Love and Monsters: The Doctor Who Experience, 1979 to the Present

Much has been written about how fans relate to their favourite programmes, but there have been few historical accounts of how specific fandoms change over time. Scholar and Doctor Who fan Miles Booy has written the first historical account of the public interpretation of Doctor Who. Love and Monsters begins in 1979 with the publication of Doctor Who Weekly, the magazine that was to start a chain of events which would see creative fans taking control of the merchandise and even of the programme’s massively successful twenty-first-century reboot. From the twilight of Tom Baker’s years, up to the newest Doctor, Matt Smith, Miles Booy explores the shifting meaning of Doctor Who across the years. His account ranges from the Third Doctor’s suggestion that we should read the Bible, via costumed fans on television, to the 2010 general election in Britain. Love and Monsters is also the story of how the ambitious producer, John Nathan-Turner, assigned to the programme in 1979, produced a visually-excessive programme for a tele-literate fanbase, and how this style changed the ways in which Doctor Who can be read. The Doctor’s world has never been bigger, inside or out!