The Authortrek View: This
is the latest edition of the Pocket Essentials Guide to Doctor Who. It’s always going to be difficult to
produce such a guide for an institution that is over 40 years old and still
growing, but Mark Chapman does a very good job. It’s quite different from the programme guides that Target
produced in the early 80s, as there is only enough room to provide a brief
synopsis for each of the stories, and besides, episodes of the classic series
are now more readily available on DVD and video than they were back then, so
Mark Campbell does not have to go into a lengthy exposition of each adventure. Having said that, I think the cast lists
for each story took up a lot of room, and were not entirely necessary. Mark
Campbell gives each story a rating out of ten, and it’s inevitable that this is
highly subjective: I, for instance, will always rank Genesis of the Daleks
higher than Destiny of the Daleks and the frankly ludicrous Planet of
the Daleks. I’m surprised that
Mark Campbell gives The Time Meddler and The Masque of Mandragora
only 6 marks, The Three Doctors only 4 marks, and that The Android
Invasion gets the incredibly worthy 7 marks, but I am gratified to see that
The Gunfighters gets 9. This
subjective marking system is half the fun, of course, as well as Mark Campbell’s
wry humour (i.e. his suggestion that Pigbin Josh from The Claws of Axos
should have his own series).
Although space in the book is sparse, Mark Campbell does manage to fit
in mentions of all the Doctor Who audio adventures and the novels,
although there’s not enough room for any plot details for these. However, it does not bode well for the
immediate future of the series that Mark Campbell can only give The Runaway
Bride, David Tennant’s first adventure with Catherine Tate, a lowly
2/10. All in all, this is a very
good pocket guide to Doctor Who.
You can read a resume of the book on our Amazon store below. To find out more about the editor, please visit our Mark Campbell page.
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