The first in a series of reference guides to Doctor Who, covering the era of the First Doctor. Amazingly in-depth, and possibly the most entertaining and well-written TV guidebook I've ever seen. (Most I've come across are 90% plot summary of all the episodes we've seen, and 10% trivia that every fan invariably already knows.) They've also written guidebooks on Buffy & Angel, so I may pick those up as well sometime down the road. ( )

I have the first four of the About Time series, the exhaustive guide to the original series of Doctor Who, and I've dipped in and out of them on occasion, usually to read an entry on a serial that I've just seen. This was my first time reading one of the books straight through, however. They're excellent guidebooks-- Doctor Who is a series with no shortage of commentary available, but the authors still manage to say a great many new things. The best bits are usually the essays explaining the "origin" of each story, placing it in its cultural context, and the sidebars on topics many and bizarre. Watching Doctor Who gradually change into something closer and closer to "real" Doctor Who is fascinating, and Wood and Miles are good at picking out all the important "firsts", from the first monster to the first time the Doctor fights evil just because it's "good". I really want to go back and rewatch the Hartnell Era now. If only I had the time.

http://nhw.livejournal.com/796625.html

The authors state firmly that they have provided "the most comprehensive, wide-ranging and at times almost shockingly detailed handbook to Doctor Who that you might ever conceivably need" and though it is a pretty large claim, I think they have succeeded. As well as description of each story, evaluation of how well it succeeded, and variably straight-faced attempts to reconcile continuity issues, there is some very good analysis of just how Doctor Who fitted into the BBC and British culture in general, and what its influences, both inward and outward, were. I should have spotted some of this - for instance, the foreshadowing of things later used in Blake's Seven in The Keys of Marinus; or the influence of J.R.R. Tolkien on The Daleks. I especially liked the embedding of long essays on specific broader topics in boxes inside the story-by-story narrative. This is a difficult trick to pull off, but they've done it well, including topics like the true history of the Daleks (twice), unpacking the classical roots of The Myth Makers, and explaining Z Cars. ( )