Story: Doctor Who fanzine publishers, interviewers and analysts extraordinare David J. Howe, Stephen James Walker and Mark Stammers kick off an seven-volume examination of the series with this look at Tom Baker’s reign as the longest-serving actor in the role. Baker’s own quotes before, during and after his time in the TARDIS are analyzed to see how he approached the part, and each episode’s production details and evolution are covered. The Brain Of Morbius is selected for a scene-by-scene breakdown, with comments from members of the behind-the-scenes crew forming a DVD-style commentary in print. Finally, the effect of Baker’s reign on the rest of the show’s lifetime are discussed as well.
Review: Tom Baker left an indelible mark on Doctor Who when he bowed out of the role in 1981. Some would say that mark was good, and others might say it’s bad – and some of them are probably confusing the effects of Tom Baker, the actor, with the effects of John Nathan-Turner, the producer who took over the show in Baker’s final season. If you’re looking for a solid analysis of this period of the show’s history, this book is for you.
And at the same time, I wish its authors would revisit and expand upon it. Paradoxically, and probably simply due to the fact that neither the authors nor their publisher knew how this format would work best, the book covering the longest-serving Doctor Who is the briefest of the Handbook series. This doesn’t make it any less commendable as a research resource, but it is surprising, especially when held up to the relatively thick tomes on other Doctors Who like William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, and Sylvester McCoy, none of whom were in the role even half as long as Baker. Tom Baker’s “Handbook” is six pages longer than Colin Baker’s, when proportionally speaking it could’ve easily weighed in at twice the length.
One result of this bit of groping in the dark to find the format for these books is evident in the critical sections of the book. The authors’ three voices are melded into a single review per episode credited to all three of them. I found the multiple review format adopted for the other six books far more appealing, as the three authors didn’t always agree, and didn’t always disagree, and as such often represented a reasonable cross-section of fandom’s feelings about various episodes. Here the reviews are both briefer than they would become in later books, and they’re anonymous.
The DVD-commentary-style roundtable discussion of The Brain Of Morbius is a highlight of the book, and I’m not sure a better episode could’ve been chosen. It shows that the show’s makers were, in fact, aware of problems driven by both plot and budget that would be visible to the audience. Particularly funny is their admission that in the mind-bending sequence, the faces of Baker’s three predecessors were juxtaposed with faces of costumed members of the production team (which earned them a hefty fine that had to be paid to the actors’ union, which would have preferred the BBC hired actual actors for those briefly-glimpsed still photos). Not only do they fess up to the stunt and the resulting fallout, but also to the fact that they were trying to tack on a little extra mythology by being vague about whether or not any of the unknown faces were actually pre-Hartnell incarnations of the Doctor! (The authors even point out that despite this, Hartnell still wasn’t nailed down as the first Doctor until Peter Davison’s reign, and I hadn’t thought about it, but they’re right. They’re that good.)
It’s a fascinating book, and one that could’ve easily been a lot longer and even more fascinating. My hopes aren’t high that a reworking of the book will happen in the direction I’m hoping for, though: the authors are combining elements of all seven books into a single tome that will also contain elements of their “Television Companion” episode guide originally printed by BBC Books in 1997…and unless that’s going to be a monster-sized book, I can’t see it doing anything but watering down all of the volumes editorially. Hopefully the authors could yet surprise me (the new book isn’t due out until 2005). In the meantime, even as it is, it’s hard to beat “The Fourth Doctor Handbook” as a guide to Tom Baker’s TARDIS travels on camera and off.
Year: 1996
Author: David J. Howe
Publisher: Virgin
Pages: 256