J. Shaun Lyon

This is a powerfully, excruciatingly boring book. Which is almost exactly what I wanted, and rather what was intended, but you have been warned!

Lyon's book is designed to be a day-by-day account of the revival of Doctor Who in 2005, from the point-of-view of fans unconnected to the production team. That is, by telling the story through media releases, publicly available interviews, contemporary production information, leaks, and fan opinions. As a result, this is not a "behind the scenes" story but rather one that is "in front of the scenes and about two-and-a-half miles away".

Lyon details how the media (especially in the UK) reacted to the news that the series was coming back after 16 years, which information was revealed or leaked over the production period, how fans responded to it, and the immediate reception of the initial run of 13 episodes as well as the major, and poorly-handled, announcement that star Christopher Eccleston had decided to leave before they had even finished shooting. It's an attempt to recapture how the public and fandom felt, and what they knew, about the new Doctor Who on any given day or week between late 2003 and mid-2005.

This is of interest to me, in a trainspotting kind of way, and can be useful to those of us trying to watch these episodes in the particular context of the zeitgeist - which is usually the best way to try and watch a television series once a decade or so has passed. It's something that has been done, far more rigorously and contextually, in the About Time series of books, and yields plenty of moments of insight or surprise for the committed fan.

Yet...

Another reviewer posted that he had given up after "ploughing through" half of the book, and that verb seems spot on. Sure, most reference books are not designed to be read cover-to-cover, but the very nature of this volume means that it is often reduced to guesswork, unnecessary wordiness, or half-complete stories. Although there are official production histories available, which detail the day-to-day filming of this series, Lyon did not have access to them at the time. As a result, he can only tell us when filming took place outdoors (i.e. a member of the public saw it and shared with the media) or if studio filming was mentioned in the media for some reason, and often has to speculate about what scene it must have been. This isn't very enlightening material. He is often reduced to quoting official interviews or, worse, press releases, which naturally are designed to be as upbeat and vague as possible. His commitment to being comprehensive means that we get to experience this detail every time an overseas TV network purchases the series, and sometimes even the speculation about which TV network in a given country will end up obtaining the rights. What fun! Given that the making of this first series was one of the most expensive and challenging things in British television history, not to mention the Eccleston drama, it feels slightly empty after all these years to only see this reflected through official and occasional unofficial but deeply patchy sources.

One of the most charming elements of the book is that Lyon, whom one assumes is a longtime fan, can't help but give equal credibility to other fans as he does to media sources. One of the first pre-reviews of the series from a major media outlet is negative, and this is reported across most other media outlets. Yet Lyon is infuriated that they didn't also mention that many fan blogs had written reviews full of praise! He continues this after each episode's airing, mixing reviews from the Guardian or Daily Mail with fan responses on internet forums. This is, of course, perfectly legitimate in its way. Most major reviewers are not going to have the comprehensive knowledge going back to 1963 which most online bloggers will, and the ongoing question since 1989 had been whether any revival of the series would aim itself more toward fans or to the general public. And internet forums replaced, to an extent, fanzines of the '80s and '90s, which remain hard-to-access but valuable resources for contemporary attitudes, responses, and debates. But it does rather pinpoint this volume as being an anorak's guide for the moment, rather than something of all that much use two decades on.

An unintended item of great interest is how this book reflects the great changes between the early 2000s and now. Aside from internet forums, social media plays no role. Reviews from major media outlets carry an outsized amount of weight. "Overnight viewing figures" for network television sit at the heart of a program's success. Illicit photographs of filming are generally first uploaded to fan sites before then being stolen by the media. Fans wait for Doctor Who Magazine and the news it will bring, as opposed to seeing that news in several Twitter threads before using the Magazine only as final confirmation. How bewildering our world is, even compared to those halcyon days, and it makes me worry for the later books in this series!

Yet, while this book is only for pathological lovers of minutiae like myself, I can also see the great merit of these volumes. Production histories of the 20th century incarnation of Who can content themselves with explaining how the few serious media outlets covered the series, how a given episode was received on its (usually) one-and-only airing, what merchandise was released, and whether the actors appeared on any of the limited number of talk shows of the day. While there was just as much "intangible" reaction - i.e. the playground, the workplace, diaries, general sentiment - the tangible was limited by technology and the culture. By contrast, the 21st century is a throwaway culture, digitally no less than in the real world. Many of those interviews, press releases, blog posts, television news pieces, talk show speculations, and forum chats are now lost to time. We've progressed somewhat by the 2020s, but it's still alarming how often original content can be edited, wiped, deleted, archived, or just lost when a marketing intern decides to redo the company website. (It alarms me how many new popular non-fiction books include web links in the bibliography and endnotes, and how often I find the link doesn't work from a book that may only be three or four years old.)

There is a value in this volume that is specific and targeted, but I'm glad it exists.… (plus d'informations)

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1511032.html

I've given up on this 'unofficial and unauthorised guide to Doctor Who 2005', after ploughing through a first half composed entirely of secondary reports gleaned from the media and checking out the write-ups of the first two episodes, and I won't buy any of the rest in the series. I picked it off the shelf at the Doctor Who shop hoping for something at least as insightful and interesting as the ol' Discontinuity Guide and if possible approaching the standards of the About Time series, but this isn't it. The reviews of each story were written almost immediately after broadcast, so have the qualities of enthusiastic reflection rather than the detailed reflection which I know several of the writers can deliver. A disappointment.… (plus d'informations)