Reviews

The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who by Marek Kukula, Simon Guerrier

triscuit807's review

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4.0

This is an anthology of short stories featuring the Doctor (all 13) plus Companions interspersed with scientific explanations of various concepts occurring in the story and/or the tv series. I read the first 111 pages in early January but put it aside until early December - for no reason other than getting distracted by other reading. As an anthology it is something that can be set aside without harm. As a Whovian I found it very enjoyable, and I think a non-Whovian would also find it entertaining as well as instructive. I read it for my 2016 Reading Challenge "read a book with a blue cover" (PopSugar).

kribu's review

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4.0

Short review because I'm completely wiped out by squeeing and fangirling over the brand new (as of the moment of writing this review) Doctor Who Series 9 trailer, but anyway, I finished this earlier today and, as the rating shows, really liked it.

I admit I was quite hesitant when I first heard about this book - it's been a long time really since I've read nonfiction, and also, I'm not very sure of the entire concept of "actual science" in combination with "Doctor Who" (~thinks Kill the Moon and Into the Forest of the Night just for starters, and I actually liked both those episodes~).

Then I heard the book also has a bunch of brand new short stories, and my interest went up several notches. And I figured "okay, I'll get it and read the short stories".

.. soooooo. I actually ended up reading the whole thing? Obviously the science chapters are written on a level that should be understandable also for younger readers, but hey, it's been 20 years since I last gave my brain a workout, so that suited me just fine. And I really enjoyed the science chapters, although the ties they had to the short stories were rather tenuous.

I liked the short stories as well. I especially like that we get a new story for each (numbered) Doctor and four (and a bit) new ones for Twelve. :D Also, there were some gloriously shippy Twelve/Clara moments in some of them, so that helped too. :D

But yeah, I actually enjoyed this bunch of stories - some were better than others, but I didn't dislike any of them, and most were pretty interesting as well as paced okay.
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