Doctor Who: The Vault - treasures from the first 50 years by Marcus Hearn
BBC Books, a Random House Group Company, 2013. ISBN 9781849905817.
In 2013, the television series, Dr Who, celebrated its 50th
anniversary even more popular now than when it began. The TARDIS,
that time machine disguised as a police telephone box, continues to
transport fans, new and seasoned, into another world providing them
with a momentary diversion from the here and now. And in this
magnificent creation of Marcus Hearn, fans can travel back across
time, without a TARDIS, to revisit their favourite memories.
Hearn is a Doctor Who fan, and when he realised that there is no
central archive of props and paraphernalia, he decided to curate a
collection within in a book as a way of marking the program's 50th
milestone. Each chapter is devoted to a year, or other short off-air
periods, in its history and through text, remarkable photographs and
other graphics, the timeline is told. Much of the material is rare
and much of it not seen before. A specific event sparks each chapter
such as the story of the Daleks in 1965 and the phenomenon of time
travel in 2007. This really is an
all-you-wanted-to-know-about-Dr-Who tome.
But it is much more than a book for the aficionados. Given the
popularity of sci fi with our students, this book encapsulates its
development as a genre over the years in both text and film so there
is much that could be used for comparing and contrasting activities.
The development of costume design and makeup could be an interesting
theme as well as the impact of technology on special effects It
would also help satisfy the Year 10 history strand which focuses on
'Popular Culture (1945 - present)' and examines the influences of
music, film and television.
In my opinion, the author has well and truly achieved his aim of
curating a museum in a book and this has a place on the shelves of
every secondary library at least. It is a remarkable work that is
likely to satisfy the appetites of established fans and whet that of
new ones.
Barbara Braxton