Doctor Who: The Vault: Treasures from the First 50 Years by Marcus Hearn

Celebrating everything Doctor Who, just in time for it's 50th anniversary- which occurred 6 years ago!

I got this amazing book right around when Doctor Who turned 50th. I was born on November 24th. Doctor Who's first appearance on TV was November 23rd, 1963. So this was a birthday present. 

I remember that I read it through Christmas of 2013. But sometime in early 2014, I got off track and put this book away in my reading cabinet. I promptly forgot about it. that was until about a week ago.

BBC America was showing a massive marathon of Doctor Who episodes as a sort of countdown to the New Year's Day premiere of the newest season (12th) of the long-running time travel series. Around this same time, I was organizing my reading cabinet and I came across this book again. Seeing that I had made a pretty big dent, and I was excited for more Who after a year without any new episodes, I dug back in.

I've read several VAULT edition books. While the format of the Doctor Who vault is petty similar to them, there are some big differences. Most VAULT books have 'artifacts'; removable items that readers can examine. These are things like stickers or blueprints or even scripts. The Doctor Who book has tons of images of a lot of cool stuff. However, there is nothing removable here.

Another difference is the formatting itself. Most VAULT books are separated into chapters that resemble a museum exhibit. But here, each chapter is broken down by year or season. However, there are not 50 chapters. As there was little to no Doctor Who from 1990 until the early 2000s, those 'wilderness years' are lumped together. (Only 1996 in which the movie debuted on national TV is given a separate year entry.) Still, this is a pretty lengthy book about about 40 chapters. I think the shear volume was why I put this book aside for a while.

This is a must for fans of Doctor Who. It's very British. But then again, so is Doctor Who itself. One thing that's a bit aggravating is how much detail is devoted to the show's ratings. I understand that the show spent a long time on the brink of cancellation. But couldn't all of that have been combined into one or two chapters and not spread out throughout the book? I found the production and fun facts parts of this book very interesting. But the devotion to viewership was a bit mind numbing. 

Maybe THAT"S why I put this book away for a while.

Lots of fun but sometimes bogged down in some boring details.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 7 out of 10 stars.