Customer Reviews

Doctor Who: The Dalek Handbook (Doctor Who (BBC Hardcover))

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I was initially less than thrilled about the idea of this book when I first heard about it. After all, air one more Doctor Who episode regarding the Daleks, and this book can easily become redundant. But after reading most of this, I must admit, it's still a good read for the Dalek fan.

Realistically, it's not perfect. But realistically, what is? The authors try to make sense of the Daleks' convoluted time line, and do this reasonably well, even though they embellished a bit. And since I never tried to publish a book on this matter, my applause to them for trying.

Additionally, since there is some insight to some of the behind the scenes information on various episodes, I gained a further appreciation for them. For example, why was Terry Molloy's masque so different from the previous one? This has now been brought to light. And poor David Gooderson...

Aside from this, I thought the scattered info on Dalekmania was, well, too scattered, and would have rather have it presented it one lump sum. But the more I read this, the more I appreciated the fact that it was presented in a way that was specific to the era. And so again, I applaud the fact that they presented it this way. Nice gob gentlemen.

Although I would have loved to have more information on my favorite baddies, this is titled, "The Dalek Handbook," not "The Dalek Encyclopedia." So take it for what it is. That being, a quick reference guide with some really informative behind the scenes information. Ideally, I would have had the chapters as the individual stories, since the authors did use the chronological airing of the stories, and find an inventive way to explain certain discontinuities. So why didn't they just make each chapter a story, bridge the information in between, and make it an easier reference guide? Prerogative of an author, I suppose. But if they would have done that, I would have been more than happy to buy two copies of this book. One to sit prettily on the shelf, and one to crack open, ruin the spine, and dog-ear the pages for fast access on my beloved baddies.

For the Dalek fans, I am biased to say, this is a must for your collection. For the Doctor Who fans who like the Daleks, I think you can't go wrong from adding this book to your library. As for those who don't care for the Daleks, you should be EXTERMINATED!

Doctor Who, certainly as the longest running sci fi series (as far as true fans are concerned), needs references. Since we are discussing a program that has history since November of 1963 something like the Dalek Handbook is very handy. In this book Tribe provides a good reference on the Daleks, Davros, and the evolution of this foe of the Doctor and the Time Lords that beats anything else out there. Is it perfect? No. But it is done very well in the style of his previous TARDIS handbook. Any fan of the series should have this book along with the TARDIS handbook.

I certainly hope the publisher and authors would add a couple more volumes to this series on perhaps a few other topics. I would suggest the following additional volumes:

Cybermen Handbook (on original and alternate universe cybermen)
Sontaran Handbook
The Time Lords and their Renegades Handbook (cover the Master, the Rani, Romana, Rassilon, Omega etc)

I actually got this for my oldest son. He likes Doctor Who a lot (it helps his mom is sort of a scifi geek) and he has always liked the Daleks. I was surprised at how much fun it was to go through the book together and how much I enjoyed it as well. I thought I knew a lot about the Daleks, but I guess I didn't! Perhaps one of the best parts was that although it presented a lot of information it also had a lot of pictures and graphics which made it an enjoyable read for both of us together. There is apparently a TARDIS handbook too that I'll have to track down now for us.

This truly is a lovely book. Despite the picture on the front of the book in which the new Dalek paradigm is portrayed rather prominently, this book discusses the Daleks from the beginning in the Classic series until today. Contrary to quite a few other recent publications (like the dictionary and the time traveller's guide) the space taken up by the Classic series is sufficient, even for someone who has been a fan since the early 70's when I was a highly interested 8-year-old. There is a lot of background stuff on Skaro, the Thals, the Dals (!?) and the Kaled's, and the Time War. All Dr. Who's confrontations with the Daleks are discussed extensively (including those serials with episodes that do not exist any more), while the authors even try to make something of the disturbingly complicated Dalek timelines in relation to the timelines of Earth.

Furthermore, information is provided about comics, plays, novels, audio plays and adaptations, and computer games as well (all categorised as Dalekmania). A nice touch is the fact that the Daleks have even asserted their right to be the supreme beings in this universe. You can find this statement in the colofon among the authors' rights, the BBC rights and the mentioning of the Daleks' creator Terry Nation. It made me laugh almost as much as when the Daleks were speaking German in the new series 4 episode Journey's end. I admire these kind of things.

Another nice touch is the illustrative showing of Daleks in all the time periods, starting in 1963, and ending with the new paradigm. I admit to be less than enthousiastic about this latest version. Despite the added size and mass, they seem to be more of a plaything or a toy than the earlier versions that were more spooky and scary. Even if you could sometimes see quite easily that they were well past their date of minimum durability for a TV prop!But they always remained true to form. The only saving grace on t.v. is the voice, but alas, that connot be put into a book like this. The first Daleks in the new series (serie 1-4) were great, highly recognizable and, as one of the designers states in the book: as daleky as you can get with no real changes in the design (even if they changed quite a lot of so-called little things).

Contrary to this negative evaluation of the new, toyish and even somewhat cute (instead of frightening and Daleky), Daleks, the ironsides were actually quite good. And hurray, the authors included a picture of an ironside actually serving tea with the tray on the sucker arm. Great picture.

Thankfully, the new Daleks only take up a relatively small part of the book, which otherwise is packed with all the other versions we love so much! I would advise any fan to buy this. Excellent and great fun.

The Daleks. What more can you say about them? For millions of years they have cut a swath of carnage across the cosmos. Just when you think they are gone, they come back stronger then ever. In this book, you will find out everything you ever wanted to know about this deadly enemy but were afraid to ask. From the Planet Scaro to Mother Earth, the Daleks have been many places and in many times. What are they planning? What is their mad creator, Davros, up to now? Look no further and get this book.

The idea of a Dalek Handbook is a good one. This handbook has a good outline that covers almost all the needed topics. However, it falls far short in some areas, especially accuracy. The timeline presented as to when Dalek events occurred often differs from what was seen on screen, giving reader a poor view as to how stories fit together, and leaving them unable to trust the dates presented. There is also a problem in that the Dalek Hierarchy presented is not accurate to what is shown on screen, leaving readers with a less than accurate view of the Daleks command structure over the history of the show. There are also dozens of photos in the handbook that are the size of a matchbook, which is so small as to often be useless. Having seen all the Dalek episodes and read all the novels of the episodes, these errors jump out at me, but the novice might have a hard time understanding the overall history of the Daleks with this book.