Doctor Who: From A to ZBy Gary GillattBook review by Paul Scoones![]() This book gets my award for the most deceptively titled Doctor Who title ever (how many people go to buy it thinking it's an encyclopedia?), but it's also a strong contender for the best factual book about the series as well. Far from being a dry guide to the history to the series, Gary has selected twenty-six aspects of the series and written an essay on each. Like a magazine, these chapters are best dipped into; to read from cover to cover would be a feat, not because of the length but because Gary's packed in so much thought-provoking material that each chapter really needs to be savoured. We always talk of Sydney Newman as the creator of Doctor Who, but Gary takes a fresh look at what we know about the origins and identifies another, uncredited individual as the man who came up with most of the initial ideas. There's a very informative look at the impact and lifespan of so-called ‘Dalekmania’, revealing that by the time the BBC responded to the fad, it was already over. The long-held idea that Christopher Bidmead introduced ‘hard science’ in Season Eighteen is given a shake-up and a rather embarrassing revelation comes tumbling out. Most poignant for me is the section dealing with how Tom Baker and the fourth Doctor are the same character - something I discovered for myself in January 1997 but have never seen spelt out with such directness and clarity elsewhere. With all the Doctor Who non-fiction now on the market, it is very easy for the reader to become jaded, but for an entirely fresh and no-holds barred look at what really makes the series tick, this book is utterly indispensable and thoroughly recommended. [5/5] This item appeared in TSV 56 (October 1998). | |