Riffing off the BBC’s highly successful A History of the World in 100 Objects, this volume chronicles the universe though items encountered in episodes of Doctor Who. Starting with ‘The Urns of Krop Tor’ from Before Time itself, the book takes us right through to the Toclafane from the end of the Universe, in the year 100,000,000,000,000.
Authors James Goss and Steve Tribe have been responsible for the excellent and highly detailed Dalek and TARDIS handbooks over the past couple of years. The exhaustive compilation of detail seen in those handbooks is present here too, coupled with a strong sense of humour. This is no dry episode guide, but rather an entertaining gallop though the Who-niverse and its themes, absurdities and apparent contradictions.
The chosen objects themselves vary from the obvious, such as the TARDIS, The Key to Time and the Sonic Screwdriver to the more obscure, like The Doctor’s Pipe, Marsh Minnows and Milo Clancy’s Toaster. Each gets a beautiful Peter McKinstry illustration and an explanation before it is used as a launching pad to explore some aspect of the series. Thus, the Weeping Angel fronts a feature on statues while the Koh-i-Noor diamond from Tooth and Claw leads into a piece on the Doctor’s encounters with royalty, and so forth.
There are some comprehensive guides included, such as a run down of everything the Sonic Screwdriver has been utilised for and a list of known uses for a Dalek’s sink plunger. Many of the features have a picture gallery; highlights include ‘An A-Z of Mad and Very Mad Scientists’ and ‘A Primer in Non-Identical Cloning’ which tackles the changing appearance of the Sontatans. For the many ‘Artefacts of Rassilon’, it even resorts to a flow chart!
The authors, though clearly steeped in Doctor Who trivia, always seek to rationalise and suggest explanations for some of the contradictions in the show’s long history. On other occasions, they deliberately mislead. You might expect the paragraph entitled ‘UNIT Dating Controversy’ to cover the issues surrounding quite when the Pertwee era stories were set. In fact it mentions Mike Yates and Jo Grant’s nights on the town before going on to provide a recipe for Army Cocoa.
The book is not entirely in-universe, as it regularly breaks the fiction to discuss production details. Of these, a couple of the most fascinating come from the Doctor Who website where author James Goss worked for some seven years. In the feature on ‘UNIT’, there is a copy of the now infamous letter from the United Nations’ solicitor threatening over the use of the organisation’s name within the show.
The only slight criticism we would make of the book is the decision not to have a contents page. While a glossary would be near impossible, it would have been handy to have a list of the 100 objects themselves and the topics they cover. Regardless, this is a beautifully designed tome, highly detailed and vividly illustrated. Retailing at £20 and available online for not much more than half that, it would make a worthy addition to any fan’s Christmas list!
Published on Thursday 27th September 2012 by BBC Books.
What did you think of the book? Let us know below…