Published: Whose Doctor? Reflections on a Time Lord

Back in November 2013 there was a lot going on around the 50th Anniversary celebrations of Doctor Who, and I managed to get in on a bit of that action here and there.

One thing I got to do was a reading at the Litho Club in North Melbourne as part of the Melbourne City Library’s 50th Anniversary program.

The Not Quite the Big Finish: A Night of Doctor Who Spoken Word was a brilliant night featuring nine amazing readers from the cream of Melbourne’s authorial intelligentsia (well, eight plus me) waxing smart on the Doctor.

I was stoked and kinda nervous to be sharing the stage with folks like John Richards and Ben McKenzie of Splendid Chaps fame, as well as luminaries like Emilie Collyer, Karen Pickering and George Ivanoff. Everyone was amazing and there was a lot of Who-love in the room at the end of the night.

There was talk that night of somehow collecting the pieces that people had read for posterity, maybe as a a one-off podcast, and I chipped in to suggest that maybe an ebook collection would be an easy enough and fun enough thing to do.

Seven months later (and in the long lead-up to the first appearance on our boxes of Peter Capaldi as The Twelfth Thirteenth Fourteenth latest Doctor) I’m proud to announce the arrival of Whose Doctor? Reflections on a Time Lord.

It’s a fantastic collection of essays, commentaries and poetry that looks at Doctor Who from multiple angles, no two of which are the same.

So here’s what you’ve got:

• John Richards’s wry essay about original companion Barbara Wright as the true hero of the show
• Karen Pickering’s passionate excoriation of Steven Moffat’s gender politics
• Jules Wilkinson’s hilarious opening lecture to a class of would-be companions
• Ben McKenzie’s heartfelt admission that Seven is his favourite
• Emilie Collyer’s touching poem about how she, her partner and her step-daughter bonded over Sunday nights with Christopher Eccleston
• LJ Maher’s playful examination of New Who’s subversion of the male gaze
• Philip Ashmore’s nostalgic revisitation of his relationship with the show and its monsters
• George Ivanoff’s cheeky request to become a Doctor Who scriptwriter

Oh, and there’s also my poem about how Donna was faking it so she could leave the Doctor and have her own, much more excellent adventures without him.

So yeah. Doctor Who ebook. You can buy it right now from either:

• Tomely (in .epub or .mobi format)
• Smashwords (in formats including .epub, .mobi, .pdf and other reader-compatible versions)

It’ll set you back only $5US, so there’s no real reason not to, really.

If you’re a blogger or a reviewer or a Who fan of some kind, I’d be more than happy to provide you with a copy so that you can spread the word and extol our virtues (if you’re so inclined) – just leave a comment below this post, or email me at adamatsya [this is not an at] gmail [this is not a dot] com.

Thanks to all of the authors involved in putting this sucker together, and especial big-arse thanks to Aimee Rhodes and the Melbourne City Library for bringing everyone together in the first place.

Further thanks also to Mr. Nathan Curnow, award-winning poet and all-round nice guy, who worked with me on my contribution, giving me some excellent advice on how to improve on the version that I originally read in November.

[insert your own witty Who-ism by way of a pithy closing comment here.]