by Lance Parkin and Lars Pearson

Mad Norwegian Press, out now

All you could ever possibly want to know about the past of the Doctor Who universe (including many licensed and unlicensed spinoffs…)

I’m sure that somewhere there’s a story set in the many worlds of Doctor Who that isn’t covered in this mammoth history. Maybe some unpublished jottings by Russell T Davies, or a laundry list of story ideas belonging to Robert Holmes? Otherwise, this really does seem to cover the whole gamut. (NB yes, there are certain exceptions but they’re clearly marked – short stories, for now, haven’t made it. That’s the Fifth Edition I suspect!)

The conceit of AHistory, going right back to its fanzine beginnings even before Virgin got their hands on it in the mid-1990s, is that every Doctor Who story was set in a consistent(ish) universe, and the Doctor of An Unearthly Child was the same as the Time Lord who ended the Time War with the Moment (and any other example you may care to name). For a show that almost boasts of its many different fates for Atlantis, let alone its remaking of its own spin-off stories into the main body of the “text”, that clearly is going to need a very special way of looking at things.

Lance Parkin and Lars Pearson are very special. It’s not just Doctor Who, Torchwood, K9 & Company, The Sarah Jane Adventures and Class that are covered here. It’s the K9 TV series, the comic strips, the Time Hunter series, the Erimem books, the Faction Paradox tales – even the Lethbridge-Stewart “Haisman Timeline” gets its events incorporated. A typical spread will include references to at least half a dozen of these, featuring events from probably five or six Doctors, as well as ancillary facts (dates of birth etc.) derived from the information given in the media.

Footnotes explain the logic of the dating, and the writers pull no punches where they’ve found errors. (As copy editor/proofreader for one of the ranges, I’m dreading finding a mistake I missed turning up!) You can almost see their eyebrows raising when they find contradictory references in the material, or where there’s a plotline that simply doesn’t work. It’s these – and the mini-essays within them – that are the most fun part of the book and prevent it from being a dry recitation of dates.

And this is just volume 1 – the 3rd Edition was a huge brick of a book, and there’s been six years of new stories since then in multiple media. The decision to split it into three was a sensible one… and I’m looking forward to finding out what’s been going on in the “present” (which by coincidence is almost my own lifespan!).

Verdict: Insanely detailed and beautifully argued – the ultimate continuity guide lives again. 10/10

Paul Simpson

Click here to order AHistory Vol. 1 from Amazon.co.uk