The latest issue of the year-by-year Chronicles publications from DWM arrived today. Despite the Colin Baker era still lacking representation, this one returns to the Hartnell era. We now have two consecutive Chronicles for him, covering 1963 - 1965.
Naturally, 1963 could never justify a bookazine of its own so they've made the new one 1963-64, meaning it covers all the stories from An Unearthly Child to The Dalek Invasion of Earth.
The four lead actors are all profiled, with images from their many non-Doctor Who roles.
The regular features are all present and correct. These include a diary of the year; brief overviews of the stories broadcast during the year(s); studio production; location production; design; and special effects:
There's usually a look at the Annual but, of course, there wasn't one that first Christmas.
The latter section has the usual look at the programme in the press, and what else was on TV at the time.
I've been a huge fan of these publications ever since the first one (covering 1975). They may not be cheap (£11.99 in the shops) but I think they are well worth it for the context in which they place the programme. I think they make an ideal compliment to the Complete History partwork, which concentrated on the nuts and bolts of writing and production.
Hopefully they'll concentrate on the classic era. The only recent Chronicle was for 2007, and it's noticeable that it's the only back issue they still have unsold copies of on the Panini website. The nostalgia factor certainly comes into play with these.
The actual release date for this latest issue was 8th June, and I'm assuming that no-one picked up on the fact that this was Colin's 80th birthday - otherwise it would have been nice to have released the 1984 Chronicle yesterday, and kept this one back for November and the 60th Anniversary.
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