“It’s always different. The library goes on forever.”
— Little Girl, “Silence in the Library”
You’re reading a book about Doctor Who right now. And you know what? There are even more books about Doctor Who to read. Because the great thing about Doctor Who is that it has really smart fans who want to know everything about their favourite show. And so they’ve written a great deal about it, or recorded things worth knowing. Here are just a few of them.
For the past three books, we’ve been telling you that the best books to read on the Classic Series include David J. Howe, Mark Stammers and Stephen James Walker’s Doctor Who: The Sixties (Virgin Publishing, 1992), Doctor Who: The Seventies (Virgin Publishing, 1994) and Doctor Who: The Eighties (Virgin Publishing, 1996), alongside Philip Segal and Gary Russell’s book about the making of the 1996 TV Movie, Doctor Who: Regeneration (HarperCollins, 2000). They still are. Howe, Stammers and Walker’s books on the making of the Classic Series by decade have a staggering amount of archival research and interviews. Regeneration is a remarkably detailed recounting of the six-year odyssey to put the TV Movie onscreen. Sadly, all these books are out of print, but they’re still available on eBay or AbeBooks.com.
Have you ever heard of VAM? Value Added Material is what makes the Doctor Who Classic Series DVD range so incredible. Just about every DVD has some sort of a making-of featurette, along with commentaries (text and audio) and a wealth of information. Oh, and they have the actual stories to watch as well!
As you can tell, the missing episodes are a big part of 1960s Who. If you want to better understand how these episodes went missing and how they’re being found, we’d highly recommend Richard Molesworth’s Wiped! Doctor Who’s Missing Episodes (Telos Publishing, revised 2012). While the recent discoveries of “The Enemy of the World” and “The Web of Fear” are absent, it’s still an unputdownable book for geeks interested in how these miraculous recoveries of lost 1960s episodes were made.
One of the best books to come out of Doctor Who’s fiftieth anniversary was The Doctor Who Vault: Treasures From the First 50 Years by Marcus Hearn (Harper Design, 2013), which collects a treasure trove of photos, documents and details from behind the scenes of Doctor Who over the past five decades.
One of the finest documentaries on how the Modern Series came together is “The Unquiet Dead,” a documentary that is (oddly) on the special edition DVD for “The Green Death.” In it, Jane Tranter, Russell T Davies and other key people explain how Doctor Who began the process of returning to our screens back in the dark days of 2003 …
One of the best glimpses into making New Who has to be Doctor Who: The Writer’s Tale (BBC Books, 2008) and its semi-sequel Doctor Who: The Writer’s Tale — The Final Chapter (BBC Books 2010) by Russell T Davies and Doctor Who Magazine contributor Benjamin Cook. It’s a series of detailed emails between Davies and Cook that tracks the making of Series Four (and, in the sequel, the final David Tennant specials) from its earliest concepts through to production. Included are scripts-in-progress for several episodes; the discussion about them is a master class in TV script-writing.
An event every season is reading Andrew Pixley’s in-depth companion volumes, which are published by Doctor Who Magazine. Pixley is Doctor Who’s most eminent historian, and you can see his brilliance at making all the behind-the-scenes details eminently fascinating.
If the fictional universe is more your thing, your best bet is still Doctor Who: The Encyclopedia by Gary Russell (BBC Books, 2011), which captures just about everything ever mentioned in Doctor Who; it’s been updated for the iPad. We’re also huge fans of the recent The Official Quotable Doctor Who by Cavan Scott (Harper Design, 2014), which has a wealth of great zingers from the series, and Doctor Who: The Doctor’s Lives and Times by James Goss and Steve Tribe (Harper Design, 2013), which deftly mixes fiction and non-fiction to provide a lively tour through the Doctor’s 50-year career.
We’re deeply indebted to Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping’s Doctor Who: The Discontinuity Guide (Virgin Publishing, 1994; reprinted by Gollancz, 2013), which includes thoughtful and irreverent analysis and reviews of all the Classic Series stories. It was hugely influential to us as authors. For a long time, the beloved standard of episode guides for the Classic Series was The Programme Guide by Jean-Marc Lofficier (Target Books, 1981), sadly out of print but worth looking for on eBay. The Modern Series is well represented by Shaun Lyon’s Back to the Vortex (Telos Publishing, 2005) and Who Is The Doctor: A Guide to Doctor Who — The New Series (ECW Press, 2012), which provides reviews for the first six seasons of New Who, written by some guys named Burk and Smith? (We followed it up with a book called Who’s 50: The 50 Doctor Who Stories to Watch Before You Die.)
Shannon Patrick Sullivan’s site A Brief History of Time (Travel) (shannonsullivan.com/drwho) continues to be the best source of history on the Classic Series by story. The Doctor Who News Page (doctorwhonews.com) continues to be essential for up-to-date news on what’s happening in the world of Who.
For a great read about gender politics in Who, look no further than Chicks Unravel Time: Women Journey Through Every Season of Doctor Who, edited by Deborah Stanish and L.M. Myles (Mad Norwegian Press, 2012), which features essays by women about every season of the show.
The co-author with the question mark has edited a series of books where every Doctor Who story is reviewed by different fans. The first volume, Outside In: 160 New Perspectives on 160 Classic Doctor Who Stories by 160 Writers (ATB Publishing, 2012), does exactly what it says in the title. The same is true for its sequel, Outside In 2: 125 Unique Perspectives on 125 Modern Doctor Who Stories by 125 Writers (ATB Publishing, 2015).
Three and a half decades after starting as a Marvel comic, Doctor Who Magazine has turned into the best source for Doctor Who news. Published 14 times a year, it delivers brilliantly written behind-the-scenes features and interviews, as well as intensively researched pieces on Doctor Who’s rich history. Plus, it features a regular column by the executive producer, which is always entertaining.
Podcasting is increasingly becoming the thing that fans do to discuss and build communities around Doctor Who. There are so many Who podcasts to choose from that we couldn’t name them all, but we’ll recommend four: Radio Free Skaro (radiofreeskaro.com) is the most popular Doctor Who podcast and for good reason: every episode is full of lively and quirky discussion you want to argue with while listening to it. The Verity! podcast (veritypodcast.wordpress.com) was one of the first all-women Doctor Who podcasts; it’s also the smartest, and it offers a thoughtful cross-section of the diaspora of Doctor Who fandom. We also recommend Two-Minute Time Lord (twominutetimelord.com), which (mostly) does what it says, providing always-fascinating commentary in a short amount of time. And, finally, we recommend Reality Bomb (realitybombpodcast.com), which is a magazine-style show that’s more like current-affairs radio. Admittedly, it’s hosted by that Graeme Burk guy, so we’re a little biased …
Meeting up with Doctor Who fans either online, in print or in person is always a great thing to do. Online, we recommend Gallifrey Base (gallifreybase.com) for discussion forums and The Doctor Who Ratings Guide (pagefillers.com/dwrg, edited by that question-mark guy) for reviews. In terms of conventions, we love Gallifrey One in Los Angeles in February (gallifreyone.com), Console Room in Minneapolis in May (console-room.mpls.cx) and Chicago TARDIS in November (chicagotardis.com).
If you’re looking for fan community in Canada, there’s the Doctor Who Society of Canada (doctorwhosociety.com), which has fantastic social events and a great community. The Doctor Who Information Network (dwin.org), also based in Canada, is North America’s oldest and largest Doctor Who fan club. They too have social events (often hosted by Who Party Toronto; whopartytoronto.org) as well as a fanzine, Enlightenment, to which each of this book’s co-authors contributes.