Random Doctor Who Picture
Aug. 27th, 2022 05:36 pm
One of the advantages, as a child, of a birthday in late November was that one tended to get hot-of-the-presses anniversary stuff for Doctor Who as gifts. I recall the excitement of receiving this book. It wasn't the first book about the history of Doctor Who, but it certainly one of the earlier examples of a genre of books that there are now a lot of. Its high production values, with a hard cover, plenty of photos (some of which were in colour!) made it really special.
Of course, today, it seems fairly simplistic, but its probably hard to over-estimate how influential it was to how a lot of people my age understand the history of the show.
Random Doctor Who Picture
May. 26th, 2018 01:36 pm
Nigel Robinson, I have learned since joining LJ, got his start in publishing with a Tolkien Quiz Book in which enterprise he was aided and abetted by
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Travel without the Tardis
Jan. 27th, 2018 01:47 pm
I'm not sure if this is the first of the Doctor Who location guides to get written, but it was certainly the first I came across. A novelty in the 1980s Who fandom landscape as I experienced it for being written a) by Americans and b) by women. "It is quite acceptable," they note, "for porters, newspaper vendors, and bus and train conductors to call a strange person of the opposite sex `Love (Luv),' 'Duck,' 'Dearie,' or even 'Darling'." (which is true, at least in some parts of the country, but I suspect a lot more visible to a female traveller than a male traveller in the 1980s).
The section of the book on British Terminology, as well as containing all the standard items, lists a definition for Underlinen (I'm sure this is the only place, outside a Victorian novel, I've come across this term in the wild - and why on Earth were they discussing their underwear with people (possibly I shouldn't ask)?). There is also a discourse on the difference between British and American bacon which caused me to look this up. The Internet tells me that British bacon is served in round slices, a claim I find odd. I get the impression that American bacon is what we would call crispy bacon, but it's all bacon. "Don't try to order a BLT," they warn but don't elaborate whether this is because of the strangeness of the bacon or that the term was a mystery to 1980s Britain.
Their packing list advises that the traveller bring a clothes line and toilet paper (! even in the 1980s I don't think the UK was so primitive that one did not generally find toilet paper in most toilets) and how long (and where) were they staying that they thought a clothes line would be necessary?
It's an odd book, half being a quick travellers guide to the UK (plus Paris, Seville, Amsterdam and Lanzarote) and half being a brief guide to Dr Who filming locations with particular emphasis on how to get to them. It was fascinating at the time and remains so.
Perfect Timing 2
Sep. 23rd, 2017 04:15 pm
I had cause to pull this off the shelf the other day in order to write a Tides of Time article. I'm sure Perfect Timing wasn't the first Dr Who charity fanfiction anthology but it was the first of a new wave that started during the "wilderness years" when the line between fan and professional Dr Who fiction was particularly blurred. Perfect Timing 2, obviously, was its follow up and charity fanfiction anthologies, as far as I can tell, have continued to be published on a regular basis ever since.
The Making of Doctor Who
Jul. 1st, 2017 09:42 pm
It is difficult to explain how incredibly amazing this book was when I first randomly purchased it from The Children's Book Shop on Oxford's Broad Street circa 1980. The truly incredible part about it was that it contained summaries of every Doctor Who story up to Sarah's departure in The Hand of Fear. I spent hours pouring over those summaries which were the only real access one had to information about those episodes though the book recommends to the reader, at the end, the range of Target novelisations of which there were "27 in print and more in preparation".
Cover of Search for the Doctor (1986)
Oct. 8th, 2016 06:04 pm
Given how studiously Doctor Who, the show, has avoided giving us child companions, it is always a little jarring when a piece of spin-off media chooses to do so. Though, in the case of a choose your own adventure book, you can see why it might have been tempting, even if it does make your assumptions about your audience pretty explicit.