The Smugglers

Target novelisation Doctor Who - The Smugglers

Author	Terrance Dicks
Published	1988
ISBN	0 426 20328 3
First Edition Cover	Alistair Pearson

Back cover blurb: A 17th century Cornish town - villainous pirates roam the seas searching for treasure while the townspeople have turned to smuggling, wheeling and dealing in contraband. Into this wild and remote place the TARDIS materialises and the Doctor and his companions find themselves caught up in the dubious activities of the locals. When the Doctor is unwittingly given a clue to the whereabouts of the treasure the pirates are determined to extract the information - whatever the cost...

• Dicks & The Smugglers by Matthew Kresal

Dicks & The Smugglers by Matthew Kresal 11/11/25

In a time before their audios were widely available, the only way to experience missing Doctor Who serials from the 1960s was in prose. The Target novelizations, that long-running literary foundation for the series, offered numerous examples of that across its run. Coming later on (and being the fifth-from-last First Doctor novelization) was The Smugglers, with Terrance Dicks adapting Brian Hayles's 1966 scripts into prose.

The Smugglers isn't a Doctor Who serial one hears mentioned very often. Even among the wiped serials of 1960s Doctor Who, it's pretty obscure. Reading the novelization, having never heard the audio or watched any of the reconstructions, it isn't hard to understand why that is. Because, honestly, it's a run-of-the-mill, fairly bland pirate story. Like Black Orchid nearly more than 15 years later, it feels like something written for another series that was reworked for Doctor Who. The lack of a sizable historical tie-in or figure being the thing that makes it stand out like a sore thumb among other 1960s Doctor Who historicals.

And what of Dicks's prose? Longtime readers will know that it so often came in one of two different varieties: scripts essentially copy-and-pasted onto the page with the odd "X said" with quick description or, when time allowed, a more thought-out approach that often showcased his pulp-writing heritage. The Smugglers falls somewhere between those two with dialogue scenes playing toward the former but the odd set-piece (including the action-packed final chapters) leaning toward the latter. There's also some unfortunate description of the character of Jamaica that, given he was already a stereotype already, feels downright out of place given the novelization was written in the late 1980s.

The Smugglers as a novelization is, much like its TV counterpart it seems, non-essential except for completionists' sake. There are certainly worse ways to pass a little time with a thin volume in one's hand. Especially if you're a Doctor Who fan, though why else would you read this?

However, that Alister Pearson cover art is rather nice, isn't it?