that make up the ongoing saga. He makes a case for perhaps-undervalued stretches of the program (hailing Patrick Troughton as the best Doctor, and arguing in favor of Colin Baker’s much-reviled ten- ure) and notes how various formulae (eg. the ba- sic plot of THE TIME MACHINE) are recycled many times. He often makes comparisons with other science fiction shows, suspecting that the Borg of STAR TREK owe a debt to the Cybermen of WHO and noting parallels between individual serials and episodes of VOYAGERS, SPACE 1999 or BLAKES 7; this is useful enough, though it’s a quirk of the backwater production of WHO that it tended not to be influenced or influence the programs a fan- expert like Muir sees as its peers, but to look to more mainstream sources, from Hammer horror
to THE PRISONER OF ZENDA. Rarely is the show seen in its original context, as a British TV pro- gram—whereby some of its apparent eccentrici- ties (casting an older character actor in the lead, for instance) are more normal, though Muir does take an interesting tack in arguing that the earlier, apparently cruder, studio-based programs of the 1960s were more imaginatively designed and di- rected than the apparently slicker shows made after the change-over to color in 1970. A major problem with A CRITICAL HISTORY is that it’s a perfectly fine book for 1999, but fairly redundant for 2008. Not covering the new show isn’t that damaging—not every book on STAR TREK has to cover ENTERPRISE—but the republication of now-redundant information about whether or not a particular serial was available on US VHS in 1999 is about as useful as the list of inoperative rescue stations broadcast by the television station in DAWN OF THE DEAD. Muir also repeatedly (and justifiably) lambastes the BBC for not preserving a great many 1960s WHO serials (while failing to acknowledge that this was standard practice for UK TV at the time), but seems unaware they are all semi-preserved on audio (and commercial re- leases of these shows now allow some assessment of them to be made).
THE GREATEST SHOW IN THE GALAXY
The Discerning Fan’s Guide to DOCTOR WHO
By Marc Schuster and Tom Powers 2008, McFarland & Co., Inc.
www.mcfarlandpub.com Box 611, Jefferson NC 28460 208 pages, Softcover, $35.95
THE GREATEST SHOW IN THE GALAXY is thinner and more expensive—but might offer more value, in that it’s up-to-the-moment approach means that the authors get to go over ground that hasn’t been dug up by many previous writers and researchers. Schuster and Powers don’t offer any history and rarely venture into evaluative criticism but instead provide assessments of various aspects of WHO in a variety of analytical modes, exploring themes like the use of language in the “Whoniverse,” whether the multiply-regenerated protagonist suffers from Multiple Personality Disorder, why cyborg races like the Daleks and the Cybermen are so “cranky,” and the function of the Doctor’s human companions within the scheme of things. It’s a spottier, trendier, livelier take than Muir’s solid, even progress through the decades and doesn’t find room for whole swathes of WHO history. (It’s notably weak on the “historical” adventures which were so much a part of the show’s first seasons—and which even Muir tends to undervalue even as he is capable of spending several pages on the eminently forget- table Baker serial “Underworld.”) However, it’s a book that doesn’t feel a need to be definitive and, once it gets past a certain fannish bonhomie, de- livers some interesting new insights to the ongo- ing, increasingly complicated debate between this still-evolving format and its fans and critics.
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