ISBN: 978-1-849-90770-5
‘Keep your wits about
you and your eyes open. Don’t blink,
don’t get complacent. And watch out for
the monsters – because you never know when they might…..’ Doctor John Smith – former scientific advisor to UNIT
I’m a geek,
an ultimate fan of the Whoniverse and all that sail within it. Obviously my
love of Who came before my love of Torchwood – it goes without saying really,
and whenever I see a hardback Who book I have to have it. As beyond the glossy hardback cover are
equally glossy inner pages that smell of the ink they were printed on, shine
with the illustrations and photos of the creatures you have only fantasised in
dreams and action games, that you convinced every grown up you were only
involved with because the kids wanted to play them.
I’m a mad
collector of glossy hardbacks with the Who images, but they have to be decent
books, I’m not going to collect it just because it says Doctor Who. I have to know that the information contained
alongside the photographs is filled with enough detail I could practically
break down that creature and rebuild it in my head. Although to be fair, given the amount of Who
episodes I’ve watched over the years, that level of imagination doesn’t have to
work too hard. Only where a new
character that hasn’t had any screen time is worthy of a little bit of creative
imagination!!!
Published in
2014 by BBC Books – Doctor Who: The Secret Lives of Monsters is written by
Justin Richards with illustrations by Peter McKinstry. There are 16 monsters contained within the
pages, from Oods to Daleks, Cybermen to Zygons, with Weeping Angels scaring us
into the past.
In much the
same style as that of the Torchwood Archive book written by Gary Russell, this
holds some level of that style of writing.
The book is classed as Non – Fiction, which to most of us means that
this book is about the facts of the creatures including the Behind the Scenes
look at how they were made, from the first cast, to the actual finished
product. But it portrays the details of
the Cybermen and Daleks that you first encounter as if they are very real, and
with the backed up evidence of witnessed reports, it’s very much like those old
UFO sighting books you read as a kid, desperate to know if there really was life
on other planets, now hurtling their way to Earth.
‘In this book we bring together the
evidence that has emerged over the past few years and throw light into the
darkest corners of the universe. We draw
on information from the secretive UNIT organisation, and the even more shadowy
Torchwood Institute. Many of the
classified documents we refer to are only available now thanks to the untiring
efforts of investigative journalists……’
A lot of
books you buy have a portfolio of each character, summed up in a thinly
detailed Top Trumps style rating, but this doesn’t. I’m in love with this book. There is so much detail I could gush about it
for days, but I still probably couldn’t fully detail it without photographing
every single page, but where’s the fun in that? It would be better to own your
own copy. It’s priced at £20, you could
buy it for half that price on Amazon, or you could visit your local library and
ask them nicely to order it in for you so you could stroke the front cover and
pore over the pages and hope that the next 6 weeks drag so you can keep it for
as long as possible, because my friends, this book is absolutely brilliant and
I for one, do not want to part with it.
I managed
to nab this book at the library before anyone else had a chance to read it…I
have to give it back next week, unfortunately.
*pouts*
The book
took the author Justin Richards 6 months to compile and you can definitely tell
that a lot of hard work and researching had gone into it.
If you
didn’t enjoy the Classic era of Who, or you were too young to really follow it,
this book will tease you back into the enjoyment of the characters such as the
Yeti, which looks like a taller version of the 2nd Doctor’s fur coat
if that photo is anything to go by. Oh
sorry, you’ll have to obtain the book to see what I’m talking about.
It’s like the
Adventure Books for Boys that you read as a kid, the moment you turn the page
you’re suddenly absorbed into a story about monsters that have the feeling of
being more fact than fiction, backed up with documents and snippets of
confidential papers from Torchwood and Queen Victoria, collaborations from
various scientific bodies, all converging to bring the history of the Daleks
and Cybermen together, noting down where they came from, which era of Cybermen
attacked Canary Wharf, the life of Davros, the details of the Osterhagen System
do I need to go on?
Seriously can’t I keep it?
Oh and
don’t forget to read the After Word, that is absolutely vitally important.
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