up thanks to Mr Davison's beaming face featuring on the cover. The one paragraph introduction doesn't offer any insight into the reason for the choice of stories, other than the fact that Peter likes them. But it's as good an excuse as any to introduce kids to the work of people such as Ray Bradbury and Arthur C Clarke, I suppose.

'Doctor Who : The Script Of The FIlm' is at least amusing for that photo of Paul McGann allegedly standing on a box to make him look taller (at least according to Sylvester McCoy) and differs from the final broadcast version here and there, giving the opening lines to the Master instead.

We've got chunky Solo-Play Adventure Game books from America with some equally-chunky Daleks on the cover. There are 'Blake's 7' novelisations (From the publishers of 'Star Wars' crows the blurb that is probably trying a little too hard) for which the artist has clearly never seen a Liberator gun properly. And 'The Companions Of Doctor Who' series seems to launch Turlough's giant face into the firmament, hovering close to a space station that might have wandered off the set of 'Star Trek - The Voyage Home'. Come to think of it, that space ship looks a trifle familiar, too...

And let us not forget what might be termed Activity Books. I was pleased to see I'd at least managed to fill in some of 'The Doctor Who Crossword Book', but cannot condone attempting to full in the blanks whilst caught in a traffic jam, as suggested on the back.

Sometimes, though, it's the real oddities that stick in your mind. 'Doctor Who : Brain Teasers And Mind Benders' is the rather unwieldy name of a 128-page volume of trivia questions and word searches. This book can even provide you with a rating of your 'Doctor Who' knowledge, with a score out of 35. (Woe betide you if you score 15 or under as "you obviously don't know that much about 'Doctor Who' yet". Report immediately to John Nathan-Turner's office where he will give you some lines! )

Some of the answers seem very out-of-date these days : 'The Ambassadors Of Death' is the Odd-One-Out as "all the others have been turned into Target books". This may have been true in 1984, but how times change, eh?

We still haven't covered 'Travel Without The TARDIS', I know, but that one deserves a starring role. Once I can find it again, that is...

PS: It's Argolis.

(By Andrew Trowbridge)