For the first eight
years of Doctor Who there was
precious little in the way of behind the scenes information beyond whatever
appeared in Radio Times. Then in 1972 a book appeared that changed all that and
really started the momentum of the series moving from popular to iconic. The
Making of Doctor Who was published by the Piccolo range of Pan Books, penned
by Malcolm Hulke and Terrance Dicks and sold at the princely price of 25p! The
cover features a rather odd photo from `The Sea Devils` of the moment where the
Doctor is a prisoner of the titular creatures. Hardly the heroic posed stance
you might expect it has the Doctor looking rather worried and sharing the cover
with a Sea Devil rather than Jo Grant. Nonetheless the red on Jon Pertwee’s
cape matches that of the series logo above it and the end result is a
charismatic photo that was also rare at the time.Considering the joint author’s pedigree on the series the text at the start of this book is somewhat less loquacious than you might imagine. Obviously written with a younger reader in mind it nonetheless sometimes resembles something translated from another language. The content may seem basic to the modern eye yet bear in mind that in 1972 nobody outside of a few primitive fanzines had undertaken any archiving of the series nor detailed the production process. In 2016 even Mrs Putey in the corner ship is aware of arc stories, CGI and the like but in the Seventies people just watched telly, enjoyed it, chatted about it and that’s all. A book which offered a window into the way the programme is made was a rare treat and a half. If the prose early on is sometimes awkward, the authors go on to achieve a nimble mixture of fact and fiction presenting some of the history of the series in the form of supposed found documents produced by the Time Lords or UNIT.
