Obverse Books, current home of Faction Paradox, Iris Wildthyme, and other spinoff series, just published another in its line of nonfiction books: Downtime: The Lost Years of Doctor Who, by Dylan Rees.
After Doctor Who went off the air in 1989, there was a long run without new, filmed Doctor Who, aside from the 1996 TV movie. So a number of fans and would-be pros took it on themselves to create extremely low budget videos and audios that would tide the diehard fans over. Sometimes they skated close to the line making Doctor Who-like videos like The Stranger series, starring sixth Doctor Colin Baker. Other times they managed to get the rights to use certain characters or alien races. Wartime featured John Levene as Benton. Downtime featured the characters Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, Sarah Jane Smith, Victoria Waterfield, and Professor Travers, all played by the people who played them on Doctor Who, in a story involving the Great Intelligence and introducing the character Kate Lethbridge-Stewart. Then there were videos featuring Doctor Who cast members as new characters, like The Airzone Solution. Later, audio series like Faction Paradox (spun off from the Eighth Doctor Adventures novels) and Kaldor City (combining elements from Doctor Who and Blake's 7) appeared.
Rees researched old publications but also conducted a number of new interviews. There's a lot of information here. I've seen a handful of the videos described here, which vary wildly in entertainment value, and I've heard some of the audios. Some of this may be seen as just the stuff desperate people put up with for a fix -- but some is quite good, and not only did Doctor Who former companions and guest stars appear, so did several Doctors, as well as people who would go on to be better known -- Mark Gatiss, for example.
I'm only a few chapters into the book and I'm a bit bugged by the slightly rough prose, typos, and grammatical errors, but these aren't exactly rare in books from very small presses. The thing is, no major publisher is going to do a book on this stuff, so the range of material Rees covers, the research he's done, and the interviews make up for the book's shortcomings. It's a good look at an important, if now almost forgotten, period of Who history.
ETA: just about done reading the book, and it's been a chore. The author doesn't know what punctuation is for, never mind what sentence fragments, run-on sentences, or dangling participles are. The book's had some positive reviews, so maybe people don't care about the quality of written prose these days, or possibly the wrong version of the book was used to create the ebook. Obverse is a small press and some things slip through occasionally, but this is not up to their usual standard. It's a shame because there's a lot of information here.
But tonight I'm going to start reading the latest Black Archive book from Obverse, this one on Scream of the Shalka. I'm looking forward to it.
After Doctor Who went off the air in 1989, there was a long run without new, filmed Doctor Who, aside from the 1996 TV movie. So a number of fans and would-be pros took it on themselves to create extremely low budget videos and audios that would tide the diehard fans over. Sometimes they skated close to the line making Doctor Who-like videos like The Stranger series, starring sixth Doctor Colin Baker. Other times they managed to get the rights to use certain characters or alien races. Wartime featured John Levene as Benton. Downtime featured the characters Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, Sarah Jane Smith, Victoria Waterfield, and Professor Travers, all played by the people who played them on Doctor Who, in a story involving the Great Intelligence and introducing the character Kate Lethbridge-Stewart. Then there were videos featuring Doctor Who cast members as new characters, like The Airzone Solution. Later, audio series like Faction Paradox (spun off from the Eighth Doctor Adventures novels) and Kaldor City (combining elements from Doctor Who and Blake's 7) appeared.
Rees researched old publications but also conducted a number of new interviews. There's a lot of information here. I've seen a handful of the videos described here, which vary wildly in entertainment value, and I've heard some of the audios. Some of this may be seen as just the stuff desperate people put up with for a fix -- but some is quite good, and not only did Doctor Who former companions and guest stars appear, so did several Doctors, as well as people who would go on to be better known -- Mark Gatiss, for example.
I'm only a few chapters into the book and I'm a bit bugged by the slightly rough prose, typos, and grammatical errors, but these aren't exactly rare in books from very small presses. The thing is, no major publisher is going to do a book on this stuff, so the range of material Rees covers, the research he's done, and the interviews make up for the book's shortcomings. It's a good look at an important, if now almost forgotten, period of Who history.
ETA: just about done reading the book, and it's been a chore. The author doesn't know what punctuation is for, never mind what sentence fragments, run-on sentences, or dangling participles are. The book's had some positive reviews, so maybe people don't care about the quality of written prose these days, or possibly the wrong version of the book was used to create the ebook. Obverse is a small press and some things slip through occasionally, but this is not up to their usual standard. It's a shame because there's a lot of information here.
But tonight I'm going to start reading the latest Black Archive book from Obverse, this one on Scream of the Shalka. I'm looking forward to it.
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