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Fantastic! A Celebration of Fans Discovering Doctor Who
Fantastic! A Celebration of Fans Discovering Doctor Who is a big, warm scrapbook of memories rather than a straight critical history. Nicholas Seidler brings together more than a hundred fans, plus a foreword from director Rachel Talalay, and lets them answer the same four simple questions about how they first saw Doctor Who, how they became fans, their favorite fandom moments, and what story they would use to introduce someone new. Short scene–setting chapters explain the show, the idea of fandom, and the project itself, then the book turns into a long run of first-person stories that stretch from the early days of black and white BBC broadcasts to the Disney era and Ncuti Gatwa. The closing sections zoom back out again with a reflective essay on what the editors learned, some light statistics, and even an episode guide that anchors all those memories in the wider history of the series.
I really liked the choice to keep the fan voices front and center. The editors explain that they made only light edits and left dates and details as the fans remembered them, even when those memories are a little fuzzy, and that decision gives the book a raw, honest feel. I could hear people talking across a convention table or a pub rather than delivering polished essays. Some stories are just a paragraph, and others sprawl; some are very practical, while others turn almost poetic, and that mix keeps the pace snappy. The four repeating questions might sound rigid on paper, yet they actually work as a frame, and the variety of answers fills that frame with a lot of color. Moments like a fan remembering nightmares about Daleks, or someone hauling VHS tapes from country to country, or another describing a surreal theatre trip with John Nathan-Turner, stick in my mind because the book lets those scenes sit without heavy commentary.
The early chapter about “That Fantastic Moment” argues that fandom is really about connection and small, shared joys, and the “Fantastic Final Thoughts” later on circle back to that point and talk about how these tiny encounters with a TV show can shape a life, sometimes from childhood onward. I felt that through-line the whole way. You see academics, parents, kids, convention organizers, audio drama devotees, cosplay fans, and people who just watch at home, all treated as equally valid fans. The book is very clear that you count as a fan even if you never join a club or attend a convention, and that quiet inclusiveness feels important in a media landscape that often rewards only the loudest voices. On the downside, the sheer number of short pieces can blur together after a while, and there is some repetition because the same key episodes and anecdotes come up again and again. I sometimes wished for more thematic grouping or editorial commentary between clusters of interviews to help shape an emotional arc.
I came away feeling that Fantastic! is less a reference work and more a love letter. It celebrates Doctor Who, of course, but, moreso, it celebrates the way one long-running series can push people to create, to build communities, and to see their own lives a little differently. I would recommend it to long-time Whovians who enjoy hearing how others found “their” Doctor, to newer fans who want to feel part of something bigger, and to scholars or librarians who study fan culture and want a big primary source full of lived experience. If you want to curl up with a cup of tea and listen in on a hundred different “how I fell in love with this show” stories, this collection delivers and then some.
Pages: 295 | ASIN : B0FRNLXDZB
Detours in Time
Pamela Schloesser Canepa’s novel, Detours in Time, is anything but your run of the mill science fiction novel. It follows Professor Milton Braddock, who has conveniently developed a time-traveling car, and his assistant turned traveling companion, Tabitha (cutely nicknamed “Pinky” by the professor). The pairing of the older and more experienced Milt with young, spunky Tabitha will feel comfortably familiar to Doctor Who fans, as the two travel through time, encountering futuristic adventures as they begin to feel a bit closer than just friends. Though their time travels begin as scientific examinations into both the past and the future, Milt and Pinky’s present and future lives begin to unravel when they break their golden rule of not disturbing the future.
Canepa’s novel excels by creating three distinct time periods that each feel relatable to readers: 1997 (the “present” for Milt and Pinky), 2018, and 2047 (where most of the novel occurs). By creating a recent past setting, a practically present setting, and a not too distant future setting, Canepa creates a science fiction novel that relies on her well-developed plot and inter-character relationships rather than the spaceships, aliens, and high-tech gadgets of many science fiction works.
Detours in Time begins mid-adventure in 2047, without skipping a beat. Though 2047 is certainly more futuristic than what readers in 2017 experience in their daily lives, it is not so high-tech as to be completely beyond belief. But perhaps most shocking to readers will be how the citizens of 2047 describe the war that tore apart the United States in 2019, with reasons for division painfully realistic: “how tax money was spent, which citizen’s rights could or could not be limited and for what reason, the role of the military, who was allowed to immigrate into the country…” Milt and Pinky are aghast at the country’s divide, but readers’ hearts in 2017 will ache at the accuracy of what Canepa describes.
But, thankfully for readers, Canepa does not spend too much time dwelling on the demise of the United States, but rather takes a closer look at the questions that time travel inevitably brings: What happens when you interfere? Could a single action reroute history entirely? Are you better off not knowing? The last question is one that Pinky and Milt find themselves asking after they look into their own futures and decide to take a bite of the forbidden fruit: trying to change the future.
A truly five-star novel, Detours in Time is a well-written and interesting story with characters who are developed independently and whose relationships are carefully crafted, not flung together as if forced. Detours never stalls or bores readers, but it invests enough time in explanations and detail that it feels thought out. Readers will find Milt and Pinky’s 90s naïveté charming (What’s a text? What does it mean to swipe? Why would anyone eat food out of a truck?) but also eye-opening: how long ago were we asking those same questions ourselves? Milt and Pinky’s present is just twenty years in our past, which begs the question, what wonders or terrors does twenty years in our future hold? Canepa brings Detours In Time to a natural close, but leaves the door wide open for a second novel in the series, hopefully one that readers will not have to travel too far into the future to experience.
Pages: 305 | ASIN: B0711ZW6XF
