About Time 6: The Unauthorized Guide to Doctor Who

About Time #6

by Tat Wood

About Time vol. 6 covers Seasons 22 to 26 of Doctor Who, focusing on the tenures of Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy, as well as the TV movie starring Paul McGann in mind-bending detail. In addition to the usual concerns such as the TV show s continuity (alien races, the Doctor s abilities, etc.) and lore (anecdotal, Did You Know?-style material), author Tat Wood will examine each Colin Baker, McCoy and McGann story in the context of the year/historical period it was produced, determining just how topical the stories were. Essays in this volume include: Is Continuity a Pointless Waste of Time?, Why are Elements so Weird in Space?, Why Do Time Lords Meet in Sequence?, Is There a Season 6B?, Did They Think We'd Buy Just Any Old Crap?, What Might the Other Season 23 Have Been Like?, Who Narrates This Programme?, How Warped was the Doctor's Mind?, How 'Good' is the Doctor?, The Valeyard, Er - How?, What's All This Stuff About Anoraks?m What are the Oddest Romances in the Programme's History?, The Semiotic Thickness of What?, When Did Susan Go to School?, What are the Gayest Things in Doctor Who, Did Cartmel Have Any Plan at All?, Could It Be Magic?, Where Does 'Canon' End?, What Were Josiah's Blasphemous Theories?, Are These 'gods' Related?, What About Season 27? and Does Paul McGann Count?

Genres: Doctor Who, Nonfiction, Reference, Tv, Essays, Criticism

416 pages, Paperback

First published December 5, 2007

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

[Arthur B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating account of a fascinating era of the show, though at points Wood allows his personal tastes to override his encyclopedic ambitions. Admittedly, it might be hard to find anyone who truly loves the TV movie, but perhaps input from someone who merely thinks it was a bit lukewarm would be more informative than a long rant from a writer who regards it as a betrayal of all that is holy. Full review: https://fakegeekboy.wordpress.com/202...

[Kieran McAndrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exhaustive and (especially in this volume) no holds barred examination of the series. The episode reviews are comprehensive, but the real value comes in the side essays.

[Don · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tat Wood flies solo for this last outing, mostly, but it's just as enjoyable as ever. After 26 seasons (and change), it's undeniable that the series lost some of its charm and magic along the way - although regaining new bits and pieces here and there - but this series of guidebooks added enormously to my appreciation of the material every time: Great stories were made better by the compelling discussion of ideas and themes, and the stories of production details and hilarious plot-hole analyses (I don't think a single story lacked a "Things That Don't Make Sense" section) make even the tedious episodes more enjoyable than they would have been on their own.

And the snark. OH, the snark. Very seldom are the authors of this series actually mean-spirited (except when discussing the current series; no love of it from them) ... but they absolutely embrace the not-so-gentle mocking and howling at those elements that truly deserve to be laughed at, or stared at with incredulous wonder. At the end of the day, though, you get the feeling that it's just another form of love for the show - loving it for its faults as much as its strengths - and in that, the rest of us can entirely agree.

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Parts of this book are hard going. For whatever reason, it's not quite as compulsively readable as some of the earlier entries in this series. Some of this may be due to the absence of Lawrence Miles as co-author. Most of it is probably due to this book's covering Doctor Who's least successful period, both artistically and commercially.

The book is rather kinder to the show's last couple of seasons than I was at the time I first saw them - I switched off in embarrassment at the rapping circus-master in "The Greatest Show in the Galaxy", and fell asleep during "Ghost Light" (probably not the story's fault, really - PBS did run them awfully late). The book has definitely made me want to go back and have a second look at some of these stories.

[Nicholas Whyte]

http://nhw.livejournal.com/1032098.html[return][return]As in previous volumes, Wood's sarcastic yet affectionate humour makes it a good read, even though it's the period of the programme's history I probably know least well. There are some brilliantly sardonic one-liners which I was regrettably unable to refrain from reading aloud to anyone who would listen. The explanatory essays are as good as ever. Slightly disappointed with the editing - there seem to be a lot more typoes than usual, and some other structural glitches as well. But any serious fan needs to get this.

[Michel Siskoid Albert · Rating 5 out of 5]

The last volume of Tat Wood and Lawrence Miles' comprehensive Doctor Who guide, this one going through Doctors 6, 7 and 8 (well, the TV movie). I love About Time despite the frequent snark and it's the main reason I haven't read much of anything in a number of weeks. These things are BIG. And now I see they're going to double the size of Volume 3, since the Pertwee era book was the first published and they hadn't yet gone insane. Good chance I'll buy it given there are new essays in it. Sigh. In the meantime, I get to read some fiction!

[Anne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Whew! At long last I'm done with my first go-around of classic Doctor Who and, at even longer last, I'm done with this wretched volume. I definitely do not recommend reading this while concurrently watching the episodes it covers - the Colin Baker years were bad enough on their own but watching them AND reading this made me want to bail on both endeavors. If I were prone to violence I'd say doing both made me want to shoot Mr. Wood so I wouldn't have to read one more bitchy entry... I definitely will not be moving on to volume seven!

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

The series ended as they began -- the best episode by episode guide to Doctor Who. And, their disappointment/disapproval of the last five seasons gets annoying. Even when they like an episode, there's always a lot of carping about "why couldn't they have done more of this". Still, they were good companions to my four year journey through the classic Doctor Who stories. Now, on to the new Doctor!

[Zachary · Rating 3 out of 5]

With respect to Tat Wood, the absence of Lawrence Miles is really felt in this volume. Worse, the McCoy era is certainly a time Miles would have an interesting perspective on. As it is, many sections are tedious in a way earlier volumes were not.