Dr Who book help

[Quendil]

Hi All,

I am after a Dr Who reference book for the original series up the 1990's TV movie.  Something with lots of images and episode guides. I don't mind if its ins a few volumnes.  I have been searching on Amazon, Dr Who sites and google but there are that many books out there and can't seem to find anything that matches what i want. So the question is does anyone know of such a book(s)?

Thanks

[The Dozing Dragon]

one for An Evil Giraffe methinks.

[Benny]

Cant say i know of the one book with all that you want in it. But as a story guide I recommend
Dr Who: The Television Companion. Its an official BBC guide book. It breaks down each story, mentions when each episode was first broadcast in the UK, the plot of the different stories and who played whom. It also makes notes about the changes from one Doctor, or companion to the next and some interesting notes about production and storyboarding. Each Story is also reviewed with fan thoughts being expressed by reference to fanzines relevant to the story.

As for images, most of the books i have don't go up to 8th Doctor (stop at 7th) and the movie but one i can also recommend is: Dr Who the legend. Like the Above book, but larger with lots of glossy pictures but less actual wordy content or facts. Still a great book to flick through and mine is a rare one when they classed the big finish Richard E Grant web episode Doctor as the 9th Doctor and no mention was made of new who at all. Newer Editions i have seen have lots of New Who stuff, not sure if that has affected the content of the older stuff though.

[CyberAlien312]

I don't know about a book that covers a complete episode guide of the classic series with lots of pictures, but I do know the BBC produced a series of books called Monsters and Villains, Aliens and Enemies and Creatures and Demons. It contains information (plus lots of pictures) of several villains from the new series and also of quite a lot of villains from the classic series. They don't cover all classic monsters, but the most iconic villains of the classic series are there, plus episode guides of the episodes in which those villains appeared.
I believe these books have been combined in one big book a few years ago.

Edit: These books, plus additional material, have been collected in The Ultimate Monster Guide.
http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Doctor_Who:_The_Ultimate_Monster_Guide

[Michka]

For shear information, as well as some great pictures, what you want is the three volume set that most fans refer to as the decade books. These are Doctor Who: The Sixties, Doctor Who: The Seventies and Doctor Who: The Eighties. Many fans consider the book Doctor Who: Regeneration as the unofficial Doctor Who: The Nineties. The real decade books were all written by David J. Howe, Mark Stammers, and Stephen James Walker. Regeneration was written by Gary Russell, if memory serves. These are the books I go to first when I'm doing any miniatures painting research for the classic show. (I was going to say 'series', but that's just inviting confusion.)

Oh, and you can't go wrong with a copy of the Companions book.   

[Steve F]

Dr Who: The Television Companion. Its an official BBC guide book.

A later edition was published by Telos Publications.  This is Howe-Stammers-Walker again (they run Telos).  Good on actual facts, but I disagree with a lot of the critical opinion they try to pass off as fact.

My favourite set of books discussing the original series is the About Time series published by Mad Norwegian Press, mostly written by Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood.  Particularly good at placing Doctor Who in its cultural context, they also track what each story has to say about the regular characters, human history, aliens and other planets, as well as notes on the production history (although Andrew Pixley, Doctor Who Magazine's production fact supremo reckons their fact checking is sloppy).  There are also splendid little essays - how the science in David Whiatker's stories seems to be based on Paracelsus rather than Newton and Einstein, the influence of Mod, how sexist was the programme, how do Dalek history and the dating of the UNIT stories work (or not) and so on.

A single volume alternative is The Discontinuity Guide by Paul Cornell and others.  OK on Doctor Who continuity, but the attempts to identify influences are risible (basically, the authors try to attribute everything to other cult TV programmes, comics and bits of geek culture while the writers, directors and producers were actually brought up on Stevenson, Wells, Sabatini and Hollywood) and there are pathetic attempts to find double entendres in every story.

If you can find it, grab with both hands a copy of one of the editions of The Doctor Who Chronolgy by Lance Parkin that were published by Seventh Door Fanzines, which is the best possible attempt to create a single timeline for the universe of the original series, with extensive notes explaining and arguing over Parkin's choices.  Later editions from various publishers, usually titled Ahistory try to shoehorn in all the ancillary fiction (novels etc) and then the new series, which gets too much for me.

But there are no pictures in any of these!

For picture-based guides, The Legend has the disadvantage of being really, really ugly, with every page disfigured by misuse of silver ink and muddled production design.  I thought it was so ugly, I never bought a copy (uniquely for a profesionally produced Doctor Who book to this date, so I can't comment on the text. Tastes may of course differ - see Benny's recommendation.

Like Michka, when I'm doing my original series minis, I keep on the table beside me the relevant "decade book".  I also use two sets of Doctor Who Magazine specials: "The Complete First Doctor", "the Complete Second Doctor" and so on: most of these can be found at reasonable prices on ebay (except "The Complete Sixth Doctor", which always costs a bomb, for some reason) -  "the Complete Fourth Doctor" comes in two volumes; and "In Their Own Words" which uses the Magazine's huge stock of interviews to tell the story of making the programme, divided into periods (Volume one covers 1963-1969, for example).  All of these have large numbers of well chosen photographs.  The recent Radio Times volume on "Companions" is, to my mind, better than the old Virgin Books one - more, bigger and better photographs, better reproduced, and fewer of them from the actresses' non-Who portfolios.

Avoid at all costs anything "written" (more accurately cut and pasted) by Peter Haining for Target books (aka WH Allen).  Not only is it possible that Haining never even saw the programme, but the relatively few photographs are badly chosen, oddly cropped and poorly reproduced.

one for An Evil Giraffe methinks.

Oh, right.  Well, obviously you can ignore all the above, then.

[anevilgiraffe]

 

best visual guide would be those aforemention Monsters and Villains, etc books - I have them, nice to read...

there is also a Dalek handbook which has lots of good stuff on the pepperpots and the TARDIS handbook - but both lean a bit more to the new series than I'd prefer...

and I love Ahistory, and the preceeding volume the History of the Universe... although Ahistory does try and shoehorn in new series stuff (that was about at the time, that is), it would have been better if they'd used the Time War as a clean break from that...

[Steve F]

... rare one when they classed the big finish Richard E Grant web episode Doctor as the 9th Doctor and no mention was made of new who at all...

One small correction: Big Finish made the semi-animated stories Shada (with Paul McGann) and Real Time (with Colin Baker) for the BBC website, but they had no involvement with Scream of the Shalka (with Richard E Grant).  That was made by BBCi themselves, with animation provided by Cosgrove Hall (who later did the missing episodes animation for the DVD release of "The Invasion", using the budget left over from the planne second Grant story, which was cancelled when the BBC decided to bring back the TV series).

[Quendil]

Thanks guys thats lots to look for.  I must get some more miniatures now the tardis and a few daleks won't cut it 

[fastolfrus]

there is also a Dalek handbook

There were also a couple of Dalek annuals 1964-65 that have a few useful illustrations.

One of the best options for old titles is to search on abe :
http://www.abebooks.co.uk/

but otherwise I would go to Hay on Wye for a couple of days.
There is a specialist bookshop there that just sells SF, also a children's bookshop that specialises in old annuals, plus dozens of other good bookshops

[oxiana]

No one mentioning Jean-Marc Lofficier?   

I also use two sets of Doctor Who Magazine specials: "The Complete First Doctor", "the Complete Second Doctor" and so on: most of these can be found at reasonable prices on ebay (except "The Complete Sixth Doctor", which always costs a bomb, for some reason) -  "the Complete Fourth Doctor" comes in two volumes; and "In Their Own Words" which uses the Magazine's huge stock of interviews to tell the story of making the programme, divided into periods (Volume one covers 1963-1969, for example).  All of these have large numbers of well chosen photographs.

Another vote for these. Aside from these, DWM also produced special editions covering each year of Doctor Who since it came back in 2005 (since Matt Smith took over, these have been split into several volumes). They're great resources – very picture-rich and full of information. The Eccleston special seems the priciest on eBay, but it's one of the best, and includes extras like RTD's original pitch document to the BBC to bring Doctor Who back, as well as concept sketches and other material from the design teams. Recommended.

[Steve F]

No one mentioning Jean-Marc Lofficier?  

OK, then - unreliable, but for a long time The Programme Guide and The Terrestrial Index were the only things of their kind commercially available.  Indeed, the first edition of The Programme Guide was used by John Nathan-Turner's production office as a source of reference.  They can now be considered obsolete.

The nth Doctor, about various American attempts to set up a Doctor Who production, serves only as a ghastly warning about American TV executives.

L'Officier and his wife are deeply annoying, because they are often the only English-language source for translations of or information about vintage French pop culture, but they feel free to rewrite to suit their own tastes.  They claim City of Gold and Lepers and Doctor Omega as precursors to Doc Savage and Doctor Who respectively, but the texts seem to have been (ahem) doctored in translation to build up that impression.

[oxiana]

OK, then - unreliable, but for a long time The Programme Guide and The Terrestrial Index were the only things of their kind commercially available.  Indeed, the first edition of The Programme Guide was used by John Nathan-Turner's production office as a source of reference.  They can now be considered obsolete.

Ah, Steve – 'twas but a gentle tease. I know that they're long out of date, but they were the first DW reference books I ever owned so my my inner eight year–old insisted they get a mention! 

Not sure how it fits in to the terms of this thread (it lacks illustrations, but an another absolutely lovely book is Running Through Corridors by Rob Shearman and Toby Hadoke, who wrote the 2005 episode Dalek and the stand-up comedy show Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf. It's basically a dialogue between them as they embark on a year–long DW marathon, watching and discussing every episode ever made. They've only released the first volume so far, covering the 1960s, but it's charming and full of enthusiasm and insight. It even manages to get you excited about stories like The Space Museum!

[trynda1701]

One I have that I haven't seen mentioned is "Cybermen" by David Banks.

It came out around 1988, (the same time as the 'decade' books?), and I think its a good reference for all things Cyberman up to their 'last' classic appearence in "Silver Nemesis." Good background information on the concept and development throughout the programme, and even an attempt to work out a timeline for the Cyber-race, which might not be what you thought, and will probably disagree with any other books out!

The only fault I have with it is not enough color photographs!

Mark

[Michka]

Ooh, I forgot one of my other favorite picture research books. Starlog Magazine put out a 20th Anniversary Special, timed to coincide with the Five Doctors. It's filled with lovely full color photos, including a couple set shots from The Celestial Toymaker, Marco Polo and The Abominable Snowman. In modern times of the internet and new Doctor Who reference books coming out fast and furious it's hard to understand how cool this magazine was. Especially for an American in his teens. 

Great. Now I want to paint some Doctor Who minis. This thread is dangerous.