Jay Emmerich’s Reviews > About Time: The Unauthorized Guide to Doctor Who, #2: 1966-1969, Seasons 4 to 6 > Status Update

Almost done, but I need to take a break. This section brings up that the pivot into the 3rd Doctors era was timed perfectly with the frontier of space being way more out of fashion. This was partially motivated by the fact that the actual, documented shots to the moon were working, providing far more interesting "reality television." The unknown was known... to some degree, and far less interesting.

A section here talks about what defines "camp" in media, and it's not a strict 1:1 with "queerness/gayness" and I found that really interesting. Some terms from my film classes keep coming up in scary ways, however, it's keeping me on my toes. I'm probably gonna be done with this in another day or two and I'm excited! Might take a bit of a break from reading into Vol. 3 but we'll see.

There's a lot of text in this section, focusing on how significant plot can be to the narrative, as it's not like people at the time were watching because of it's historical significance, that's merely applied to the show when looking backwards. Also it's really interesting to note how much production issues the show was having at this time, there's no wonder this season was all over the place.

Getting to a point in the show that I am really fascinated by in terms of production materials, but the bland text is flaring up again. Maybe I'm trying to read it too quickly. Nothing really significant stood out to me in this chunk. I'm making good progress though, maybe I'll finish it before summer's over.

Interesting to note how this identifies that there's a story in this part of the show that was written as a criticism of something going on at the time, only for the criticism to be shown to be REALLY stupid by the time the episodes made it to air. Might explain why I never cared for the episode. The story kinda felt like a reactionary argument against something the writers didn't take the time to understand.

There's some bits here about how people of the 60s never predicted the computing power of the 2000s and it's always interesting to have it spelled out like that. There's also some really fascinating lines about cultural differences between the UK and the US, but yeah, the text is still dense but interesting. An essay here focuses on how weird one of the writers was on the show and I found it enlightening.

The most interesting take away I had from this section has to be about how popular pirate radio stations was in the UK, as well as how easy it was to be "secretly" broadcasting counter programming. Definitely might need to look into this more and see what exactly has changed/how the culture changed around it.

There's some really good wording in here of what is widely regarded as the "best story ideas" for the show and how that's not really the case, it's more the fact that the people wanting to return to those stories really want their childhood back. And I'm not gonna disagree with that. Aside from that, they also focus on what can make the show work when it's done well, but it isn't always done well.

Solid explainer in this section as to what was so significant about the Radio Times at the time, as well as some interesting points about what some writers find significant about stories, despite what is standard about the show at the time, which might explain why some monsters haven't come back to the show. The next section will be interesting given that it was written before the episodes were found.

Touches on Buddhism in the show, especially focusing on how non-Western cultures ended up representing a lot of 'alien' cultures because to the western writers, stories and beliefs from the East felt exotic and alien. Thought that was interesting. Getting to a point where I was watching the show but reading the last volume of the series and I'd watch the episodes saying "I can't wait to read about this in vol 2!"