Book Review: Exterminate/Regenerate - The Story of Doctor Who by John Higgs ★★★★☆

The problem with fans is that we want to know everything. What did Lennon eat for breakfast the day he recorded Imagine? Which colour pencil did the script editor use on our favourite episode of Doctor Who? Did the costume designer on Buffy secretly sneak in Masonic references in that extra's shirt?!?!

There's no trivia so obscure that it won't be referenced somewhere, debated endlessly, and eventually schism'd.

The problem with Doctor Who histories is that the real fans know all there is to know, and the filthy casuals have very little interest in the obscure trivia about how the BBC Electrician's strike was a major turning point in the show.

John Higgs has a difficult job. How can you possibly summarise over a half-a-century of Who and make the history interesting and relevant? The answer is simple - philosophy.

This isn't "Everything I Learned About Kantian Ethics I Learned for Doctor Who" - but a rather more subtle musing about the nature of television, how stories drive their tellers insane, and how the viewing public are complicit in the eventual disintegration of our favourite shows.

This goes from the pre-history (why did Doctor Who the TV show exist) all the way up to the end of Ncuti Gatwa's first series. It covers some well-trodden ground that will be familiar to the people who turn on the DVD trivia tracks - but it adds a bit of bite. This isn't a sycophantic piece of corporate biography; there are some rather distressing and shocking truths about the people who brought such magic into our lives.

There are some odd gaps. While we probably don't need the ins-and-outs of every casting decision, but it is a bit odd to relegate the 1960s' movies to a few sentences. As ever, with books like this, a few photos and illustrations wouldn't have gone amiss - but I suspect rights issues would have scuppered that.

The book really gets going when it leaves the history behind and reflects on the nature of the show.

The question of whether Doctor Who should grow up with its audience or target a new generation of children was one that the programme makers would struggle with many times over the following decades.

It skewers some of the myths which are uncritically repeated by fans who have only a surface-level understanding of what the show is about and why it succeeds.

Just as the Doctor is a trickster who dons the disguise of a hero, Doctor Who is a show that claims to champion science and logic to disguise its innate mysticism.

As it dives in and out of the history, there are some wild revelations and some absolutely WTF moments of both synchronicity and sycophancy. For a book which deals with fans and fandom, it is remarkably brutal in its honesty. No one comes out of Doctor Who unscathed - and the fans are often (self-inflicted) casualties.

[T]he Valeyard [could] be seen as the representation of the darker side of British fandom

Is that true? It is certainly a plausible reading of how the toxic culture of fandom helped sow the seeds of the show's eventual downfall (and, to be fair, resurrection). It is, perhaps, a little portentous and overwrought at times - for example, when talking about Sylvester McCoy's Doctor's regeneration in the 1996 movie:

Seeing him struggling to avoid being anaesthetised and then killed in an expensive, state-of-the-art American medical centre, it was hard not to see the cheap and cheerful British version of the show being held down and put to sleep by the glossy new production team, who didn’t fully understand what they had or why they were about to unintentionally kill it.

Is that a reach? It is certainly a valid if perhaps unintentional reading of the scene.

The book veers between the gossip of the production and the critical appraisal of the object. It never quite settles on whether it is a history, philosophy, or psychological profile of the show. This sums it up best:

The drama backstage leaked into, and ultimately overwhelmed, the drama on screen.

If you're interested in Doctor Who - and don't mind some of your sacred cows being slaughtered - this is a compelling read.