Elizabeth Sandifer

Having embarked on the enterprise of watching every single episode from "An Unearthly Child" to "Twice Upon A Time," I thought it might be a good idea to accompany that with some in depth reading, and among the available options very quickly settled on Elizabeth Sandifer's Tardis Eruditorium, as I already had dipped into the blog this book originates from on several occasions (not all of them Doctor Who related).

So I already had some idea of what would be expecting me, and was not disappointed - this is an immensely readable, hightly informative and very clever account of all Doctor Who episodes startting Patrick Troughton as The Doctor (or "Doctor Who" as the character was then still called in the ending credits) as well as an examination of their cultural and political context, with excursions into other related material (mostly Doctor Who novels). The Hartnell volume of the series had mostly focussed an how the Doctor Who we know and love came into being, this Troughton volume sees it settle (mostly) into shape. Sandifer does a great job of showing the contributions Troughton made to the character, and clearly loves the actor(and rightly so, Troughton is utterly fantastic), while also being quite critical of quite a lot of the material he was given to work with (again, rightly so as it tends to be very repetetive [but does have some great stand-out serials, too]). She also is quite outspoken about the political impetus of some of the episodes and is quite open about her own left-wing leanings. While that might be an issue for some, those have only themselves to blame; for my part I thought this was an excellent volume, I particularly liked Sandifer`s in-depth analysis of the serials (which I much prefer to just accumulating factoids on their production) and her (for the most part successful) attempts to wrangle new insights and an original perspective from watching them.

I do not agree with everything she says, and her excursions on how a particular serial were received in fandom tend to go right past me, also some of the connections she makes between the series and its contemporary context seem coincidental rather than compelling - but those are all very minor niggles. Overall I enjoyed reading Sandifer's books so much that i have decided putting my watch on hiatus in order to read another book on the series which Sandifer recommends, namely the first volume of Running Through Corridors which deals with the Hartnell and Troughton eras. After which, it will be on to Pertwee!… (mer)