Board Thread:The Reference Desk/@comment-4138948-20131013141628/@comment-146.199.103.55-20141109011150

Well yes, she did frequently wear skirts later on...but at this point, Zoe has only been with the Doctor for 2 full serials. In The Wheel In Space, she wore the catsuit that was her uniform on the Wheel, and then in The Dominators she changed into that high-waisted, translucent dress that I can't help but love, it's quite a silly-looking dress but I feel that it just somehow looks so cute on her!

Zoe even comments at the time to Cully, that it feels "impractical". Perhaps that was her first time wearing a dress, and even then she's wearing it not because she wants to, but because she basically has to, to slip past the security unnoticed and get to a pod. So she would still be thinking to herself "But I never wear dresses!" when she suddenly and inexplicably gets turned into an Alice lookalike in the Mind Robber novel.

As to the differences between the televised serials and their novelisations, I always considered it to be that the novelisations were kind-of how the plot in the TV episodes had been MEANT to go, before re-writes and budget restrictions and special-effects limitations got in the way. After all, it would've meant an extra costume change for Zoe, and taken up more time in-story doing that segment...although they could've just cut down (or removed) the first episode with the TARDIS trapped in the white void. I never felt that that contributed much to the remaining 4 episodes anyway.