Non-Fiction Reviews
Whotopia
The Ultimate Guide to the Whoniverse(2024) Jonathan Morris, Simon Guerrier and Una McCormack,
BBC Books, £35 / Can$74.95 / US$45, hrdbk, 324pp, ISBN 978-1-785-94829-9
Just in time for the 60th anniversary of Doctor Who, the BBC bring out a big coffee table-style book with a bladed art cover with gold leaf lettering with lots of colour photographs, taking in the start of the show right up until the Christmas 2023 specials although we do get some photos of the 15th and 16th Doctors and a photo of Neil Patrick Harris as the Toymaker, but that is as far as it goes.
However, if you were expecting “Everything You Wanted to Know about Doctor Who, But Were Afraid to Ask”, or “An A to Z of Doctor Who” then you might be disappointed, although if anything, this “ultimate guide” comes closer to an A to Z in a jumbled-up sort of way.
Why is that? Well, what we do get is a whopper of a book divided into six sections – Heroes, Villains, Monsters, Machines, Worlds, and Technology, and the first four of these sections are subdivided into “Heroes of Time”, “Heroes of Space”, “Heroes of Earth” and then “Villains of Time” etc, etc, to section five which is about “Worlds” and is divided into “Dimensions in Time”, “Alien Worlds” and “Earth”. This is followed by the last section on “Technology” which contains “Gadgets of Time” and takes us from the Beryllium Atomic Clock, which featured in Paul McGann’s TV movie outing, to the Time Transference Module. In between there are memorable gadgets like the Key to Time, and The Moment. Following this we get “Gadgets of Space” – usually objects which the Doctor or a companion has cobbled together in a hurry – ranging from the 2DIS (a device which could unflatten flattened objects (you did ask)) to the Zero Cabinet which allowed the Fifth Doctor to heal quicker after his regeneration, naturally various sonic screwdrivers, psychic paper and other familiar items appear in this 2DIS to Z section. “Space Stations” make up the last section, which lists 13 space stations, the oldest being The Wheel from 1968’s “The Wheel in Space” right up to a couple of space stations featuring in 2021’s “Flux”. If these sections on “Technology” and “Space Stations” seem to contain a lot, I haven’t even touched on those parts concerning Tardises, other time machines and common and garden spaceships, so you can imagine how large the sections are about Heroes, Villains, and Monsters.
The meat of the book comes in the first four sections starting with “Heroes of Time”, with a full-page photograph of the Tenth Doctor and then a montage featuring him surrounded by other heroes, namely companions through the years such as Jamie and Sarah Jane right up to Graham and Yaz, and then – ta, da – we have the Doctors from the first to the fifteenth, with slightly smaller entries for the Eighth Doctor, the War Doctor, the Fugitive Doctor and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Doctors. The unusual thing about this section (and those that follow) are that the entries are from the viewpoint of the Doctor, sometimes getting their voice – or character – spot on, sometimes not. Each Doctor has a little circle in their entry mentioning some – but not, all – of their adventures.
This is followed by a section on “Travelling Companions” with incoming messages from River Song, Jenny (the Doctor’s Daughter, Susan, and the two Romanas. Next, we get the first of a recurring section on “Fleeting Friends”, no personal messages from them, but fear not there are more incoming messages from more travelling companions, this time including Adric, Captain Jack Harkness, K-9, Karvanista, Nardole, Nyssa and Turlough. And so it goes, but what’s this? More sections on Pioneers (like Rosa Parks and Marco Polo) and Scientists (like Ada Lovelace and Albert Einstein, and Creators (like Agatha Christie, Van Gogh, and H. G. Wells) and so on with sections about Pirates, Crime Fighters, Paranormal Investigators, UNIT, of course, and many more sub-divisions categorising heroes and friends that the Doctor has encountered.
The next section on Villains, starts naturally with the many incarnations of The Master, followed by villainous Time Lords and other Immortals, even alternative versions of the Doctor before we move on to Davros and then meet a whole host of baddies, usefully labelled as “Megalomaniacs (and Murderers)”, “Scientists (and Sorcerers)”, “Capitalists and Criminals. Strangely enough, they do get do tell us their own side of things unlike some of the heroes.
Similar fare follows in the other sections with groupings that sort of make sense and the whole thing is full of great photographs. Some are full-page-size showing us Rosa Parks, Martha Jones, Rose Tyler, The Master among others, and there are some sumptuous double-spreads showing us Van Gogh’s Tardis painting, and the Weeping Angels, and a lot of Daleks of various shades in one of their spaceships, and one that seems to sum up classic Who showing the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane battling something that looks like a tree brandishing a bathroom plunger, and one that sums up the heartbreak of the new Who as the Twelve Doctor touches a Cyberman that used to be his companion Bill. I particularly liked some photographs that were clearly publicity shots such as the Third Doctor and Jo encountering a Daemon.
If ultimate doesn’t mean complete, then this is the book for you, and one that Whovians will have to have, until a revised 70th anniversary edition comes out in 2033 or 4.
Ian Hunter
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