TV Show Novelizations

[Megotastrophe]

I have known about the Blish STTOS episode novelizations since I started reading the early seventies. The early eighties I discovered the Alan Dean Foster novelizations of the STTAS episodes. Just recently I picked up the Planet of the Apes TV series novelizations Volume 3 at Dollar Tree and I didn’t know these had ever occurred. I got to wondering if other TV shows had episode novelizations as well. I don’t mean novels based on the series. I have seen plenty of those over the years.

[Nostalgiabuff]

i could be wrong, but i think there were some Space 1999 ones and maybe Buck Rogers

[Bruce Banner]

Battlestar Galactica had quite a few episode novelizations.

And the Doctor Who novelizations from Target Books were numerous over the decades.

[sprytel]

Yes, the classic BSG had novelizations that I loved as a kid. I picked up like 30 of them dirt cheap at a used bookstore.

[Megotastrophe]

Dr Who yes but weren’t the BSG books novels based on the series and not text versions of the episodes? Like the thousands of trek novels that clog the used book stores?

[B-Lister]

I was gonna mention Quantum Leap, but don't think they were episode translations.

I think there was a push in the early 90s for the spin off novels to be original stories, as opposed to episode adaptations, though the first DS9 novel is an adaptation of the series premiere/pilot.

[apes3978]

"Kung Fu" (the original David Carradine version) had novelizations.

In line with what Megotastrophe mentioned, the "Return to the Planet of the Apes" animated series had novelizations of some of their episodes.

"Alien-Nation" had novelizations as well.

[Bruce Banner]

Dr Who yes but weren’t the BSG books novels based on the series and not text versions of the episodes? Like the thousands of trek novels that clog the used book stores?

The majority of the Galactica books were direct novelizations of episodes, while only the last few were original stories.

Some of the novelizations changed the titles of the episodes, for example 'The Gun on Ice Planet Zero' was novelized as 'The Cylon Death Machine', and 'Lost Planet of the Gods' was novelized as 'The Tombs of Kobol'.

[Megotastrophe]

I guess I just only saw the ones that were original novels. I’m not really into collecting them in physical form but it still fascinates me what we settled for before we had vcrs and dvds and streaming media.