Officially licensed books about TV’s Doctor Who – particularly, sadly, those issued by the BBC itself – have fallen into a bit of a rut recently. Aimed, obviously, at the widest possible demographic, these titles tend to be fairly generic rehashes of material that’s now become achingly familiar – the history of the Doctor’s numerous incarnations, the history of the Doctor’s televised adventures, the history of the Daleks and/or the Doctor’s other formidable enemies, the stories of the Doctor’s companions etc. ad infinitum. Generously budgeted and lavishly illustrated, these glorified picture books look nice on the shelf, but there’s nothing much going on between the covers, and there is certainly very little interest for the hardened, long-time fan. Aficionados looking for some a little more unusual, a little more niche, are often drawn to unlicenced independently-published books and even self-published books, and Neil Cole’s fabulously immersive and nostalgic It Belongs In A Musuem – The Second Doctor (the first, excitingly, in a proposed long-running series of books) is a terrific new publication aimed squarely at those whose adoration of Doctor Who goes deeper than just watching the TV episodes and embraces the stuff that made the show – the props and costumes and paraphernalia and the genuine production history of the show stretching back, in this particular instance, fifty years or more.
Neil Cole is the creator/curator (and quite possibly the madman) whose life’s dream was to build a museum dedicated mainly to artefacts from the classic days of Doctor Who, but also, it now transpires, bits and pieces accrued from a plethora of classic films and TV shows made in the UK and in the USA. This first volume of It Belongs In A Museum – a lavish, glossy, slickly-illustrated 132-page treasury of delights and glorious memories – chronicles Neil’s obsession with Doctor Who, his determination to build his own museum in the quaint and picturesque village of Allendale in Northumberland and how in 2015, after nearly three decades in the teaching profession, he decided that it was ‘now or never’ if he was ever going to realise his dream. The book is split into three distinct sections; in ‘Welcome to the Madness’ Neil explores ‘the insanity of collecting’ and exactly how he went about setting up a museum in the cellar area of the family’s ramshackle new home, a Grade-2 listed four-storey Georgian townhouse in Allendale. Quite aware of the impractical lunacy of the project, Neil nevertheless set to work refashioning the house’s cellar and collecting the random items that would eventually find their ‘forever homes’ in his extraordinary Museum of Sci-Fi. The book’s second section presents Neil’s stunningly researched look at every serial from Patrick Troughton’s three-year tenure aboard the TARDIS, explaining the provenance of what (frustratingly little) original prop and production material still exists five decades on. It’s a painstaking section as Neil tracks down the odd Cyberman chest unit, surviving Ice Warrior claw or fibre-glass robot; much of this stuff is either lost to the mists of Time (although Neil is hopeful that some of it has found its way into the hands of very private collectors) or else in the hands of collectors who have kindly allowed Neil to print photographs of items that would otherwise continue to remain unseen. Section three of the book is the ‘Virtual Museum’ where Neil displays close-up photographs of these legendary iconic creations, many of which are now, happily, nestled away in Neil’s museum.
It Belongs In A Museum is, in itself, a spectacular achievement, albeit a tome aimed at an audience who will thrill at the sight of crumbling, cheaply-produced props often knocked up in a few days by hard-pressed BBC designers or outside contractors tasked with making something that would pass muster for a cheap half-an-hour teatime sci-fi adventure series that no-one involved could ever imagine would become a global phenomenon. This lovely, warm hug of a book is a tribute to those men and women who worked at the BBC coalface with precious little money to play, and it’s a delightful window into the past for the fans who have come to cherish this very special period in the history of Doctor Who. Unlicenced Doctor Who books are very often unlicensed for a reason; the writers are enthusiastic about their subject matter, but very often, they’re unable to articulate it professionally. That’s not a problem here. Neil’s an assured, enthusiastic writer with a wry and witty turn of phrase and his passion for his work and his museum explodes from every densely packed page of text. Full of Neil’s own evocative illustrations (drawn in biro…how can one man be so bloody talented?), It Belongs In A Museum belongs on the bookshelf of every serious Doctor Who fan. In its own way, it’s as much a time machine as the Doctor’s trusty TARDIS. We can’t wait for future volumes.
Find out more about the Museum of Sci-Fi at museumofclassicsci-fi.com, and copies of the book can be obtained by contacting Neil at [email protected]
