Doctor Who in Space and Time

I might as well start off by saying that I've been a fan of Doctor Who for about 30 years. It's been my favorite TV show for much of that time, so while you might think Doctor Who in Time and Space: Essays on Themes, Characters, History and Fandom, 1963-2012 (Critical Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy) would be a good match for me, you'd be wrong. Sure, a collection of essays about my favorite TV show sounds interesting, but the book isn't.

Don't get me wrong, Doctor Who in Time and Space isn't a bad book, though it does have it's flaws. The main problem I had is that the style of the essays is a bit too dry. The book seems more suited for a more academic class of Whovian. Don't get me wrong; the essays are interesting, but they're not really for the casual fan.

Plus, as I said, there are flaws. Firstly, the book spends far more time on the new series than on the classic version, despite there being more than three times as much classic Doctor Who as new Who.

Another problem is that the book is already dated. This isn't surprising since there is no possible way the book could include essays on the most recent season. However, the final essay "Chasing Amy," which is a study of companion Amy Pond, seems a bit odd as it only includes information from her first season.

If you're a Whovian who would like to read a collection of academic essays on the show, then pick this up, but if you're just a casual fan, you might as well pass on it.

I Am a Dalek, by Gareth Roberts

I've been a fan of Doctor Who since I was in elementary school. It's probably been about twenty years now since I first watched the series. I loved the Tom Baker episodes. I started watching the new series as soon as it was downloadable via bit torrent (once it was broadcast in the US, I started watching on SciFi).

I was always a fan of the Doctor Who books too. I have a largish selection of the novelizations. I have (what I believe is) a complete set of the Virgin Missing Adventures. I have a few of the Virgin New Adventures too, but I never liked that series as much. When the BBC started publishing the books themselves, I picked up one novel, didn't like it very much, and stopped reading the books.

Flash forward to January, 2007. I got about $80 worth of Borders gift cards for Christmas, and was having some trouble finding $80 worth of books. So, when I saw I Am A Dalek for only $5.99, I decided to give it a chance. I thought the author's name was familiar, and after a quick search through my collection, I found that he wrote three of the Virgin Missing Adventures.

The book is pretty well written, though I thought the opening was a bit off. The plot is original, but true to the series. The characters seem like their TV counterparts. Style-wise, it's everything I'd expect from a Doctor Who novel, and it's a good book.

Sadly, I have to give it a mediocre rating because of the price. $5.99 is cheap for a book, but I think it's a bit much for a hundred-page book that I read in about an hour. I couldn't recommend a book of this size unless it was at least a dollar cheaper in price. So, with it being no reflection on Mr. Roberts' writing, I can only give I Am a Dalek three yo-yos.