TARDIS Eruditorum - A Critical History of Doctor Who Volume 2

The second volume of Philip Sandifer's critical history of Doctor Who continues in much the same vein as the first one. There are, once again, issues with the formatting, although somewhat less so than in the first volume, and there's nothing obviously missing this time. The signs of the essays having been edited for the book (they originally appear on the web) are also clearer here, perhaps indicating a self-publisher improving with practice. The book also includes the essay on ‘The Massacre' missing from the previous volume.

It becomes clear reading this that Sandifer is not a great fan of the Troughton era. He is full of praise for Troughton himself, regarding him as one of the greatest actors to play the role. What he's a lot less keen on are the actual stories, especially those of the fifth season - most of which are thematically rather similar. It's a testament to the thought put into the essays that they remain interesting even if you happen to disagree with them, and that nothing is dismissed without sound reason.

So, yes, there will be some controversy here. Sandifer is not a particular fan of, for example, ‘Web of Fear' or ‘Tomb of the Cybermen', while he does have high praise for ‘Enemy of the World'. On the other hand, there are some stories whose quality, or lack thereof, is fairly inarguable - ‘The Dominators' comes in for a particular kicking, and, at the other end of the spectrum, a literature student is hardly going to dislike ‘The Mind Robber'.

As before, the essays link the stories to the time that they were broadcast, which in this case means psychedelia and the Summer of Love. In between the essays on the Doctor Who stories of the late sixties, therefore, we have some on British culture of the day, and in particular, how the show relates to other TV of the era. Some comparisons, such as those with The Avengers, Star Trek, and The Prisoner are the sort of thing you'd expect to see referenced. You might be a little more surprised to find that Cathy Come Home is in there too!

There's much discussion here, too, of the relevance of the themes of medieval alchemy to the Troughton years, most notably in scripts written by David Whitaker. It's something that's explicit in ‘Evil of the Daleks' (one of the villains is obsessed with turning lead into gold), but Sandifer makes a strong case for their presence in other episodes, too, and at times uses them as a broader lens to examine the era.

There are also essays in here on later novels ostensibly set in the Troughton era. Some of these, such as 2012's The Wheel of Ice, don't appear in the web version. There's discussion of the missing episodes phenomenon, which hit Troughton harder than Hartnell, and of one completed script that was never filmed because it was deemed too sexist - in 1969.

As with the first volume, the essays are interesting, well thought-out, and peppered with a dry wit that also makes them entertaining to read. As a book of literary criticism rather than a set of detailed reviews, it's perhaps not the best place to start a discovery of the Troughton era if you're new to it, but it's certainly worth a read if you want to dig deeper into it.