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nwhyte's review
4.0
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2539376.html
The latest of Sandifer's collected essays from his blog, hot off the presses. There is a lot less to say about this less popular era of Doctor Who - his previous two books covered the seven Tom Baker years, this one book covers five years and two Doctors. There's not a lot of people who pick this as their favourite era of the show. But Sandifer does his best to find redemptive readings - "it is preferable, given the choice among reasonable arguments, to like a piece of art rather than to dislike it" or, even more succinctly, "Disliking it frankly requires more effort than liking it, and I just can’t be bothered" - and generally succeeds, showing, alongside the usual complaints, the achievements and merits of even John Nathan-Turner and Eric Saward (though not Ian Levine).
As usual, he finds interesting things to say about some of the least celebrated stories, even trying to make a positive case for Time-Flight. But towards the end of the book he has to shift format, because there are fewer TV episodes to talk about. There's a lot more about spinoff literature than I remember from previous volumes. The essay near the start on Cold Fusion is particularly good. An upside of the Fifth/Sixth Doctors is that we are now in Big Finish territory, and I wish Sandifer had covered more than one Fifth Doctor audio (though if you have to choose one, he gets it right with Spare Parts) - he does six Sixth Doctor audios (though again, in line with his redemptive policy, this is where Colin Baker shows his strengths).
There are also a number of essays that don't fit any of Sandifer's usual categories: one on Tegan, a long interview with Robert Shearman, several pieces about why and how Doctor Who was cancelled / put on hiatus, and a great one at the start about the Five Faces of Doctor Who season of repeats in 1981. All very good stuff, and I'll be seriously considering this as a potential Hugo nominee for Best Related Work next year.
The latest of Sandifer's collected essays from his blog, hot off the presses. There is a lot less to say about this less popular era of Doctor Who - his previous two books covered the seven Tom Baker years, this one book covers five years and two Doctors. There's not a lot of people who pick this as their favourite era of the show. But Sandifer does his best to find redemptive readings - "it is preferable, given the choice among reasonable arguments, to like a piece of art rather than to dislike it" or, even more succinctly, "Disliking it frankly requires more effort than liking it, and I just can’t be bothered" - and generally succeeds, showing, alongside the usual complaints, the achievements and merits of even John Nathan-Turner and Eric Saward (though not Ian Levine).
As usual, he finds interesting things to say about some of the least celebrated stories, even trying to make a positive case for Time-Flight. But towards the end of the book he has to shift format, because there are fewer TV episodes to talk about. There's a lot more about spinoff literature than I remember from previous volumes. The essay near the start on Cold Fusion is particularly good. An upside of the Fifth/Sixth Doctors is that we are now in Big Finish territory, and I wish Sandifer had covered more than one Fifth Doctor audio (though if you have to choose one, he gets it right with Spare Parts) - he does six Sixth Doctor audios (though again, in line with his redemptive policy, this is where Colin Baker shows his strengths).
There are also a number of essays that don't fit any of Sandifer's usual categories: one on Tegan, a long interview with Robert Shearman, several pieces about why and how Doctor Who was cancelled / put on hiatus, and a great one at the start about the Five Faces of Doctor Who season of repeats in 1981. All very good stuff, and I'll be seriously considering this as a potential Hugo nominee for Best Related Work next year.
daveversace's review
5.0
The TARDIS Eruditorum series is some of the best critical writing about Doctor Who I've seen.
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