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Title: The First Doctor: The First Doctor (Doctor Who the Handbook) by David J. Howe, Mark Stammers, Stephen James Walker ISBN: 0-426-20430-1 Publisher: Virgin Publishing Pub. Date: 01 December, 1994 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $5.95

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Average Customer Rating: 3.5 (2 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: A must for all Doctor Who fans who want to know more!
Comment: This book is a must for any Doctor Who fan. From the inception of the show in April 1962 to the end of October 1966, this book looks at the William Hartnell era of Doctor Who. These handbooks are really good. I've only seen these stories recently, but the book brings back the memories of them. It even thoroughly helps out on the missing episodes that can't be seen, by summarising these stories. So you get a sense of how it might've been like to have seen them. The attention to production details is excellent. You learn about interesting facts about the episodes: budgets, originally intended actors, location and studio recordings, original titles, original direction of some stories, etc. The book is divided into 8 chapters: William Hartnell stuff, the Doctor, the stories, establishing the myth, production diary, a focus on the making of the classic story "The Ark", and selling the doctor. The First Doctor Handbook is a great reference source of information on Doctor Who's early years. These handbooks are all great (there are 7 volumes in the Doctor Who handbook series), but the fact is that the first doctor handbook was actually the third one made in the series, published in 1994.

The co-authors trio of David J. Howe, Mark Stammers, and Stephen James Walker have proven themselves to be the definitive historians on the Doctor Who TV series. Besides the handbooks, they have also written three volumes focusing on the three decades of Doctor Who's television run: The Sixties, The Seventies, and The Eighties. I highly recommend all of these books to any fan of the world's longest running science fiction TV series!

Rating: 2
Summary: Dazzer's review of 'The First Doctor Handbook'
Comment: Marcus Hearn's exhaustive research in the early 1990's provides the basis of most of the information in this comprehensive guide to the formative years of Doctor Who, yet nowhere in the book does he recieve even pssing credit. Rather than being presented as a dry 'info-dump',the book's accessibility could have been vastly improved by more user-friendly approach to conveying its wealth of material, some of which is interesting, some mindlessly dull. Unforgiveable, too, is the insulting 'What others said about William Hartnell' section, which is not used in any other handbook in the series, woefully implying some kind of inadequacy, or unreliabilty in Hartnell's own words. Equally annoying are the reviews offered by David Howe for each individual story, which are vapid and predictable in the extreme. He awards 'Marco Polo' and 'The Crusade' 10/10, despite both being broadcast some 35 years ago, claiming 'he really can't find anything wrong' with either story. Is this really the point of being a Dr. Who fan, as Howe claims to be? Strangely enough, the stories that remain intact in the archives (and thus accessible for review) such as 'An Unearthly Child', the classic first ever story, favour less well, suggesting, as John Nathan-Turner once infamously stated, 'The memory cheats'. Although, as usual, it's sheer wealth of information is indispensible, this is by far one of the weaker handbooks in the series.