Wit, Wisdom and Timey-Wimey Stuff
by Cavan Scott & Mark Wright
Out Now
This extensive collection of quotes, broken up into thoughtful chapters and sub-categories, is a charming book all fans will love. Show me the sentence, “Close your eyes, my darling – well, three of them at least”, and I’m thirteen years old, sitting on the edge of the sofa, watching The Daemons, and falling in love with a show that has stayed with me ever since. This book is a glorious nostalgia-fest; words uttered by William Hartnell in 1963 sit comfortably next to those spoken by Matt Smith barely six months ago.
The sub-categories in each chapter are often gently humorous themselves: in the first chapter, predictably enough entitled “The Doctor”, sub-categories include “Modesty” and “Qualifications”. The chapter “Darkness” has a number of interesting sub-categories, including “Loneliness”, “Sadness”, and “How Insulting!” – the last of which must have been a riot to put together. That last one includes “You know, you’re a classic example of the inverse ratio between the size of the mouth and the size of the brain”, a phrase that lives on the tip of my tongue but rarely gets spoken aloud to those who deserve to hear it.
I loved the way the book was organised and I don’t want to spoil all the sub-categories as some of them are as amusing and moving as the quotes within. However, I did find it odd that K-9 is included, not in the chapter headed “Companions” but one titled, “The Tools”, something with which I take slight umbrage. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been to choose a few quotes to cover a subject as colossal as “The Doctor and his companions”, however, companion-based quotes pop up frequently throughout the book.
This labour of love, (you can tell, because how many casual viewers would get a reference to “Bafflegab” and “high fabsion”?), would sit happily on any fan’s shelf and I see myself reaching for it in a idle moment in the same way that I still do with my dog-eared copy of The Discontinuity Guide…
BLOGTOR RATING 9/10
