Pocket Essentials: Doctor Who (2005)

Subject matter
This is a revised edition of a dense book covering each television story from An Unearthly Child through to the series relaunch and brief notes on the Big Finish Audios and other spin-off media.

Publisher's summary
Almost everything you need to know in one essential guide 23 November 1963: Two schoolteachers follow their strange pupil into a gloomy junkyard. She disappears inside a weirdly humming Police Box. A stooped figure appears, frail and elderly, yet oddly menacing. 26 March 2005: A shopgirl working in a London store goes down to the basement. Mannequins jerk to life around her, blocking off her escape. As if from nowhere, a tall energetic figure in a battered leather jacket appears and offers her his hand... Two beginnings, one ongoing story. Doctor Who is the television series that refuses to go away. After 26 years, it disappeared from our screens — seemingly for good. Then after 16 years in the wilderness, Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper burst back onto our screens in a brand new Doctor Who series and once more at the forefront of British televison. Who is Who? A Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey with two hearts and thirteen lives? A TV folk hero? Or a bumbling British eccentric who fought rubber monsters in a cheap and cheerful BBC kids' show? What's in this book? Each Doctor's era is examined with facts, figures and informed opinion on every televisied Doctor Who story. There's a list of spin-offs on TV, radio, cinema and stage; updated Big Finish audios; original novels; missing episodes; and an in-depth reference section.