Reference Book Wars: Quarter Finals 4

[SiHart]

Yep, another long break, for which I'm sorry, but without further ado, you can vote for your favourite Doctor Who Reference Books from these mighty tomes...









Vote now!

Si xx

[Andrew Curnow]

I've only read Tom's & the Discontinuity Guide so that discounts the other two. Tom's is an interesting read, but I prefer the Discontinuity Guide - and in the spirit of the competition, it genuinely is one of the few books I often use for reference.

[Dirk Gently]

I've gone for the About Time series. They are a nice read & very informative.
I can't wait for a new series version.

[Stuart Wallis]

The Discontinuity Guide, for the same reason as Andrew.

[Jonno]

Discontinuity for me - it' s the only one of the four I've actually got, but in spite of that it's one of my favourite reference books anyway.

[Rob McCow]

I went for Anneke. A fascinating autobiog where the Doctor Who stuff is the least interesting part!

[Si Hunt]

I love About Time to bits. It's often rambling, frequently just plain wrong, but it's exactly the sort of thing I love to read - in depth analysis of Doctor Who. And just about every element of every Doctor Who story you could possibly imagine, not to mention the random essays with each story. Lawrence Miles is awfully dull and pretentious on his own, but these are co-written with Tat Wood (in fact he does the later ones on his own) which means his involved theories are perfectly balanced with Tat Wood's factual material. It's basically a process of taking every Doctor Who story apart at the atomic level - bliss. I can't wait for the reprinted Pertwee volume this May, which is the only one I haven't yet read.

And their articles on the history of the missing episode junkings made me completely redefine how I view the whole topic. We act as if the BBC suddenly wiped all their tapes of Doctor Who - they didn't, they never actually kept ANY episodes. All we have today is off-camera recordings of them, which basically just got lost because everyone assumed someone else had a copy. It sounds obvious, but you need to read and think about to appreciate it. Also about the nature of Television beginning as recorded theatre; once you think of it like that, you start to realise why nobody cared. No plays are recorded today! And no-one minds! If recording them and keeping them became common practise, it's not inconceivable that future generations will think of us as mindless vandals because we never taped the great theatre performances of our generation, in the same way we think the BBC were dumb for not keeping Doctor Who. It just wasn't done back then.

Si.

[SiHart]

I've enjoyed all these books down the years. But for me, the winner has to be The About Time series. Like Si, I don't always agree with the authors, and I sometimes get annoyed when they get obvious things wrong (who'd have thought Chris Achilleos designed the Neon 80s logo?) but I've thoroughly enjoyed the deep analysis of the show and the essays are superb.

Si xx

[Dave Tudor]

I'm sure they're all fabulous books, and I'd like to take a look at them all in good time, but the only one I've read so far is Tom's autobiography, and a hilarious, eye-opening read it was, too!

[Wayne]

Tom's, because i's the only one i've read.