This review contains plot spoilers 

Dark Horizons is a well-crafted, enjoyable Doctor Who story carrying more than an occasional hint of J.T. Colgan’s primary career as a writer. Better known as Jenny Colgan, author of “chick lit” titles such as Meet Me At the Cupcake Café and Amanda’s Wedding, here Colgan brings romancing, character-driven sensibilities to the action-adventure world of the eleventh Doctor. There’s a running gag about the Time Lord’s knowledge of women – or lack of it – and his (un)suitability as an advisor on matters of the heart. Plus there’s a burgeoning romance between Princess Freydis and her captor Henrik (who oddly shares his name with a twenty-first century department store). Since the Doctor is travelling alone, Freydis and Henrik act as stand-in companions. It's a role these characters play rather effectively, even if Freydis strikes an overly familiar note as feisty and proto-feminist, while Henrik closely resembles Rory in at least one crucial way.

Again drawing attention to the fact that J.T. Colgan is Jenny Colgan, at one point the Doctor declares that if he fully understood human motivations he’d “retire to a hammock with a rather excellent hat and read a lot of novels with pink covers” (p.294), conjuring an image of the Time Lord as a holidaying "chick lit" consumer. But the in-jokes and the romance subplot simply add to a tale well-told, as the Doctor struggles to understand and combat a mysterious fire threatening twelfth century islanders and Vikings alike.

Dark Horizons, like The Coming of the Terraphiles before it, offers a strong argument for welcoming new voices and unexpected writers into the fold. The result this time is a Doctor Who adventure that has a vibrant freshness of touch, and a willingness to do things which old hands might deem unconventional, such as challenging the TARDIS’s powers and potency. One stand-out sequence has the police box proving to be a rather useless submarine whilst the Doctor realizes his time machine might, for once, prove more of a hindrance than a help.

Colgan’s authorial voice also shines through via a focus on character, though her historical figures sometimes read as thinly veiled versions of contemporary norms. It seems that the past is merely a different county; they do things pretty much the same there. Mind you, the TV series already has form on this, and one could just as well argue that Colgan is faithfully emulating the approach of The Fires of Pompeii. In terms of structure, this feels a lot like a Russell T. Davies tale, with the action-oriented storyline ending some time before the novel’s eventual closure and being followed by a coda leaving readers with a warm, fuzzy glow inside. Colgan has seemingly blended a cocktail of showrunners’ tics and tropes: Moffat’s take on monstrosity combined with Davies’s greater feeling for feeling.

And there are some ‘Easter egg’ treats for attentive readers, such as the Doctor’s knowledge of Busted lyrics in Chapter Eighteen, and some delightfully unexpected cameos in Chapter Nineteen. Colgan’s writing enacts its very own time travel in the latter case, skilfully proffering a sudden, vertiginous narrative switch to the present day. This gives her story added scope and scale, and brings home the fact that ancient history can linger unseen within nooks and crannies of the here-and-now. It’s a smart literary trick well suited to the omniscient narrator, and rather more difficult to pull off on TV.

The eleventh Doctor is well depicted, with Matt Smith’s performance style and quickfire dialogue being well captured. And although the Doctor’s method of overcoming the fiery antagonist he faces is very strongly signposted, there are still some unexpected twists and turns along the way. I suspect that BBC Books are deliberately commissioning these stand-alone releases as distinctly seasonal titles; the snowy, silvery Silent Stars Go By was aimed squarely at last year’s Christmas market, while this blazing red-and-bronze effort appears designed as a summer read, with the forthcoming Wheel of Ice again having a wintry feel in time for Christmas 2012. Or perhaps it’s mere coincidence that the range has settled into this publishing schedule of snow, fire, and ice. Given current British weather, BBC Books might be better off acquiring a novel about biblical floods or misbehaving climates for next summer.

As well as expertly catching the eleventh Doctor’s persona, Colgan also has some fun with how he is perceived. Thought to be a God, his identity is recurrently linked to that of Loki, the trickster. It’s a not uncommon parallel for the Time Lord, but one that’s especially relevant to Matt Smith’s Doctor, and also one that’s well integrated into the milieu of this story rather than ever feeling forced or tricksy. Freydis ponders whether the Doctor will meet the fate foretold for Loki, and in turn I wondered whether the novel would leave this thread hanging, implying some wider story arc or foreshadowing. But ultimately it seems that things are all tidied away by the time the Doctor departs for further adventures.

This is another satisfying novel from BBC Books. It features an intriguing, well-developed foe for the Doctor, and it successfully incorporates Colgan’s interests and writing style into Doctor Who. However, on a more critical note I do think that crediting this to "J.T." Colgan is an unhelpful bit of marketing wisdom. Are Jenny Colgan’s fans really going to order this title – with its foil DW logo – expecting it to be her usual brand of writing? Are Doctor Who fans going to read this without an awareness of “J.T”’s identity, given the author photo and description provided inside the back cover? The Coming of the Terraphiles was arguably a less ‘authentic’ Who novel than this, but there was no sign of that being written by “M.J.” Moorcock. Instead, Moorcock’s readers and Doctor Who fans were assumed to form a unified or at least non-antagonistic taste bloc (itself a potentially fallacious assumption). Coy and unconvincing author’s initials convey the shortsighted impression here that modern Doctor Who can’t or shouldn’t be clearly attributed to a bestselling “chick lit” writer. I can’t help but wonder what feisty Princess Freydis would make of this state of affairs. Or whether one “V.A.” Lambert would have sanctioned such dark, narrow horizons of gender and genre.

The latest in I.B. Tauris's series of scholarly studies of Who, Love and Monsters joins a somewhat crowded field. But it very much has something new to offer: not quite an out-and-out history of fandom, it nonetheless historically addresses “the evolution of fan discourse from the second half of the 1970s through to today” (p.2). The story it tells is one of how fandom triumphed, and how the trio of show, merchandise and fans – all rather distinct pre-1979 – had basically intersected by the 1990s, setting an agenda for the show's 2005 return. Author Miles Booy draws both on his own experiences within fandom, and on research into the show's interpretations in Doctor Who Weekly and elsewhere. But it's not especially clear where fan Booy ends and academic Booy takes over; the book occasionally seems to lack scholarly coordinates given that it reflects neither on its theoretical framework nor on its methodology. Of course, some may wish that more academic books would proceed without pesky theories and mind-numbing methods, but their absence makes it rather difficult to perceive just how Love and Monsters is engaged in any sort of dialogue with academia. (Instead one gets the impression that media studies scholars – my day job, for the record – are a strange breed of alien beings who write silly things about 'City of Death', fail to understand that fandoms have histories, and mistakenly think that US models of media fandom can account for Doctor Who's British following). And yet, of course, fans can be academics, just as they can be TV showrunners, or entertainment journalists, or comedians, or writers. Doctor Who fandom gets everywhere.

By contrast – and it is a contrast, because Booy repeatedly pits fans against academics – it's very easy to see how this book engages with fandom. Essentially, it takes fandom's side against those daft media studies types, whilst at the same time aiming a few carefully targeted provocations at fan understandings of Who. For my money, this title would sit far more comfortably with a fan-targeted niche publisher rather than in an academic book series called 'Investigating Cult TV'. The fan part of me loved this book; the professional academic in me – though they are really one and the same  – wondered whether it was monstrously lacking in scholarly debate and theory.

But there's no doubting that Booy writes like a dream. Sometimes reading like Lawrence Miles minus the self-parodic vitriol, or an alt-universe Tat Wood, Booy is at his best when wrestling with forensically close readings of Who detail. His comparison of different editions of The Making of Doctor Who is rather wonderful, as is his analysis of the word “knickers” in the Target book range. Other treats include his re-reading of Malcolm Hulke's persona, and his celebration of Jeremy Bentham, not to mention analysing the impact of video releases, and the discovery of a whole new ”semiotic thickness” by fandom (p.116). Booy also productively champions Doctor Who's comic strips, and reads Grant Morrison's 'The World Shapers' as prefiguring The New Adventures and their concerns (p.120-1). Each chapter brings with it a wealth of Proustian madeleines, Doctor Who-style: Cosmic Masque, or Peter Haining, or the 1983 Winter Special. Mind you, there are also some curious omissions: Press Gang is analysed without any mention of Colonel X (p.144), and Booy's analysis of Timewyrm: Revelation is happy to tell us he's name-checked in its pages, but at the same time he offers no discussion of how his social position and affiliations within fandom may have coloured his accounts (p.149). Having been there might confer certain advantages, but a ground-level view can limit insight just as much as it can grant revelations.

Love and Monsters is strongest on the unfolding texture of what it has meant to be a certain sort of Doctor Who fan, but weaker when it comes defining the bigger picture. For one thing, the book's parameters are hazily defended. Why should 1979 be the starting point? (It isn't, in any case; The Making of Doctor Who is analysed as a pre-79 turning point). But if Booy wants to illuminate the “merchandised reading” of Doctor Who, then why not study 1960's Dalekmania? Why not study the World Annuals that generations of fans grew up with in the pre-Weekly world? No entirely convincing rationale for these absences is forthcoming. And for that matter, why is online fandom not really represented? Because Outpost Gallifrey was deleted, and so historical records can't be pored over? Perhaps, but Booy's not-a-history still seems somewhat arbitrary both in its start and end points. Indeed, its author apparently takes a negative view of online fandom – or may be it's a nostalgic lament for the days of paper 'zines – asking: “what will it mean to be a fan when fan status can be... acquired simply by logging on and marking the new episode out of ten?” (p.190). Such a question seems faintly dismissive, as well as assuming that fandom can be acquired in this manner alone. As such, this book brings sharply into focus the need for more work – on pre-1979 fan discourses (recently documented elsewhere by Keith Miller), and on Internet fandom. To my mind, Booy also downplays changes in the TV industry; although the showrunner model of TV production is considered in relation to BBC Wales' Doctor Who (p.189), it could be argued that fandom's eventual triumph depends, in significant ways, upon shifts in how television production has been professionally conceptualised. Studying fan discourse without also studying production discourse means that Booy's story is necessarily partial, and treats only one part of what is likely to be a more complex tale.

But rather than criticising it for what it isn't, Booy's book should be celebrated for what it is: an academic study created out of the skills of close reading that were evidently nurtured by and within Doctor Who fandom. Had I not religiously read Celestial Toyroom as a teenager, or Doctor Who Weekly as a child, I very much doubt I would have become a media studies lecturer in later life. And therein lies another possible history of fandom, one shared by Booy and myself and countless other folk: not the story of fandom in and for itself, but rather as an inspiration – an opening – to other lives, and creations, and professions.

This review contains plot spoilers.

Shada is a rather special book. And this is true not just because it finally brings a lost, unfinished and untelevised story officially into print, but also because this new version is a startlingly transitional, connective tale. It seamlessly bridges different times, incarnations and conceptions of Doctor Who – all rather fitting for an epic story concerned with the creation of a “Universal Mind”.

First, there's the question of authorship. Pondering whether or not Roberts has been faithful to Douglas Adams' screenplay rapidly becomes a pointless exercise: this is not a slavish reproduction, but a careful, creative transformation of different scripts and performances. Rather than a zero-sum game of authorial control, this is a cunning blend of Adams and Roberts, and a veritable meeting of minds.

Certain moments stand out as strongly characteristic of Roberts' authorial persona and concerns – for example, Chapter 9 challenges the representational limitations of 1970s' TV Who, at the same time making new sense of a fairly throwaway moment in Adams' script. Something else which betrays a Roberts-esque preoccupation is the joke that villainous Skagra has a habit of reducing people and worlds to a contemptuous, dismissive score out of ten. Where, I wonder, did Doctor Who fan Gareth Roberts seize on that activity as a comedic motif for sociopathic evil? And Skagra obsessively collects and orders his books, not wishing to touch them with so much as an ungloved hand. Again, what could have inspired Doctor Who fan Gareth Roberts' specific take on Adams' cipher of a baddie? One might almost imagine that this Skagra is a humorous attack on certain strains of fandom: the story-scoring Who fan/collector not so very playfully rendered as monstrous. This fan-villain connection is made even more explicit when Skagra researches his adversary, the Doctor. Whereas the video of Shada includes a brief montage of clips from assorted Tom Baker stories, Roberts has Skagra watching complete “video-texts” of The Androids of Tara, The Power of Kroll, and Creature from the Pit. He curtly dismisses them as evidence of “a 1 out of 10 Time Lord larking about on 2 out of 10 planets” (p.71). Skagra is evidently unimpressed with the Graham Williams era, and his ultimate fate – which I won't fully reveal here – will also be strangely familiar to fans of the BBC television series Doctor Who (p.379).

At the same time that Roberts seemingly reworks Shada as a vehicle for his own loves and his own pet peeves – not to mention fixing the story so it makes much better sense – he also rigorously pastiches Douglas Noel Adams. The DNA of Adams' style is present in many ways: in Roberts' riffing on the obsequious, worshipful character of the Ship, in the rhythmic repetitions of sentence structure, and even in a sprinkling of shocking puns and self-referential tributes. Given that Professor Chronotis owns H.G. Wells' The Time Machine in Shada's 1979 scripts and recorded footage, incorporating real-world bookish references is very much in keeping with the spirit of Adams' story. That said, it doesn't take a vast imaginative leap to guess which SF book is identified and nearly name-checked this time around (p.392). The Panopticon Archives, we eventually learn, have long been home to a particularly appropriate tome... Oh, and the newly renovated end to episode five (or part five, in literary terms) also feels very much like a Douglas Adams-ish gag. It relies on typography, could only really work on the printed page (p.328—331), and is quite possibly the rudest, funniest episode ending Doctor Who has (n)ever had.

As well as skilfully bridging and harmonising the authorial voices of Adams and Roberts, Shada is brilliantly transitional in other ways. It re-writes 1970s' Doctor Who from the perspective of BBC Wales' Who, incorporating cheeky references to the gender-switching Corsair (p.83), to red-robed and henna-tattooed visionaries (p.232) and even to Roberts' own creations, the Carrionites (p.312). It also gives Clare Keightley and Chris Parsons an already much remarked upon romance, in keeping with contemporary Doctor Who's newfound emotional realism. To my mind, Roberts also toys with Shada's status as a story originally bookmarking the end of the Graham Williams era and the conclusion of season seventeen. When Doctor Who next returned to television screens it was as a rather different creature – a John Nathan-Turner/Christopher H. Bidmead confection. And Roberts marks this turning point by picking up on mentions of entropy in the available Shada scripts (e.g. on p.106) and vigorously extrapolating. Thus he works in further references to “accelerated entropy”, with Chris Parsons querying this as a scientific possibility (p.250), as well as developing Skagra's plan to “conquer the threat of entropy” by overcoming the second law of thermodynamics and ensuring there could be “no collapse into eternal darkness and decay” (p.346). Nobody mention it to Christopher Bidmead, but Skagra's evil scheme sounds uncannily like a mission statement for season eighteen, creating a clever subtextual blurring of season seventeen and its successor, and prefiguring the Nathan-Turner/Bidmead era... albeit with Christopher H's pseudo-science (and Logopolis) implicitly repositioned as, well, errrrm, utter madness.

Although the Doctor protests that he isn't free to travel up and down “the Gallifreyan timeline” (p.83), Roberts permits himself just that pleasure, hybridising “classic” and “new” Doctor Who to reinforce the contemporary party line – namely that it's all the same show. But perhaps it's never been quite as wholly unified as this. Shada represents Doctor Who's own “universal mind”: past and present, “classic” and “new”, Adams and Roberts, seasons seventeen and eighteen; all are merged together into one great outpouring of fannish passion and literary grace. This revisitation of a 1979 story will no doubt be a strong contender for the Who book of the year in 2012. Good writing, much like time travel, can achieve strange and beautiful and intricate things.

Gareth Roberts would probably like his readers to consider the possibility that scoring things out of 10 may be a bad idea, and – whisper it – a tad unhealthy. This is a shame, because I feel compelled to tell you that Shada is very definitely a 10 out of 10. Indeed, it's a pity that BBC Books haven't issued a Collector's Edition (its cover designed to resemble The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey), complete with Seal of Rassilon-branded reading gloves. Fandom, in touch with its inner Skagra, might just have enjoyed such merchandising. But no matter, because this retelling of Shada remains a rather special book. No, more than that, it's a very special book.

This big beast of a BBC book calls for a bigger than usual review. However, my A-Z responses don't have to be read in alphabetical order, so feel free to dip in and out as you like. Having said that, entries given here for 'R', 'T', and 'D' are especially worth a browse...

Author: Gary Russell should be applauded for the near-Herculean task of compiling this new, updated edition. Detailing the stories of River Song, Amy Pond and Rory Williams brings home just how complex and incident-packed their lives have become. But Russell nevertheless presents an earnest, coherent account of the Moffatverse, avoiding entries on “reboot” or “universe” for example – thorny topics which might have needed to engage with what, exactly, has unhappened and rehappened in the wake of series five. Steering clear of continuity tangles and controversies allows The Encyclopedia to represent itself as definitive, though in a sense no such thing is ever really possible with Doctor Who. There will always be matters of fan debate and/or production inconsistency, but under Gary Russell's official stewardship you won't find all these "unofficial" debates fully engaged with.

Biggles: Amy Pond's favourite cat, referred to in The Girl Who Waited, gets an entry. But “sexy Mr. Jennings the hot, hot art teacher” is absent. This dialogue is present in The Brilliant Book 2012's “magic moment” from episode 6.10, but must have been cut from the televised version. Despite being published on the same day, then, The Brilliant Book and The Encyclopedia appear to have worked from different sources: the former drawing on shooting scripts for its dialogue extracts, and the latter drawing on Doctor Who as readied for broadcast.

Cover design: The only place we're going to see the ninth, tenth and eleventh Doctors meet is probably in this composited image, echoing an infamous publicity photo for The Three Doctors. This edition of The Encyclopedia thus imagines or visualises an event which lies outside its own remit, given that it only refers to televised Doctor Who from 2005 onwards. In short, and although it's truly glorious, the cover cannot be covered here, along with all sorts of other new Who comic strips and novels. Couldn't entries for the likes of Aberdeen, or Alan [1] and Alan [2] have been cut to make way for some major information from the non-TV worlds of the three (BBC Wales') Doctors? For instance, "Terraphiles" would surely make a more interesting entry than "Terry".

Doctor, the: The entry for this character is shorter than those given for Amy Pond, Rory Williams and River Song. On this evidence, one might conclude that the Doctor is merely a secondary character in 'his' TV show, while the real narrative focus of recent series falls on Amy, Rory and River. Also, why are only three actors listed as playing the Doctor? Shouldn't flashbacks in The Next Doctor and The Eleventh Hour mean that this list ought to be a lot longer?

Eric and Ernie: Occasionally, entries following one after the other resonate in unexpected and playful ways. Whether by accident or by design, Eric and Ernie put one in mind of the recent, award-winning BBC Wales' TV drama depicting Morecambe and Wise, and overseen by Beth Willis and Piers Wenger.

Fact or Fiction?: The Encyclopedia insists that the Doctor compares himself to a fictional character, Arthur Dent, in The Christmas Invasion, using this interpretation to include an entry on Douglas Adams. This ignores the possibility, embraced in many fan reactions, that Arthur Dent is actually a real, non-fictional person in the Whoniverse rather than a character created by Adams. It seems odd that Gary Russell would cut down this ambiguity and playfulness, arguably present in Russell T. Davies's script.

Guard: There are five Guards listed, ranging from Guard [1] in Utopia through to Guard [5] in The Gunpowder Plot (and lots of spoilerific details are included for this Adventure Game, by the way). Curiously, more vicars than guards have featured in Doctor Who's cast lists (see my entry for 'Vicar' below), suggesting that ceremonies of everyday life on Earth – weddings and funerals – have been more central to this version of Who than fantastical, SF stories of imprisonment.

HP Sauce: Gets a mildly spurious entry on the basis that an HP advert is remarked upon in The Idiot's Lantern. Given the BBC's long-standing reticence in relation to real-world brands, this feels almost like product placement. The entry for Henrik's also works in the real-world Cardiff store Howells (where Henrik's was filmed), blurring factual/fictional commerce. Other table sauces and other department stores are available.

Internet: Reviewing the sumptuous paper-and-print version of this book brings home the difficulties of such a venture. Fans receiving it as a Christmas gift will most likely find it's out of date within 24 hours of unwrapping (since it doesn't and couldn't cover the Christmas Special 2011). By contrast, online resources and fan wikis can be updated immediately after TV broadcast, and a wealth of information is out there for free on the web. When I was a child, I treasured my copy of the Programme Guide A-Z (however unhelpful it may have been in some ways), but in a world of digital media and fan sites, I can't imagine The Encyclopedia being treasured in quite the same way by young devotees of the Doctor. I wonder whether we'll ever see a third edition in bookshops, or whether this publishing project will be wholly digital by the time of Who's fiftieth anniversary.

Jones: There are ten Joneses (characters and real people) listed: Jones the computer, Catherine Zeta, Clive, Danny, Francine, Harriet, Ianto, Leo, Tish, and Martha. Likewise there are ten different Smiths: Delia, Jackson, John, Luke, Mickey, Pauline, Ricky, Sarah Jane, Sidney and Verity, making it a Smith and Jones dead heat. For now.

Kovarian, Madame: In an unusually hesitant entry, Russell concedes that it's unclear whether Kovarian is one of the Clerics or just working with them, and that it's equally unclear whether she is dead or alive in the restored, fixed-point-at-Lake-Silencio reality. To my mind, Kovarian seemed rather under-developed as a series-long baddie, and The Encyclopedia's vagueness on the subject does little to counter that view.

Livingston, Ken: Apparently the Mayor of London in Doctor Who (p.200). The incorrect spelling of -ston rather than -stone may represent Gary Russell's revenge on all those journalists who have ever written about Christopher Ecclestone. Either that, or it's a typo that hasn't been corrected for this revised edition (see my entry for 'T'). Personally, I prefer the Ecclestone Vengeance Hypothesis.

Man in Pub: Played by Neil Clench in Turn Left. The Encyclopedia's almost manic insistence on including every credited actor ever to have ever appeared in Doctor Who ever does occasionally lead to rather dull entries. Man in Pub is marginally more interesting than Man [1] and Man [2], but all these entries suggest that there's a difference between facts and knowledge. Facts are bits of decontextualised trivia, but knowledge puts those facts to work within a frame of understanding and within a context of use. Doctor Who: The Encyclopedia fetishises facts rather than forms of knowledge: discuss. With a man in the pub.

New: An exceptionally popular prefix in new Who (if not the most popular). There are some twenty-three entries beginning with “New”, including placc names such as New York and New Zealand. Whether it's New Gallifrey, New Humans, New Skaro or New Earth, novelty has clearly been at an insistent premium since 2005.

Old: Far less popular and less frequently used than its opposite, there are a mere three entries including this prefix. Youth, novelty, and reinvention would seem to be valued implications, whereas age and the past are far less linguistically appealing in BBC Wales' Doctor Who.

Petrichor: Though The Encyclopedia makes a show of sticking to TV Who (c.f. this review's entries on Biggles and References) it does also include some bits of interpretation that were not self-evidently present in the televised episodes. One example of this is the perfume Petrichor, seen in Closing Time, which we are told here was created by Amy and Rory in order to attract the Doctor's attention. Is this Gary Russell's reading of the episode? Was it specified in the shooting script? Because this is a piece of character motivation that isn't clearly given in the story as broadcast.

Question, the: Doesn't get its own dedicated entry, and so can't be that important in the scheme of things.

References: Sticking to story facts means that many entries miss out on significant context. OK, the Anghelides Equation turns up in the fourth Adventure Game, but how about telling us who 'Anghelides' possibly refers to in real life? And, OK, Florizel Street makes an appearance in The Idiot's Lantern, but how about telling us what it refers to in real-world TV history? In-jokes are very definitely out as far as The Encyclopedia's concerned. But as an informational resource, I'd argue this volume would much be handier if it referred outwards a little bit more. Many entries miss out important real-world contexts.

Smith, Sarah Jane: Along with other characters who appear in spin-off shows, the entry for Sarah Jane covers only her BBC Wales' Who appearances, making minimal references to her earlier involvement in the show, and no references to the events of The Sarah Jane Adventures. Clearly some things have to be left out on grounds of space and word count, but when BBC Wales' production teams – Gary Russell among them – have made such an effort to co-ordinate Doctor Who, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures so that they cohere and reference one another, it seems a shame to exclude SJA, especially, from The Encyclopedia (Torchwood has, after all, been the subject of its own comparable reference volume, but the CBBC show never has been, and remains somewhat neglected in terms of reference works or companion volumes).

Typos: It's a capacious book. There's going to be a few typographical errors. But missing a word in the second sentence of the Introduction is rather remiss, especially as the team of fact-checkers and grammar spotters hasn't even been thanked by this stage. And although it's a real nitpick, the Best Typo Award goes to the fact that Gantok plays Lice Chess with the Doctor (p.130). Steven Moffat's version was lively enough, but I bet he's kicking himself now, having read about Lice Chess. Or scratching his head and wondering why on earth he didn't think of it first. (I bet it'll turn up in the series seven finale).

Under henge: or is it underhenge, as per Character Options' action figures?

Vicar: Between Rose and The Wedding of River Song there have been six different vicars in Doctor Who. And, of course, The Encyclopedia lists Vicar [1], played by Lee Griffiths, all the way through to Vicar [6], Paul Whiston. Let's just hope there's never a Time Lord character introduced who's called The Vicar (with many different dog-collared incarnations), or things could get really messy.

Wimey, timey: There are thirteen entries prefaced with “Time”, from Time Agency to Time Windows, including Time Field to cover series five's infamous crack. But there's no entry for “timey wimey”, meaning that The Encyclopedia can't be used to track infamous bits of dialogue like this, or other examples such as “Geronimo!”, “Allons-y”, “Silence will fall”, and “He will knock four times”. Given the ongoing importance of catchphrases to showrunners Davies and Moffat, this is a rather puzzling omission.

X-Factor, The: Restricted to a mention of character Lance Bennett's dialogue, rather than tackled as a real-world competitor for Doctor Who, this is another instance of production and broadcasting contexts being neglected.

Yappy: “A brand of electronic toy dog” from Closing Time, we're told in the spirit of completism. But again it's faux completism, neglecting to mention that “yappy” is also an in-joke at K9's expense (given the Doctor's accompanying comment).

Zero Room: Zero mentions of this, because although Neil Gaiman wanted to name check it in The Doctor's Wife, it didn't make the cut. There's also seemingly zero mentions of “Sexy”, the Doctor's name for the TARDIS, though if this was deemed appropriate for the TV show then it should surely be appropriate for factual inclusion here. However, it isn't referred to in entries dealing with Idris or the TARDIS (and the latter entry also makes no sustained references to The Doctor's Wife). Presumably Gary Russell was given an editorial directive: no hanky panky in The Encyclopedia.

It might be brilliant, but is it canon? This year's Brilliant Book (or next year's, depending on how you look at it) follows on from its predecessor by including a number of features expanding series six's stories as seen on screen. Tom MacRae writes about different colours of Handbot (topaz, avocado, or classic white); Mark Gatiss pens diary entries from young George (revealing the doll's house in his cupboard belonged to his mum); and Neil Gaiman unveils eleven things about the Corsair (including how her seventh incarnation allegedly dealt with Daleks on Clarkor Nine). Stephen Thompson elaborates on Henry Avery's adventures, while Matthew Graham's take on Gangers' rights involves a rather unusual birthday party. These features are a lot of fun, although casting an eye over the list of contributors does reveal a few notable absences. Busy writing the 2011 Christmas Special as this book neared its deadline, Steven Moffat doesn't proffer any additional material based around his five episodes, with those writing duties instead falling to the likes of Rupert Laight, David Llewellyn, Jason Arnopp, and James Goss. It's Arnopp who fills in what happened to the Doctor, Amy, Rory and River in the missing three months between The Impossible Astronaut and Day of the Moon, and Goss who fleshes out Madame Vastra's story. Although these are all interesting, witty pieces, it's still a shame that Moffat's distinctive writer's voice is lost from the “extras” elaborating on his stories. Toby Whithouse is likewise absent from story extensions of his ep, though he does reveal that the Doctor's "god complex", discussed in Rita's dialogue, wasn't originally planned as a thematic development of the episode title (p.129).

The biggest absence, though, is that there are no teasers/spoilers included, unlike last year's infamous Dream Lord featurette. Presumably the fact that series seven's filming is later than usual has meant that scripts are not sufficiently locked-down to allow for such things. Or perhaps the production team doesn't want to license fans' spoiler speculation this year? Whatever the reason, this gap is a real pity: last year's mixture of real and fake spoilers generated much online debate. Indeed, this Brilliant Book is extremely proud of 2011's spoilers, repeatedly telling readers that it featured the first appearance of “the only water in the forest is the river”. This is mentioned in the section for The Doctor's Wife (p.59), and referred to again in relation to A Good Man Goes To War (p.86). Wouldn't one mention have been enough? (Or does this count as editorial lobbying for the return of a teaser/spoiler feature next time?). We also learn that one of the Dream Lord's teasers actually inspired The Wedding of River Song, with “502 but never 503” being a fake spoiler from Gareth Roberts... until Steven Moffat read it, liked it, and worked it into his ep 13 script (see p.148). That's genuine dedication for you: a showrunner who deliberately deconstructs the line between true and false spoilers in an official tie-in publication.

Brilliant Book 2012: And finally: Doctor who? Care to give us any clues?

Steven Moffat: No. [The interview sidebar ends].

You can almost imagine the Digital Spy headline now: “Showrunner Says No Clue on Who”. In fact, Digital Spy is itself gently lampooned across the pages following Moffat's terse negative, where James Goss entertains by creating some Ceefax-style “Analogue Spy” stories. This feature, in particular, blends great design with sparkling content, but it should be said that one of the consistent strengths of the Brilliant Book 2012 – as last year – lies in its beautiful design, layout, and illustrations.

As if singing from the same hymn sheet as Steven Moffat's strategy for getting into a Christmas Special-ly sort of mindset, Dan Abnett cribs from Christmas songs for his chapter titles, as well as scattering a few lyrics through his prose. And this novel can pretty much be thought of as “the other Christmas Special 2011” given that it's about Ice Warriors attacking an Earth colony at their equivalent of Christmas time, while unusually vast amounts of snow are getting in the way of normal life. Abnett could hardly have made this any more Christmassy – there's a lovely coda showing the value of a thoughtful Christmas gift, a truly jaw-dropping seasonal pun at the conclusion of Chapter 1, and the winter wonderland setting is traditionally appropriate. No doubt many a fan will be finding this in their stocking or under the tree come December 25th – and if you wind up being one of those people, you'll be in for a treat.