About Time 7: The Unauthorized Guide to Doctor Who

About Time #7

by Tat Wood, Dorothy Ail (contributor)

This volume will cover the first two years of the new series. About Time Vol. 7 continues an examination of the real-world social-political context in which each Doctor Who story was made, this time focusing on Series 1 and 2 of the revamped series (2005 to 2006) starring Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant. Essays in this volume include: Why Now? Why Wales?; RT Phone Home?; Is the New Series More Xenophobic?; Why is Trinity Wells on Jackie's Telly?; He Remembers This How?; What's Happened to the Daleks?; Why Doesn't Anyone Read Any More?; Reapers - Err, What?; What's So Great About the 51st Century?; Gay Agenda? What Gay Agenda?; Does Being Made in Wales Matter?; Did He Fall or Was He Pushed?; Bad Wolf - What, How and Why?: What's a 'Story' Now?; How Long is Harriet in No. 10?; Has All the Puff 'Totally' Changed Things?; Stunt Casting: What Are the Dos and the Dont's?; The Great Powell Estate Debate; Is Arthur the Horse a Companion?; Are Credited Authors Just Hired Hands?; How Many Cyber-Races Are There?; and more.

Genres: Doctor Who, Nonfiction

450 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Tat Wood is co-writer (with Lawrence Miles) of the About Time episode guides to the television series Doctor Who. This book series, begun in 2004, emphasises the importance of understanding the series in the context of British politics, culture and science. Volume Six is entirely Wood's work.

Wood has also written for Doctor Who Magazine. In a 1993 edition of "Dreamwatch", he wrote a piece entitled "Hai! Anxiety", in which the Jon Pertwee era of the series was — unusually for the time — held up to sustained criticism.

In addition to this he has written features for various magazines, on subjects as diverse as Crop Circles, Art Fraud, the problems of adapting Children's novels for television and the Piltdown Hoax.

He is also active in Doctor Who fandom, notably as editor of the fanzines Spectrox and Yak Butter Sandwich and Spaceball Ricochet, which mixes academic observations with irreverent humour and visual bricolage. Some of his fan writing was included in the anthology Licence Denied, published in 1997.

For most of 2005 he was the public relations face of the Bangladeshi Women's Society, a charity based in Leyton, East London, and managed to keep his work running a supplementary school separate from his writing.

Reviews

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 5 out of 5]

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2230815.html[return][return]As I had hoped, this is an in depth and critical look at the first two years of New Who, the time of Rose Tyler as a regular companion. It's the seventh volume of the superlative About Time series, and it's difficult to imagine anyone producing a better survey of the period. (Phil Sandifer's book on this, when it comes out, will also be on the must-have shelf, but he is pursuing a different intellectual project and anyway his chapters are usually shorter.)[return][return]For each episode, as before, there are substantial sections on continuity (fitting in what we are told into what we know from other Who stories and 'real' history), analysis and the production process. This last is the biggest improvement from previous volumes; About Time 7 has practically a day-by-day breakdown of production (Eccleston's first scene, filmed on 18 July 2004, was chasing the pig down the corridor in Aliens of London; his last was on 5 March 2005, as he steps into the TARDIS in The Parting of the Ways). The sections on guest stars are consistently more informative than in previous volumes as well, probably because there are a lot more of them. The sections on popular culture sources for the stories remain as interesting as ever. [return][return]Wood is consistently upbeat about the lead actors, particularly about Billie Piper, who of course was known mainly as a teen pop singer before 2005. His snark, however, is fully unleashed for the plotting and sometimes the directing of individual episodes - the "Things That Don't Make Sense" section, which has always been an attractive feature of the AboutTime series, reaches new lengths and depths here. As he points out, although Series Two was a huge hit at the time, there's an awful lot of plot nonsense in it, and the real difference is that the series had a bigger budget than it had ever had or would ever have again.[return][return]This volume doesn't have the strongest accompanying essays of the series (for those, you want the second edition of Volume 3), but they are still satisfactory enough. Probably the two most interesting are "Was Series Two Meant To Be Like This?", which speculates about original plans for the 2006 episodes, including Stephen Fry's unmade story, and "Did He Fall Or Was He Pushed?", looking at the various accounts given of Eccleston's departure and tryng to find the overall picture - the evidence pointing to his not having firmly signed on for more than a year in the first place, and then a series of circumstances and incidents which all pushed against renewal of his contract.[return][return]Though this is Volume 7 of the ongoing About Time series of books about Doctor Who, those who started with New Who can jump in here. It is strongly hinted that Volume 8, which will cover the rest of the Tennant era, as well as Torchwood and Sarah Jane, is already written - at the rate this volume goes, about 16 pages for each episode, I suspect that may appear in two pieces - and that a projected Volume 9 will cover the Matt Smith era. Anyway, it's well worth getting, not just for Who fans but generally for fans of 21st century sf television. [return][return]Standar formatting gripe - 90 endnotes? Seriously? Why can't we have footnotes, which actually put the interesting nuggets next to the text they illuminate?

[Zane Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first of this series that I've picked up. I was blown away with just how in-depth it got, and how planned-out it is, with promises of essays for episodes that must be about four volumes away. The factual recap parts are nice (and would probably help anyone seeking to write DW stories or analyses of their own) but I enjoyed the critiques and behind-the-scenes context the most. I always thought of Davies' DW to be on the apolitical, light-hearted side, but reading About Time 7 really opened my eyes to just how rooted in contemporary Britain the show was.

It's also really amusing to read this as somebody who's probably younger than the expected demographic. Never thought I'd read "natch" again in a million years, or the assertion that the British Chris Evans is more well-known than the American one.

I'll probably get the rest of this series sometime soon, especially the succeeding volumes, but I might go digital for those. The formatting, with essays interspersed with the entries (which probably is the best way to go about this) and the endnotes not telling you which page they correspond to, interfered with the readability of the book personally.

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first volume that I've read, although I do have all of the others. I'd struggle to just read this, without another book on the go, it's fine to dip in and out of, being a deep dive into each individual episode it can get quite dry. The reviews are obviously personal opinion to the author, so I didn't always agree with his criticisms, other bits are things I've never picked up on or not thought about and I appreciated the putting in of the context of the televisual, and beyond, landscape at the time. Ultimately though, this tended to get a bit too bogged down on picking up on niggling things, that I personally don't really care about. Some of the essays were far too focussed on minutiae of trying to rationalise or explain Who's long history, and again I just don't care that the UNIT timing (for example) is completely messed up. I'll still look forward to reading further volumes in the series, but may start skipping some of the essays.

[Arthur B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent enough, but Dorothy Ail's voice isn't loud enough yet to overcome the sense that Wood regards the revived show as fundamentally illegitimate. Full review: https://fakegeekboy.wordpress.com/202...

[Michel Siskoid Albert · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been nursing About Time 7 for months, but when I stopped reading while walking to work, it just slowed things down. The latest volume in a series of critical (and unauthorized) guides to Doctor Who, it covers Series 1 and 2 of the new series in some 460 dense pages. The first six volumes were often dismissive of the new series, so there was some concern volume 7 would have too strong a bias to be useful, but Lawrence Miles' absence, letting Tat Wood author it alone, has produced a more balanced approach. There are differences with the previous books, of course, including a sort of glossary of British terms and references explained for international audiences, and production notes that - thanks to the way information has been disseminated about the new series through Confidential, etc. - are much more or a play-by-play of shooting schedules than pure anecdote. Perhaps too many of the essays are about the outside world (as opposed to continuity) - fandom, public opinion, Wales, the making of programs, and so on - which aren't my favorites, but still some strong one on the implications of the Bad Wolf, making sense of the in-story political landscape, how TARDIS translation works and the Cyber-races. I'm ready for the next one, Norwegian Press!

[Jessica Nelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

About Time: The Unauthorized Guide to Doctor Who is a series of books devoted to dissecting Doctor Who. The series began in 2004 with the very first seasons of the Doctor Who series, and is a work in progress that will presumably continue for the duration of the show. Although the books are also mentioned from time to time, the About Time series concentrates most heavily on the televised series and movies. This review focuses on the seventh volume, Series 1 & 2, aired in 2005 and 2006.

Tat Wood has worked on the About Time series since its inception, formerly as a co-author but currently as its sole author, although Dorothy Ail has made “contributions” as well. Wood has previously written for Doctor Who Magazine, and has been editor for fanzines Spectrox, Yak Butter Sandwich, and Spaceball Ricochet.

About Time 7 is an encyclopedic work containing an entry for each episode of Doctor Who Series 1 & 2, 2005-2006. Each entry delivers...

Read the full review on AllwaysUnmended at http://allwaysunmended.com/2013/09/09...

[Oscar · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really interesting and thorough good to the first two series of the new Doctor Who. The book goes in depth through each episode, breaking it up into things like Firsts and Lasts, Critique, Production, and more, not skimping on any of them. Perhaps my favourite is the Things That Don't Make Sense section.

But even more than the main bulk of the book I like the accompanying essays, which are very well written and about interesting topics, from funny ones like Is Arthur the Horse a Companion? (which while funny is very well written) to Was Series Two Supposed to be like this?

I feel like I learnt a lot from this book, and I also felt like it helped stimulate me into thinking about interesting aspects of the show myself, as most issues raised aren't definitively answered if there's no objective one - while the critiques are somewhat opinionated there's a generally fair and neutral tone throughout.

It's a chunky book too, and often quite moreish (though I did take quote a long break eventually). You can just as easily read through it on all on its own, or a section at a time along with a rewatch of the series. I'd recommend this to any fan of the new Doctor Who series.

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I certainly don't agree with every opinion in this volume (and Tat Wood's vendetta against "The Impossible Planet"/"The Satan Pit" alternates between ridiculous & hilarious), but it's a book that is drug-like in its addictiveness. The entire "About Time" series is an amazing analytical achievement, and this volume was, perhaps, the most anticipated of them all. It was certainly worth the wait...and it was worth staying up half the night to devour it.

[Merric Blackman · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the strangest things about "About Time 7" is that you get the feeling that whoever was writing the critiques of the episodes didn't actually like the show very much. The book is a wonderful resource on the lore and context of each episode of the 2005 revival of Doctor Who, but it often feels mean-spirited.

[Philip Boyes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Indispensable as ever, but they're not half as much fun to read since Lawrence Miles stopped.