Doctor Who: The Gallifrey Chronicles

by John Peel

The planet Gallifrey: cradle of the most ancient civilisation in our galaxy, source of the technology that mastered both space and time, home of the people who call themselves the Time Lords — and the origin of the mysterious, quirky, itinerant time-traveller known as the Doctor. When the British Broadcasting Corporation transmitted the first episode of Doctor Who in 1963, no one could have predicted that the programme's popularity would ensure its survival for twenty-eight record-breaking years.

In that first story we learnt only that the Doctor and his granddaughter Susan had left their home planet, under something of a cloud, in a remarkable time-travelling craft called the TARDIS that looked — at least on the outside — like a police telephone box.

The Doctor and the TARDIS have remained the constant elements in a television saga that has seen many changes over the decades. As the years passed we learnt more and more about the Doctor's background, about other Time Lords, and about Gallifrey.

John Peel has researched every Doctor Who story ever shown on television to bring together all the facts about Gallifrey and the Time Lords. The result — illustrated throughout with photographs from the BBC archives — is a comprehensive guide to the foundations of the entire Doctor Who universe, and a fascinating insight into the most comprehensive science fiction mythos that television has ever produced.

Genres: Doctor Who, Science Fiction

138 pages, Hardcover

First published November 17, 1991

About the author

John Peel is the author of Doctor Who books and comic strips. Notably, he wrote the first original Doctor Who novel, Timewyrm: Genesys, to launch the Virgin New Adventures line. In the early 1990s he was commissioned by Target Books to write novelisations of several key Terry Nation Dalek stories of the 1960s after the rights were finally worked out. He later wrote several more original Daleks novels.

He has the distinction of being one of only three authors credited on a Target novelisation who had not either written a story for the TV series or been a part of the production team (the others were Nigel Robinson and Alison Bingeman).

Outside of Doctor Who, Peel has also written novels for the Star Trek franchise. Under the pseudonym "John Vincent", he wrote novelisations based upon episodes of the 1990s TV series James Bond Jr..

Reviews

[Kris · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a curious little oddity in Doctor Who history. Released after Virgin began publishing original fiction but a few months before Marc Platt would radically reinterpret Time Lord history. So John Peel gets to put his own interpretation on Time Lord history which is interesting even if it is one that doesn't have much overall impact.

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has been lost in the shuffle of the past, but it's very much to the Time Lords was David Banks' "Cybermen" book was to the metal men from Mondas. While much of it has been ignored or retconned, the overall feel here is of an author who is as big a super-Whovian-geek as the readership...and loving every minute of it. Lots of fun.

[Sophie Duncan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant take on the Doctor Who universe. I especially like the section about the Doctor and Rasilon.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think it was great