Timeless Adventures: The Unofficial Story of How Doctor Who Conquered Television

(Paperback)

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This critical history of Doctor Who covers the series 60 years, from the creation of the show to its triumph as Britain's number one TV drama.

Opening with an in-depth account of the creation of the series within the BBC of the early 1960s, each decade of the show is tackled through a unique political and pop cultural historical viewpoint, exploring the links between contemporary Britain and the stories Doctor Who told, and how such links kept the show popular with a mass television audience.

Timeless Adventures reveals how Doctor Who is at its strongest when it reflects the political and cultural concerns of a mass British audience (the 1960s, 1970s and 21st Century), and at its weakest when catering to a narrow fan-based audience (as in the 1980s). The book also addresses the cancellation of the show in the late 1980s (following the series becoming increasing self-obsessed) and the ways in which a narrowly-focused dedicated fandom contributed to the show's demise and yet was also instrumental in its regeneration for the 21st Century under Russell T. Davies, and analyses the new series to reveal what has made it so popular, reflecting real world issues like consumerism and dieting.

Author Bio

Brian J. Robb is a New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling biographer. He has also written on silent cinema, the films of Philip K. Dick, Laurel and Hardy and the Star Wars movies and he won the Tolkien Society Award for his book Middle-earth Envisioned. He is a founding editor of the Sci-Fi Bulletin website and lives near Edinburgh.