Telos Publishing is celebrating sixty years of Doctor Who with a range of new titles
Stephen James Walker and David J Howe thought hard about how we wanted to celebrate the anniversary and we decided to produce several titles, each of which looked at Doctor Who in a different way. If you take the show as a whole, then there are three main areas that together cover everything: The fiction of the show itself, the making of it/behind the scenes, and the fandom. So we decide to commission three titles that together, celebrate everything that we love about Doctor Who!
The first title is THE ILLUSTRATED JOURNEY, a stunning large format art book that celebrates the fiction of the show. David J Howe explained
We approached Daryl Joyce, an artist of some standing, about collecting some images he had been showing online into a book celebrating the rich history of Doctor Who, through the medium of documenting all the places that the TARDIS has landed ... plus a few more images of notable moments, monsters and action from the show's rich history. Daryl worked tirelessly on the book, creating over 320 illustrations covering the length and breadth of the show. This is a masterpiece!'
Daryl Joyce added
From the misty streets of Shoreditch in 1963, to dark and spooky planets via ancient Rome, Troy and literally hundreds of locations in between, The aim was to respectfully up the scale, bring the imagination to life and give it all the gothic polish that Robert Holmes inspired in my appreciation of Doctor Who.
THE ILLUSTRATED JOURNEY
By Daryl Joyce
‘It all started out as a mild curiosity in a junk-yard, and now it’s turned out to be quite a great spirit of adventure don’t you think?’ … so spoke the Doctor during
Doctor Who‘s first season, and from that ‘mild curiosity’ the show has gone on to explore strange new worlds in this universe and others, taking in all times and places along the way.
For
Doctor Who‘s sixtieth anniversary, we considered that perhaps the best way to celebrate would be to remind ourselves of all the adventure, thrills, alien species, monsters, villains, companions and excitement that the Doctor has experienced on his many travels, all with his most faithful of companions, the TARDIS, by his side. Sometimes ‘the old girl’ gets left behind, or sidestepped in time, but most often she is there at the start, and again at the end, waiting patiently for the Doctor and his friends to return in order to whisk them all off somewhere else, where more adventure awaits.
And what better guide than the incredible artwork of Daryl Joyce. Joyce has been at the forefront of
Doctor Who artwork for many years, creating imagery to accompany many tie-in works, but this is the first time that a work of this magnitude has been attempted … trying to encapsulate most of the Doctors adventures and voyages in one book. We did consider trying to cover them all, but the book would have ended up twice the size – unmanageable – so with Daryl’s help we have filtered and filletted the journeys and present the majority … with a few additional sidesteps and images along the way, all to celebrate sixty amazing years of travel in time and space …
Join us for an adventure through memory, to scenes and places explored and encountered by the Doctor and his friends …
Available 2nd September 2023
Covering the Fandom element is Alistair McGown's THE FANZINE BOOK.
This was a title we commissioned from Alistair, after we saw some brilliant writing of his in the Doctor Who Magazine 1983 special, and which covered the fanzines produced in that year. I had been wanting to do a book looking at fanzines for some time, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity.
THE FANZINE BOOK
By Alistair McGown
Long before social media – a time before YouTube channels, podcasts and Twitter – the only way a generation of
Doctor Who fans could find their voice was to produce a fanzine. Following in the slipstream of mid-1970s punk rock music fanzines, for a decade or two it seemed anyone with a shaky old typewriter and buckets of enthusiasm was putting together their own amateur magazines filled with news, reviews, interviews, convention reports, fan fiction, artwork and comic strips. Schoolkids and students alike manfully struggled with sheets of rub-down Letraset, correction fluid, cow gum, hand-cranked duplicators and overheating photocopiers to try their luck at becoming fan publishing press barons. Some sold dozens of copies, others sold thousands.
This was the only platform fans of the time had to praise, criticise and share opinions on their favourite show, largely uncensored and unbound, sometimes controversially so and running into trouble with the BBC and the
Doctor Who producers of the era; Philip Hinchcliffe, Graham Williams and John Nathan-Turner.
Covering UK fandom’s earliest beginnings in the 1960s, through to the ‘golden age’ of the 1970s and 1980s, several hundred different fanzine titles are documented, discussed and displayed in this fully-illustrated coffee-table hardback, from hand-stapled newsletters to full colour, professionally-printed magazines. It includes everything from
Aggedor,
The Animus and
Ark in Space to
Zygon,
Zodin and
Zeiton-7 and covers fondly-remembered classics including
Celestial Toyroom,
TARDIS,
The Doctor Who Review,
Gallifrey,
Matrix,
Skaro,
Shada,
Frontier Worlds,
The Frame,
Private Who and the best-selling but outspoken
Doctor Who Bulletin.
From tiny acorns do mighty oaks grow and these fanzines included the first published work by many
Doctor Who writers and artists of the future – many of them going onto comic strips, books, audios,
Doctor Who Magazine and even the revived TV show itself, with at least one future showrunner helping run a local group newsletter of the 1980s!
With an Afterword by
Doctor Who showrunner and writer Chris Chibnall, and a Foreword by the Master of fanzine writing Martin Wiggins, plus contributions and comment from many of the editors, publishers and writers who were there, this is the definitive look at the UK
Doctor Who fanzine phenomenon and how it chronicled everything from the highs of the Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker years, to 1983’s Longleat 20th anniversary event, to 1985’s cancellation crisis, to the show’s quiet demise in 1989.
Writer and researcher Alistair McGown – whose own first published work appeared in
The Highlander fanzine in 1985, aged 13 – celebrates the fascinating story of the underground
Doctor Who press in this latest slice of publishing history from Telos.
Writer and historian Andrew Pixley had this to say about
THE FANZINE BOOK: 'This is
superb. Massively entertaining and massively informative ... a very lavish, specialist volume - and a real delight.'
Available now. Mailing at the end of August
THE DOCTOR WHO PRODUCTION DIARY: THE HARTNELL YEARS
By David Brunt
In the first of a new series of books, noted
Doctor Who historian David Brunt presents the most detailed and comprehensive day-by-day record ever published of the show’s production during the years 1963-1966 when William Hartnell played the Doctor.
Drawing on many years of research and an exhaustive study of BBC archive documentation – including files not previously accessed by any other
Doctor Who author – the book includes a wealth of newly-discovered information and explodes some long-standing myths.
David came to us with the suggestion of doing a day-by-day diary of the production of Doctor Who - a format that had never been attempted before in this detail and scope. And we snapped it up!' says Howe. 'I think it was in part inspired by Richard Molesworth's JOHN NATHAN TURNER PRODUCTION DIARY from a year or so back, but here David has delved deep into the BBC Archives to deliver an unprecedented view on the making of Doctor Who.
Available November 2023
Finally, a fourth book has been added in the form of Andrew-Mark Thompson's THIS IS A FAKE! '
THIS IS A FAKE!
by Andrew-Mark Thompson
In this humorous, full-colour hardback, Andrew-Mark Thompson presents items ripped from an alternative dimension in his basement from a world where
Doctor Who, and its tie-in merchandise, were a little different from how fans might have remembered.
Packed full of items which should-have-been and never-were, this is the ultimate book of
Doctor Who appreciation viewed through a lens of affectionate parody.
Paul Simpson from
SciFi Bulletin has talked about
THIS IS A FAKE!:
'There are a lot of books coming out for the 60th anniversary of Doctor Who, but I will be a little bit surprised if there’s one quite so unusual, or able to make you laugh as hard as this ... this may be *the* book of the 60th anniversary…
David J Howe added I had long been an admirer of Andrew's incredible 'fakes' on Twitter and Facebook - using clever Photoshop manipulations to convince the world of the existence of all manner of invented Doctor Who merchandise, toys, books, comics, games, confectionary and other ephemera ... it's genius level stuff!' says Howe. 'So I reached out to Andrew and asked if he might be interested in assembling some of the madness into a book, and he agreed! So we also have the inventiveness, humour, and imagination of fandom all brought together in an incredible celebration of merchandise, first-anniversary garden parties, 'Daleks' Master Plan' Cluedo games, Alpha Centauri easter eggs, Sapphire and Steel ice lollies and so much more besides! It's a book that defies explanation ... you have to experience it!’
Available now. Mailing at the end of AugustAll four titles are available from Telos Publishing direct at telos.co.uk.
They will also be available from WHONA in the USA (whona.com).
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