Cover Art: The VHS Years

Continuing my exploration of the world of Doctor Who cover art, I reach the VHS years. Honestly, the VHS covers hold the most nostalgia for me, far beyond the hallowed Target book paintings. I was at just the right age to treasure those video releases; they were the all-new Doctor Who episodes to a child of the wilderness years and each new cover was the equivalent of a movie poster, tantalising young eyes in their magnetism. Often, I wouldn’t see them until I unwrapped a birthday or Christmas present. I remember opening The Two Doctors on Christmas Day and thinking how wondrous it looked. Castrovalva was an Easter present (a substitute for eggs!) and Logopolis came along a little while later. (Imagine my confusion.) They were the most beautiful paintings. Here, hesitantly because there are so many I could choose from, are my Top Ten:

10: ROBOT

It seems like a simple painting, perhaps not even a particularly exciting one but it captures the optimism and charm of Robot in that Tom Baker portrait alone. It’s bright and forward-looking and Alister Pearson’s painting is, as ever, so photo-realistic it’s almost unbelievably a painting! His rendition of K1 gleams beautifully and its growth at the end of the story is implied in the cover, rather than spoilered. In its understatedness, the Robot cover is easily one of the finest.

9: THE THREE DOCTORS

I remember finding The Three Doctors in Rochdale’s TESCO. It must have been in the TV charts. I’d never seen it on the numerous occasions I’d be searching for videos in WHSmiths or HMV so it could only have been a new addition to the range. The cover stood out from the shelves: it seemed serious and weighty. To be honest, the painting is far more serious and weighty than the story itself but illustrates clearly the pure iconoclasm of the important adventure. And Omega looks terrifying and powerful in dark red.

8: THE TRIAL OF A TIME LORD

What a shame that this striking piece of art was buried inside the TARDIS tin and produced on cardboard! Alister Pearon’s portraits mirror the grandness of the story. Michael Jayston’s Valeyard points and accusing finger at the viewer, whilst Colin Baker’s Doctor looks scared but valiant. The three villains below represent excitingly the segments of the trial itself and the angry red background, complete with a matrix screen, feels dramatic and exhilarating. This is one of Pearson’s best works but it’s never talked about, probably because it was so well hidden!

7: THE MASQUE OF MANDRAGORA

It’s that man Alister Pearson again: he came up a lot when compiling this list and there were a whole handful of his covers I had to heartbreakingly demote to mere Top 20 status. His Masque cover is dominated by a backlit, eyeless, Pagan face, angry-looking but uncannily emotionless. Below, Tom Baker looks guarded and Hieronymus terrifying. With every Alister Pearson painting the likenesses must be mentioned. Here, there are four crackers. Although he perhaps only sells the period with the costumes - the helix forming the painting’s background - it’s a rich and vivid cover, selling the story far more thoroughly than the later DVD cover and even the Target book. Perhaps it’s only equalled by Pearson’s other attempt for the blue-spine Virgin reprint. Both are striking but then the VHS has that haunting, devastating face…

6: THE TOMB OF THE CYBERMEN

In 1992, The Tomb of the Cybermen burst back into our lives. I had no idea it had been missing but the cover painting sold its importance to this seven-year-old. Black and silver, it didn’t seem like any other 60s cover. The Hartnells and Troughtons were almost always light-grey, as if to reassure the buyer of their black and white archival status. Tomb looked so much more imperative, an urgent Troughton in the foreground, the Cyber-controller arms poised and ready to attack, and best of all, the two of them framed by the enormous tombs, Cybermen waking within. This was a cover that had something of the fable about it, the legend that had been The Tomb of the Cybermen writ large in black and silver.

5: RESURRECTION OF THE DALEKS

Bruno Elettori isn’t a name that has gone down in Doctor Who history but his covers for Resurrection and Dragonfire are so moody and well-lit. Whilst Dragonfire is slightly let down by the bright rays from the dragon’s eyes filling the page, Resurrection suffers no such impediment. The Davison portrait is a shadowy orange, Davros a picture in green. At the bottom, spacecraft explode and zoom away to safety and at the top, the Daleks are coming… This is a cover full, of incident, imaginatively composed and dripping in atmosphere, much like the story itself.

4: THE FIVE DOCTORS

This one had to be there : it was the first VHS I bought, and that on the strength of the cover. Looking at it now, Pertwee seems to be sporting a white afro and Davison has gone grey. Tom’s eyes are too close together and Troughton’s are almost shut. But there’s a grandness to the design that - in much the same way as The Three Doctors – mirrors the story’s importance. There may not be monsters here, but the sight of the five Doctors alone was enough to fuel this child’s imagination. Sometimes the hero, or at least five of them, is all a boy needs!

3: AN UNEARTHLY CHILD

There isn’t much to say about this totemic painting that hasn’t been said before. It is a thing of profound beauty. In one picture, it illustrates the strangeness of Doctor Who, particularly in those very earliest days, and the enigma of William Hartnell. The eponymous Susan is, for once, granted equal status to that of her grandfather and the image of the TARDIS on a barren landscape below them sums up their relationship without the need for words. But if the painting were to have a title, it’s probably be: Wanderers in the Fourth Dimension of Space and Time.

2: PLANET OF THE SPIDERS

At the last minute, the great Andrew Skilleter puts in a most welcome appearance. His illustration of Pertwee here is one of his best. The blue colour scheme is bold and complements the story itself. The composition, Metebelis 3 either side of Pertwee, the Great One below, the blue crystal central is simple and clever. I bought this from Woolworths in Blackpool, holidaying with my parents, and remember the sales assistant having trouble putting the videos in the plastic case – it seemed to take her centuries. But I didn’t care, because if there were ever a cover to thrill the curiosity of a child, it’s Andrew Skilleter’s tantalisingly effusive Planet of the Spiders.

1: THE DEADLY ASSASSIN

Easily one of the best portraits of Tom, unusually scared and desperate sans signature scarf and hat, the image marks out this cover and indeed story as something very different and very special. The skeletal Master creeping in from the left, over Tom’s shoulder, lends the cover an off-kilter nature, but the distant masked gunman in silhouette below grounds it. His weapon is no space ray gun either, it’s an earthly rifle, making the story feel unusually dangerous and realistic. This, coupled with Tom’s haunted expression, make Skilleter’s masterpiece the most unnerving, striking and vital VHS cover of the lot.

Near misses: What a shame for me not to have included any Colin Howard artwork. I loved his Key to Time covers and almost included his purple Androids of Tara. His Sylvester McCoy efforts are equally exciting: Paradise Towers and Survival are action-packed and thrilling. His Frontier in Space looks epic and his Sea Devils perfectly captures the story. Perhaps it’s that Howard’s portraits don’t quite capture the actors as sublimely as Alister Pearson but there were plenty of covers I seriously considered before settling on the Top Ten. His unused Time-Flight would have been a classic too! I’d also like to mention the bizarre illustration for Terminus which I thrilled at when finding in HMV: bright blue and with a smiling Davison, the cover nevertheless felt menacing and fresh. Finally, those aforementioned slate-grey Troughtons with their fabulous likenesses were all considered for the list: The Dominators, The Mind Robber and The War Games, as well as Hartnell’s Dalek Invasion of Earth. They really were utterly fabulous.

JH