“The Time Lord has met many aliens, cyborgs, robots, and humans on his journeys through history and across the universe.”
Doctor Who has clocked almost eight hundred episodes over thirty-three seasons. If you add in the fact that the Doctor can travel to any time in history and any place in infinity, then it isn’t surprising that it can be a little difficult to keep all the characters straight. That is where the Doctor Who Character Encyclopedia comes in very handy. With more than two hundred entries from Abzorbaloff, the greedy shape shifting humanoid to the Zygons who met the fourth Doctor, it can’t claim to cover all of time and space, but it comes close.
November marked the fiftieth anniversary of Doctor Who–an extremely exciting event for Whovians. Those of us without BBC America on cable would have been left waiting for the Fiftieth Anniversary Special to come out on DVD except that, for the first time I have encountered, the Fiftieth Anniversary Special was kindly shown at movie theaters. Our closest movie theater showed it on IMax 3D on a Monday night, which is not my preferred format or time, but I had to go anyway. I didn’t dress up–unlike dozens of other Whovians young and old. They varied from around ten years old to well into their fifties or even sixties which is a very mixed fan base, but is not surprising for a show that started running before the moon landing and continues to attract fans.
The Doctor Who Character Encyclopedia is a well-organized book in which you can search for characters by name, or browse the Table of Contents where they are categorized by type such as “Alien,” “Companion,” “Cyborg,” or “Entity” with color coding matching their main entries. Each character gets a full page spread with a description, details about their origins, homeworld, which Doctors they met and how they fit into the stories. Sharp, bright photos, typical of Dorling Kindersley publishers clearly show the attributes of each character.
The BBC obviously saw publishing opportunity in the interest around the fiftieth anniversary and this is an official BBC publication. If this book is out, our library has other books of background for desperate Doctor Who fans, such as, Doctor Who: A History by Alan Kistler or Doctor Who Whology: The Official Miscellany, by Cavan Scott and Mark Wright.
The Doctor Who Character Encyclopedia is a must-read (or a must-browse) for Doctor Who fans. If you are not a fan and are wondering what all the fuss is about try my review of the TV series of Doctor Who and check out some of the series on DVD.
Check the WRL catalog for Doctor Who Character Encyclopedia.
Blogging for a Good Book 
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Doctor Who is on my Netflix, and my daughter and her friend watch it. What am I missing by never having watched it in my 42 years? Maybe it’s not too late.
Eli Pacheco
As someone who is forty-mumble, I can attest that Doctor Who has a lot to offer both young and old. I watch it with my teenagers and it is great to find something that we all can appreciate.
If you want to try a few without too much commitment, even people who aren’t crazy about Doctor Who as a whole say that they loved “Blink” from the third series. And I really like “Turn Left” from the fourth series, but it may be more difficult to understand without much Doctor Who background.
Since Doctor Who is a time traveler it is possible to join the series anywhere! (Although characters do reappear and there are references to earlier episodes).
Hope you enjoy it!
Jan
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