By Derrick Stance

Who Alien Books, out now

A guide to Doctor Who and its spin-offs from 2013-2025

Following in the footsteps of the original Programme Guide and Paul Smith’s New Programme Guide, this is a chronicle/reminder of all of the Doctor’s official adventures in the years following The Time of the Doctor. It charts Peter Capaldi, Jodie Whittaker, David Tennant and Ncuti Gatwa’s periods as the Time Lord, as well as the spin-offs –Class, Doctor Who Redacted, Tales of the TARDIS and even The War Between the Land and the Sea – and the assorted computer games. (There’s understandably nothing on the many, many official books, Big Finish audios, comic strips etc.) We get a note of the writers, directors, cast release dates on air and physical media, and whether they’ve been novelised.

That makes it sound like it could be a bit dry, but where this comes into its own – after all, all that information is available online without too much research required – in its synopses of the stories. These are far more than just a simple paragraph or two per episode – there’s quite a bit of analysis and observation along the way (such as, for The Power of the Doctor describing Yaz and the Doctor eating ice cream just prior to the regeneration, “The journey has reached its natural conclusion”). You may not always agree but there’s nothing that’s completely out there.

Verdict: If you’re old school and prefer to look things up in a physical book, this is definitely for you. 9/10

Paul Simpson