Doctor Who fans love lists – how else are we going to keep track of everything that’s happened in the show over the past five and a half decades? Back in 2013, to celebrate the 50th anniversary, BBC books gave us the extremely handy Who-Ology, a fairly weighty volume dedicated to just about every sort of trivial Who-related list you could think of.
Fast forward to now, and authors Cavan Scott and Mark Wright have delivered an update of the book that now includes the last five years of Doctor Who. i.e. the entirety of the Peter Capaldi era. Actually, since the original came out before “The Day of the Doctor” was released, that means this Regenerated Edition has a whole three new Doctors to play with: John Hurt’s War Doctor, Capaldi’s twelfth incarnation and Jodie Whittaker’s No. 13. Four if you count David Bradley’s replacement First Doctor.
That’s a lot of new Who to play with, then, which makes this a very worthy item for any Whovian’s bookshelf. However, if you do already own the first version you should be aware that the book remains made up of the same categories and lists on the whole, except they have been updated with new information. So if you buy the book expecting completely fresh material, you will be disappointed. Still,
if you want a record of every single nickname the Doctor’s ever had or want to know how tall Jodie Whittaker is in comparison to her fellow Time Lords (she’s joint shortest with Sylvester McCoy, if you must know) then the Who-Ology: Regenerated Edition is for you.
As with the first edition, the miscellany is brought to life thanks to the wonderful monochrome illustrations of Ben Morris. Obviously, many of the illustrations are the same but there are a few new compositions in there – a favourite is the double-page spread of the Time War that now features the War Doctor pasted over the random Time Lord featured in the first edition.
Whittaker fans may also wish to get their hands on this for the milestone it represents: it’s the first official BBC publication to feature the Thirteenth Doctor. It’s a reminder that, though this book is a comprehensive overview of the sci-fi series so far, there will always be more Doctor Who to enjoy. Which is brilliant news for us fans, though it might be a pain for Scott and Wright when they have to deliver another Who-Ology at the end of Jodie Whittaker’s era.
WHO-OLOGY: REGENERATED EDITION / AUTHOR: CAVAN SCOTT. MARK WRIGHT / PUBLISHER: BBC BOOKS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
