Paul Kirkley

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2904890.html

I really enjoyed the first volume of this, which concentrated very much on the production history of Old Who. The second volume is a bit less surefooted. The first chapter, about the various attempts to revive the franchise (including The Movie), did tell me things I didn't already know. But from 2003 on, as Kirkley himself notes, he is in contemporary territory and therefore less able to give salacious details; he rather unhelpfully suggests that interested readers consult back issues of Private Eye to get the gossip.

Kirkley's approach to chronology is to tackle aspects of the production (largely based on newspaper reports) as they were happening, and then to talk about reaction to the series as it was broadcast, which means that some individual episodes are covered twice or more depending on whether he's talking about the making or the showing. This is a bit confusing, and also rather crowds out discussion of parts of the Whoniverse other than the main TV series; books and audios are touched on sporadically, the K9 spinoff gets a paragraph (OK, it's not worth much more), and even the Sarah Jane Adventures and Torchwood are somewhat skimmed.

I did enjoy his assessments of the success or otherwise of individual episodes, which I mostly agreed with (most notable point of divergence: Torchwood Season 2, which I rather liked). The book actually goes up to the end of 2015 rather than 2013 as the title suggests. It's as entertainingly written as its predecessor. But I didn't get as much out of it.

(And Brian Minchin was not actually born in Aberystwyth, but that's a minor detail.)… (plus d'informations)

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2516626.html

Yet another history-of-Doctor-Who book, but one with a difference: rather than analysing the stories for content or cultural context, Kirkley tells the story from the production point of view, including inside details of how each Doctor was hired and how each departed, and what the background mood music was like in the production team. I knew some of this but by no means all, and the full gory details of the friction between Eric Saward and John Nathan-Turner really made my jaw drop. The whole is written in a breezy style, with invented conversations jostling with real interview material (the difference clearly signalled in that the real quotes are given proper citations). I think it ends up being rather a good gateway drug for those who think they might want to read more about Who but aren't sure where to start - the end points, obviously, being Wood and Miles' About Time series and Philip Sandifer's TARDIS Eruditorum. And even those of us who thought we knew it all may get some surprises. This volume covers all of Old Who; I will get the second volume, which apparently starts with Dimensions in Time.… (plus d'informations)