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A review by philippurserhallard
The Doctor's Monsters: Meanings of the Monstrous in Doctor Who by Paul Cornell, Graham Sleight
3.0
This wasn't the book I wanted it to be -- it's less a critical analysis of the monsters in Doctor Who than an illustrative introduction to the idea that they might be analysed at all, bolstered by synopses of the stories they appear in. There's nothing by way of close reading, only very general observations (many of them familiar) about what the monsters represent.
On this basis, though, it's very readable and I galloped through it.
There are some editing and formatting issues -- in particular parenthetical comments are punctuated by commas rather than brackets or dashes, which becomes very irritating after a while, and having stated that it will distinguish between asterisks and plus-signs for particular uses, the book instead uses plus-signs throughout (even, amusingly, when illustrating what an asterisk looks like). That feels slipshod, but is a case of the author being ill-served by the editor and publisher rather than something that can be laid at his own door.
It's a decent enough lightweight read, but it won't rock the world of anyone who's read a critical book about Doctor Who before.
On this basis, though, it's very readable and I galloped through it.
There are some editing and formatting issues -- in particular parenthetical comments are punctuated by commas rather than brackets or dashes, which becomes very irritating after a while, and having stated that it will distinguish between asterisks and plus-signs for particular uses, the book instead uses plus-signs throughout (even, amusingly, when illustrating what an asterisk looks like). That feels slipshod, but is a case of the author being ill-served by the editor and publisher rather than something that can be laid at his own door.
It's a decent enough lightweight read, but it won't rock the world of anyone who's read a critical book about Doctor Who before.