Like the TV series and comic strips, Doctor Who books have had an unbroken run since 1973. As it is focused on continuity within the Doctor Who universe, Newapocrypha will present reviews, story guides and annotations for fiction, spin-off fiction and charity anthologies, and will touch briefly on notable works of non-fiction.

Fiction

Setting non-fiction books aside, by far the majority has been Doctor Who fiction, beginning with the first book, Armada's Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks, in 1964, which predated the Target novelizations that ran from 1973 until 1991. With Doctor Who off air, the novelizations were replaced by first the New and then the Missing Adventures, running from 1991 to 1996, and then a series of BBC Novels chronicling the Eighth Doctor Adventures and Past Doctor Adventures from 1996 until the announcement of the New Series in 2005. New Series novels have continued to be published from that time forwards, and paperback adventures for people with reading difficulties have also been published as part of the Quick Reads initiative.

Besides the mainstream fiction series there have been other experiments in Doctor Who fiction. K9 childen's books, for example, and one-off books like John Peel's Gallifrey Chronicles, David Banks' The Cybermen and Adrian Rigelsford's The Monsters. There were, briefly, a series of companion spin-offs and novelizations of the planned-but-never-produced last sixth Doctor season, and three different sets of role-playing gamebooks. There were David Bishop's Who Killed Kennedy? and some short story anthologies - Virgin's Decalogs and the BBC's Short Trips series.

Hardback fiction has also thrived in the form of the Telos novellas that ran between 2001 and 2004, and the Big Finish Short Trips series that took over where the BBC's paperback anthology series had left off in 2002 and has been in print ever since.

Spin-off Fiction

Such was the popularity of Doctor Who fiction, that obstacles such as being officially licensed have never stood in the way of continuing professional fiction set in the Doctor Who universe.

The first attempt to publish unlicensed fiction came from Adrian Rigelsford in 1995, at a time when Virgin Publishing's major competitor, Boxtree Books, were successfully publishing unofficial Doctor Who non-fiction. Like his Lost in the Dark Dimension project, Rigelsford's plans for books based on the K9, the Master, Monsters and UNIT never reached fruition, but in 1997, when their licence expired, Virgin Publishing replaced the Doctor as the lead character in their New Adventures, and Bernice Summerfield became the star of the first unofficial spin-off series until, in 1999, she and the Doctor found a new home with Big Finish Productions.

Like Virgin's writers before them, some of BBC Books' authors were similarly inclined to take their fiction away from mainstream Doctor Who. Following the abrupt conclusion of his Faction Paradox story arc with the destruction of Gallifrey in The Ancestor Cell, author Lawrence Miles repurposed the characters and situations that he created into a series of Faction Paradox Novels published by Mad Norwegian Books between 2002 and 2006.

Telos Publishing also decided that, with news that their licence was to end in 2004, they would attempt a spin-off series of their own. Based on Daniel O'Mahoney's The Cabinet of Light, and original series of Time Hunter novellas ran from 2003 until 2007.

Charity Fiction

Another less than official route for original Doctor Who fiction lay in the charity anthologies. Widespread enough to be collectible, and often containing original fiction tying in to official stories (often by or with the blessing of the individual authors), these books are often seen as the holy grail of Doctor Who fiction, unbound by the restraints of BBC approval. Anthologies of note include two Perfect Timing volumes, two The Cat that Walked Through Time volumes, two Walking in Eternity Volumes, plus Missing Pieces, Lifedeath and, due for publication in late 2007, Shelf Life.

Non-fiction

Official and unofficial non-fiction has, in some ways, been as prolific as its fictional counterpart. With a few notable exceptions, non-fiction has restricted itself to such subjects as production analysis, merchandising, series production, episode and continuity guides, science of... books and children's books.