An attempt to reconcile, sometimes by brute force, the numerous cul-de-sacs and dead ends of the fictional timeline continuity of the BBC's famed time travel series. The book covers the television series, a few video spinoffs, and the New Adventures and Missing Adventures novels through 1996. The book was published prior to such major developments as the BBC's takeover of the novel series, the 1996 TV movie starring Paul McGann, or the Audio Adventures.

Lance Parkin is a braver man than I.

Now widely regarded as one of the better Doctor Who novelists, one of Parkin's very first forays into Who fiction was this sometimes difficult tome. Now, there are Star Trek chronologies, and numerous other Doctor Who chronologies as well (namely the ones devised by Jean-Marc Lofficier for his Terrestrial Database and Universal Databank references). By far, Doctor Who is the more difficult series to reconcile. While Star Trek was dormant for much of the seventies, and films only sporadically added to its continuity in the eighties until The Next Generation came along, Doctor Who was on the air for 26 years straight. And barely two years after its disappearance from television, officially-sanctioned novels began to add to its continuity as well. In 1994, the monthly novel became two monthly novels, one featuring the current Doctor and one featuring a past incarnation. And so on.

The task of chronicling Doctor Who will never be finished. Lance Parkin does, however, make a good start. Occasionally his reasoning is pretty obscure, but it's all in the interests of making the wildly incompatible pieces of the Doctor Who puzzle fit. Now in its 37th year of stories, the Doctor Who universe has been molded haphazardly by dozens of writers, editors and producers, none of whom were especially obliged to catch up on one another's work. As a result, the series came up with no fewer than three explanations for the disappearance of Atlantis, at least two rationales for the creation of the universe, and any number of other entirely inconsistent tales. Pulling all of these threads together is no small feat.

I truly appreciate the painstaking effort taken by the typesetter of the book; different sources - i.e. televised episodes, unbroadcast scenes from scripts, novels, etc. - are distinguished by slightly different typefaces. That this system works without making the book unattractive is a miracle. And the effort taken to distinguish between source material is appreciated!

Highly recommended, though perhaps it goes without saying that only serious Doctor Who fans will grok this book at all.

Reviewed by Earl Green
theLogBook.com editor/webmaster

• Year: 1996
• Author: Lance Parkin
• Genre: Science Fiction / Meta-Fiction
• Length: 273 pages
• Publisher: Virgin