About Time 4: The Unauthorized Guide to Doctor Who

About Time #4

by Tat Wood, Lawrence Miles

Constituting the largest reference work on "Doctor Who" ever written, the six-volume "About Time" strives to become the ultimate reference guide to the world's longest-running science fiction program. Written by Lawrence Miles ("Faction Paradox") and long-time sci-fi commentator Tat Wood, "About Time" focuses on the continuity of "Doctor Who" (its characters, alien races and the like), but also examines the show as a work of social commentary. In particular, Miles and Wood dissect the politics and social issues that shaped the show during its unprecedented 26-year run (from 1963 to 1989), detailing how the issues of the day influenced this series. As part of this grand opus, About Time 4 examines "Doctor Who" Seasons 12 to 17 (1975 to 1979)-starring Tom Baker, the actor who popularized the show in America. Among other things, About Time 4 examines how the show's "Gothic horror" phase and its aftermath, plus answers such vitally important "Who" questions as "Where (and When) is Gallifrey?" and "Why Couldn't the BBC Just Have Spent More Money?"

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

328 pages, Paperback

First published December 30, 2004

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]

http://nhw.livejournal.com/917754.html[return][return]I loved the first two books in this series, but felt it would be difficult for the same quality to be kept up for all volumes. This one, covering six of the seven Tom Baker years as Doctor Who, is, frankly, squashed, with fewer than nine pages on average for each story covered, compared to eleven-ish per story for the first two volumes. (Though in pages per episode broadcast it comes out better, at 2.2 which is the same as Vol 1 and a shade more than Vol 2.)[return][return]I can forgive it. What's been cut is the back-stage gossip about the relations between and among the production team and the cast, with enough left in to make it very annoying that you don't get more; but I felt that the book is as good as the others in the series at looking at the roots of the stories covered, and impassioned in its assessment of the dramatic impact of the programme as broadcast.[return][return]Also, it is my favourite period of Doctor Who. This is when I was watching it most assiduously when first broadcast (the second episode of Revenge of the Cybermen was shown on my eighth birthday), and also, frankly, I think it includes a disproportionate number of the truly great stories of Old Who. The Doctor Who Dynamic Ratings Site agrees, with five of its top six Old Who stories dating from this era (The Talons of Weng-Chiang, Genesis of the Daleks, City of Death, Pyramids of Mars and The Deadly Assassin, with The Robots of Death, The Seeds of Doom and The Ark in Space not far behind).[return][return]Miles and Wood explain really well how it was that Hinchcliffe and Holmes made it so good, and how and why Williams simply wasn't able to deliver the same product (and Tom Baker is fingered as a major culprit in that process). There are also the usual enlightening essays about bits of Who-lore, BBC procedures and British culture of the day (of which the best is surely the piece on Top of the Pops). So, while I didn't learn as much from this book as I did from Volume 1 or 2, I did enjoy wallowing in nostalgia as I read it.

[Sammy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A major (two volume) upgrade of this book is to be released in 2023, removing some of Miles' work (no doubt) as Tat Wood is now the central author of these, having already released updated versions of the other colour Doctors. I think this version is verbose and self-consciously erudite enough for me, actually!

[Don · Rating 3 out of 5]

By this point in my Who watching, I was getting pretty tired of it. Too much Who in too short a time? Too shoddy production values? Too much (far too much) Tom Baker? Probably all of the above.

Hell, the book itself may have been more entertaining than the stories it was commenting on. But then, that's at least as much due to how fantastically enjoyable these books are, as to how uninspired the Tom Baker years were (for me).

[Jonathan Norton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Miles&Wood's comprehensive expansion of "The Discontinuity Guide" in to a 6-volume epic is great fun if you just skip to the review sections. This instalment covers most of the Tom Baker years and has got lots to enjoy, the only annoyances being Miles' fatuously prescriptive declarations about what fantasy ought to be, and the utterly meaningless views on how some scriptwriters "did not understand television". I don't understand what the substance of that complaint is supposed to be.

[Wendy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another excellent volume in the About Time series. Particularly interesting as it covers the episodes that I first watched as a child, the ones that were really formative to my experiences as a Doctor Who fan. As such, I tend to regard all of them, classics and clunkers alike, with a glow of nostalgia. It's quite interesting to see an informed critical take on these episodes.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely not a book for me to read cover-to-cover. Rather, as I'm making my way through the series I'm reading about each episode after I've just watched it. The book is a great companion piece since I don't always catch the cultural references or have any inkling of the production /behind-the-scenes drama. And I enjoy the critiques. Heh, even including all the jabs at Star Trek.

[Unwordy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Otherwise wonderful; however, I would have dearly liked for the lore sections to be much, much longer.