This weekend the BBC organised the first Official Doctor Who Convention since the series returned to TV screens in 2005 and the biggest Doctor Who event the Corporation has run since the stately grounds of Longleat hosted the celebration of the show's twentieth birthday in April 1983.

Very different to many fan run conventions, the announcement of the event had a mixed response with some fans, with some criticising the entry price and the lack of inclusion of many items that have now become a integral part of many alternative conventions. But an official BBC event is always going to be a very different beast, with different aspirations and objectives than an event purely ran by fans. Each type of event has its own own unique selling points and each will appear to different type of fan. A BBC event will always be much bigger than others purely because it is an official BBC event. Many will attend who would never dream of going to an alternative convention with the event appealing to a far wider circle of fans. So it is bound to lose some of the intimacy that many smaller conventions process.

The unique advantage the BBC has is its ability to get all the stars of the current series to attend along with many of the people who actually make episodes we all know and love. The BBC event has been described as Doctor Who Confidential Live and while that may be a good way to describe it it should not be taken as a negative. Where else could you get the three main stars onto a sofa and see them discuss their feelings for the show alongside the main writer? Where else could you get a chance to see the man behind all the Special Effects in the series since 2005 recreate some of the explosions and bangs and blasts we all know and love? Where else could you seen Silurian Masks being created before your eyes and get a step by step description of the restoration of a Classic episode by the guys who actually do this for a living.

The Panels:

The main reason for many attending the convention was the chance it gives you to see the current stars of the show in the flesh, and the convention didn't disappoint. The Meet the stars panel comprised of Executive Producers Caroline Skinner and Steven Moffat, alongside the current TARDIS team of Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill, all greeted with tumultuous applause. The affection and warmth shared between the team shone through and kept the audience entertained with tales from the set. Matt Smith is a true star and gave several fans memories they will treasure forever, including one fan who was treated to a hug not only from the Doctor, but the entire TARDIS team , and the young Eleventh Doctor look-a-likes who were treated to their very own Jammy Dodger from their doppelgänger on the stage.

Questions from the audience covered many topics with the team remaining tight lipped about what might be coming up in the future. Ask me something I can answer Moffat pleaded at one point.

The Second Panel of the Day took a look at the making of an episode that was actually filmed inside the Millennium Centre. The Girl Who Waited used several locations around the building and writer Tom MacRae discussed the way he concieved the episode and his annoyance that the Handbots had not yet been made into a toy. He was joined onstage by producer Marcus Wilson who gave an insight into the problems in making the episode and Millennium FX Director Neill Gorton who explained how the ageing of Amy was achieved.

The final panel took a look at the evolution of an entire series with Caroline Skinner returning to the stage to talk about how a series is devised. Expertly chaired by Barnaby Edwards, Skinner was joined by Casting Director Andy Pryor, Production Designer Michael Pickwoad, Director of The Rebel Flesh, Julian Simpson and Director of Photography Stephan Pehrsson who took time to explain their own contribution to the series.

Before the Panel ended an audible gasp when around the theatre when a special preview of Series Seven was shown.

Costumes:

The costume display featured many items recently seen at the Doctor Who Experience in London. Several Doctor and Companion Costumes were on display along with monsters from both the current and classic series. A cabinet was filled with Sonic Screwdrivers and TARDIS keys from throughout the years.

Special Effects:

Danny Hargreaves is the man responsible for all the Special Effects on Doctor Who, and has been since the series returned in 2005. His session was a treat for all concerned, getting off to an explosive start when, halfway through the introduction, the entire west wall of the theatre appeared to explode as a Dalek glided across the stage.

Hargreaves demonstrated many of the devices used in the show, explaining how bullets appear to explode on impact and how snow is made before allowing one young fan to play at being the Doctor and to destroy a Cyberman.

Prosthetics demonstrations:

Millennium FX were based in the main lobby where attendees were treated to live demonstrations of the techniques used in making some of the monsters and villains seen on the show.

The displays alternated with the Doctor Who restoration team explaining some of the painstaking work that goes into restoring classic episodes for DVD release.

Other Guests:

Away from the main hall several guests from the recent series of Doctor Who were available for autographs including Simon Fisher Becker and Mark Sheppard. It's a pity more could not have been made of these guests as I know how entertaining both can be and what a valuable contribution they could have made to any panel.

The Event:

The Convention was clearly a success with BBC Worldwide selling all 3000 tickets in advance of the event. Although not confirmed, plans are in place for more events in the months leading up to the shows 50th Anniversary.

Most who attended found the event a unique, exciting chance to see behind the scenes, and to meet the stars of a series they love so much. One of the most wondrous things about being a Doctor Who fan who grew up with the classic series is to see the shear joy and delight on children faces as the magic of the current series bewitches them just as it has done for their predecessors over many years.

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.

Gallifrey One is one of North Americas longest running conventions, now in its 23rd year. This years event was the biggest ever with 3,183 attendees, that's up from 2186 last year and 1595 the year before.

The event is a must for Doctor Who fans, boasting some tremendous guests, some great conversations and a chance to totally immerse yourself in the world of your favorite TV programme for a whole weekend. After 23 years the event has a lot of regular attendees, and in other hands may have become a trifle cliquey. Not so with Gallifrey One where all are made to feel incredibly welcome, whether attending for the first or the twenty first time.

The convention hall is packed choc-a-block with attendees, many dressed as their favorite character from the series. It can be a bit over-whelming, especially to an inhibited Brit, to see the effort and enthusiasm that attendees put into the making of their costumes. But the quality of some of the costumes is incredible. Just a short walk through the lobby reveals life sized Daleks, a replica K-9, several hundred Doctors of all incarnations, and even a massive Adipose.

There were panels on a wide variety of issues, from chats with new series Directors, to discussions on Why we Collect Action Figures?. Most moving were the talks on Nicholas Courtney and Elisabeth Sladen from Lucy Chase Williams and Amy Krell, two people who were deeply involved with the two stars and who shared some of their most personal memories with the convention.

For those who wanted to spend, there was a well stocked Dealers room, and for those who just wanted to watch there favorite programme, two screening rooms showed a continuous stream of episodes from both the classic and the new series.

A further room showed off the TARDIS console from the TV Movie, freshly restored and spruced up ready for the convention.

The Guests

A convention lives or dies by the quality of its interviews, and Gallifrey One had some tremendous guests who provided some very entertaining panels. Friday was mainly dedicated to single guest interviews, while Saturday and Sunday saw guests grouped together in various combinations.

It was a delight to see the cast of the 1996 TV Movie reunited. Producer Philip Segal told how Paul McGann turned the role down several times before eventually being persuaded to join the cast. McGann said he only really realized the enormity of what he had taken on when his agent, Janet Fielding, was collared by a fan during the first day of filming in Vancouver. Also appearing were Daphne Ashbrook and Yee Jee Tso. The only gremlin of the weekend was when Eric Roberts, who played The Master in the Movie, went AWOL for the panel. Question of the weekend came from the audience member who asked if he was absent as he was to busy 'dressing for the occasion'.

Other panels included Life with Doctor Who, where members of the cast of the revived series shared some of their feelings on how working on Doctor Who has affected their lives. Camille Coduri told how she was approached in the street by a man asking her to slap him, Caitlin Blackwood told of how her teacher has asked her to autograph a figure of Amelia Pond, and Simon Fisher-Becker told of how he turned up for his audition totally dressed in blue.

Highlight of the weekend though must surely be the Saturday Panel looking back at Doctor Who in the Sixties. William Russell, Maureen O'Brien and Waris Hussein held the audience spellbound with their tales of Doctor Who in its earliest days from three people who were actually there. Excellently moderated by Gary Russell the memories were crystal clear as they told of the struggles to get the series made against a climate of hostility from many in positions of power in the BBC.

Hussein paid tribute to Doctor Who creator, Sydney Newman, saying he deserved a credit on every episode. They told of life working with William Hartnell, of how he had to be persuaded against his better judgement to take the role. Maureen O'Brien told of how her job had been to shake Hartnell out of his moods and to make him laugh.

Sunday featured a three screenings where guests were asked to do a live commentary on one of their episodes. The highlight was Richard Senior talking about Let's Kill Hitler. His enthusiastic comments and delight in the show shone through making a very entertaining 45 minutes. By contract the commentary on the TV Movie was rather muted, with the guests getting rather to much caught up watching the show they hadn't seen for several years, than talking about it.

The Entertainment

Friday evening guests were treated to a double bill of Louise Jameson. First up was a short 15 minute film. Cleaning Up by the Guerrier Brother is a short thriller staring Jameson along with Mark Gatiss, which was received very warmly by the audience.

The lady herself then appeared in person in her one woman play Pulling Faces, written by Helen Goldwyn and directed by Nigel Fairs. Jameson's performance was a tour de force as she inhabited the characters in the world of Joanne Taylor, an actress who has reached the age were she needs to seriously consider a face lift. Based on events in Jameson's life, the play is funny, entertaining and deeply moving telling the story of how life's priorities change with experience. Each character is real and well defined and perfectly realized by Jameson who got a tremendous reaction from the performance. Perhaps the fact the play was being performed just a few miles from plastic surgery central in Beverly Hills helped define the issues even more.

Saturday night the entertainment was provided in the form of the Masquerade, where sketches and presentations based on the show are showcased. Daphne Ashbrook performed three songs from her new album and Comedian Charlie Ross gave a new take on The Sound of Music.

---

Overall it is a tremendous weekend which also raised over $7000 for the Students Run LA charity. Next year promises to be even bigger and better as the convention celebrates the show's 50th Anniversary. Be there if you possibly can.

Video Report from Craveonline

This review contains plot spoilers and is based on the UK preview of the episode.

Steven Moffat's second Christmas Special returns to his first love as a Doctor Who writer: the theme of motherhood. Rather than that eerie question “are you my mummy?” instead we get young Cyril Arwell's stubborn assertion that “mummy always comes” to the rescue. And in a spot of gender amending, the Doctor further sums up events in two words: “Mother Christmas!”. But before we get to the maternal love-in – with the “basecode of nature” used as justification for assorted meanings of plucky, fierce mother's love – this episode has plenty of (forested) ground to cover. For one thing, its title is misleading three times over: the wardrobe isn't actually a wardrobe, the widow isn't ultimately a widow, and the Doctor isn't quite himself either – he's the caretaker, hiding from his own legend, and keeping away from old friends.

This big festive episode also seems rather like the Who equivalent of a Christmas tree groaning under the weight of years' worth of different decorations – lots of shiny things are there on display, some of which you don't like, and some of which don't match. But if you look carefully, you'll always find something to delight. An impact suit that repairs its occupant; naturally-occurring Christmas trees; dancing chairs; a wintry forest wrapped in a TARDIS-blue gift box; wooden monsters who aren't really monsters. Androzani Major. Bill Bailey in a spaced-out hazard suit. Come on, admit it, that golden crown of fandom is starting to tingle and glow with life force. This is traditional rather than transitional Christmas Who fare, despite the fact that Piers Wenger hands over here to new queen bee exec-producer Caroline Skinner.

My favourite shiny bauble is the fact that at about 44 minutes in, and after a quiet moment where the geodesic sphere spaceship lifts off, we suddenly cut to what appears to be a 'clean' version of the end credits' time vortex (at least, we do in the “rough cut” that I'm reviewing, so fingers crossed that this makes it into the Christmas Day broadcast). Rather than the production team's names whizzing by in the smallest font in the universe, though, we pull back to see the Doctor watching through a triangular window. It's not the end credits at all, crashing in at the wrong moment, it's the time vortex that Madge is selflessly piloting them through. But just for the merest split second you can't help but imagine you're seeing the eleventh Doctor gazing out at the end of a Doctor Who episode. It's a great visual, as Arabella Weir's Billis might say.

Sadly, there is at least one major missed opportunity. It's a shame that after series six has focused on an under-developed and under-explored mother-daughter relationship, the values of being a mum can seemingly only be explored while Amy Pond is off the stage. Of course, all are well in the Arwell clan by episode's end, but I'd argue that Madge (wonderfully played by Claire Skinner) nevertheless gets more character development, and more plot beats surrounding her motherhood, than poor Amy Pond received in an arc's worth of material. It's as if Moffat can only really focus on developing wholly believable characters, and properly writing the mum thing, when he's not preoccupied with series arc plot-twists, or with which episode goes where in the run. Having said that, even the Doctor's emotional journey in this episode occasionally doesn't quite ring true: at certain moments he's clueless with feelings, but at other times he can effortlessly find just the right thing to say to Madge (“they are going to be sad later”). Part-time emotional intelligence guru, and part-time bumbler, perhaps this is a portrayal aiming for the “wise fool”, or the genius-child who can't understand his own feelings, but even so it still sometimes feels jarringly uneven.

If motherhood is a key presence here then so too, oddly enough, is water. This is a very wet Christmas Special. Following on from River and the Ponds, this time out we get “frightful” acid rain, a lemonade tap, a water pistol used as a carol-singing deterrent, and “humany wumany” happy crying in the Doctor's Christmas homecoming. Across the hour we move from a bombastic Star Wars-meets-James Bond pre-credits sequence (surely designed to make the audience sit up and pay attention) to a domestic Doctor-greets-the-Ponds ending. The latter could hardly be any less special effects' intensive, and you definitely have to pay careful attention to get it, as finally a glistening smear of “happy crying” appears below Matt Smith's left eye. People can't resist a door, and neither can the Time Lord as he crosses the threshold into Amy and Rory's home. For the eleventh Doctor, an ordinary front door can be just as much of a dimensional portal as his present to the Arwells – this time, it's a door which transports him into a new world of emotional wonder, and a newfound humanity.

The gimmicky wimmicky of “sciency wiency” workbenches or “humany wumany” crying might be wearing just a tiny bit thin by this point, I suspect, but no doubt it'll see us through to the forthcoming anniversary-wersary. Hold on to your hats, then, because the eleventh Doctor is growing up before our very eyes. He's very much linked to the children Lily and Cyril via his repeated “I know!” early on in this story, and he fails to be a proper (adult) caretaker, unlike Madge who he thanks for “taking care” of him. He even gets told off for not giving Amy and Rory a status update on his vital signs, with Matt Smith playing the “yes, Mum” scene to chastened perfection. But by the time the end-credits fly past, this Doctor is a little bit more of a time-travelling adult, and just a fraction closer to being a Time Lord grown-up. And the possibility of a return visit to Madge Arwell's life has also been deftly sketched in.

This Christmas Special isn't really about Narnia, or portals, or wooden aliens. All these things are, after all, just the decorations on the tree. Underneath the glitter of Farren Blackburn's direction (solid on The Fades and solid here), and underneath the glitz of Stephan Pehrsson's ongoing great work as DoP, this episode's roots and branches are infused with the magic of maternal care. Even the Doctor is “weak” in comparison, it would seem. Yet the TV “mothership” – Doctor Who itself – continues to be strong, even towards the end of a year where its spin-offs Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures were either put on hold or came to an end, and where Doctor Who Confidential was abruptly consigned to television history. So many unhappy realities getting in the way of the fiction. Nobody should be alone at Christmas, but this year BBC Wales' Doctor Who is notably more alone in the schedules without all of its spin-off family, and if I were to shed a metaphorical tear for that fact then it'd be sad crying, not happy crying, which would glisten damply at the end of Who's 2011.

One of the results of 2011’s split-season of Doctor Who was that there were double the number of “event” episodes – that is, season-openers and season finales. Murray Gold draws attention to this in his liner notes: “There were four musically challenging stories (first and last episodes always need a certain amount of extra impact).” I for one am very glad that Murray rose to this challenge wholeheartedly, because it has led to an outstanding album packed with a broad range of moods and genres (yet still following a single story arc), and one that will be a favourite of mine for a long time.

Disc One kicks off in funky nonchalance with some familiar chords performed by Murray himself on electric guitar. A casual but charged percussive riff joins in, before the whole orchestra explodes into a thrillingly revamped version of the Eleventh Doctor’s theme – “I Am The Doctor In Utah”. With track two, “1969”, we find ourselves in tense, mysterious “high noon” territory. The solo trumpet and the cloudy guitar dissolve into a magical, pained vocal as the Doctor begins to regenerate.

Another standout track is “Help Is On Its Way”. The musical tone of these first two episodes is very consistent, and here the guitar returns with a swinging riff, while violas and violins drive forward with that familiar semiquaver figure that dates back to Series Three and “All The Strange Strange Creatures”. Somehow swanky, somehow sleazy, the brass instruments slide and swing their way in, as we are introduced to Canton (the younger). The rest of the track is a subdued but forceful string and synth underscore, building to several peaks.

One of my very favourites, “I See You Silence” is the music from when River is cornered at the top of the skyscraper. The repetitive, taunting guitar motif at the start of the track perfectly echoes Canton’s sing-song call of “Doctor Song!” The track is a fuller mix than the version used in the episode, and features a funky, guitar-augmented version of the forthcoming “Majestic Tale”.

The Curse of the Black Spot’s offering is excellent; an ominous start, some swashbuckling action and an enchantingly sweet but deadly vocal performance as the Siren by Halia Meguid. Add to that some vigorous fiddling by Eos Chater, and you’ve got yourself the perfect score to a pirate romp.

The Doctor’s Wife also has a good selection of tracks, which work perfectly in the episode, which is perhaps surprising given the recording circumstances explained in Murray’s notes. I love the magical, lilting waltz of “My TARDIS”, but I was slightly disappointed that it was cut short, without venturing into the guttural cello and drum-machine vamp from Amy and Rory’s chase through the TARDIS corridors. I can’t complain though – there is enough terrific material packed into this album to more than make up for it!

That said, there is a lot of material from The Rebel Flesh and The Almost People – perhaps too much. The tracks from these episodes are all quite similar-sounding, and not especially memorable. That’s on first listen though – given time, I have a suspicion I will grow to love these tracks just as much as the others. The last track from this story, “Loving Isn’t Knowing”, is a suite containing some really great music: the vulnerable love theme with tearful violin; the gorgeously simplistic yet soaringly lyrical return to “Amy’s Theme”; the shocking and heart-wrenching music from the realisation that Amy is a Ganger; and the terrifying Madam Kovarian music as the real Amy wakes up on Demons’ Run.

The music from the mid-series finale, A Good Man Goes To War, is wonderful. It’s hard to believe that this is not the full orchestra and just a “good sized band”. “River’s Waltz” is gentle and sentimental, played on a detuned piano, here with more instruments accompanying it. At the end of this episode, when River reveals her identity to the Doctor, we aren’t told or shown immediately what the revelation is. However, from Murray’s music, we know it’s not a bad thing. As realisation dawns on the Doctor, gentle piano and cello melodies blossom into a beautiful, flowing tune, deepening in grandeur with horns until, as the Doctor inexplicably disappears in the TARDIS, out comes a majestic and moving reprise of the “I Am The Doctor” motif. The final track on this disc, “Melody Pond”, begins with a vocal version of River’s theme as heard in The Impossible Astronaut. The second half of the track is the theme that has accompanied River throughout the series; an emotional vocal with a repeating string pattern, ending with a soaring development and orchestral flourish.

Disc Two begins with tracks from Let’s Kill Hitler. “Growing Up Fast” is brilliantly nostalgic and frivolous, painting the perfect picture of the childhood of Amy, Rory and Mels. With its bouncing acoustic guitars, jumpy percussion and nursery-rhyme melody, it almost sounds as if it could be a theme tune from children’s TV.

“The Blush Of Love” is rich and gorgeous. It sounds like a film score – the attention to detail is remarkable (I suspect credit is due here largely to Ben Foster’s orchestration). I particularly like the way the melody passes between the oboe, flute and violin.

“Terror of the Reich” begins with a bombastic Nazi march. The second half of the track is excellent – a little bit Bond. The bopping drum machine and quirky woodwind perfectly capture the twee-ness of a robot operated by lots of miniature people!

Mark Gatiss’ Night Terrors was the first time we heard the “Tick Tock” theme, presented mainly instrumentally in this episode. There’s something very scary about simple child-like music, particularly as it gradually, barely-perceptibly, gets faster throughout the track, as if it’s liable to go out of control.

The sound-world of The Girl Who Waited was one of slightly out-of-tune electronic sounds, as exemplified in the first track, “Apalapucia”. This was perfect for the strange, clinical setting and the slipping of time-streams. “Amy’s Theme” returns in “36 Years”, in a reflective acoustic guitar version. I can’t hear this track without remembering the glum-looking Rory skipping along to it!

If you thought the sounds of The Girl Who Waited were weird, they’re nothing compared to The God Complex. Murray says in his notes that they decided to go for an electronic score to “emphasise the crooked angles and giddy mixture of merriment and terror portrayed in the episode”. This definitely worked. The result is disorienting, very scary, slightly ironic and just fantastic. That said, I don’t think the Doctor Who Fan Orchestra will be attempting it any time soon!

Gareth Roberts’ Closing Time was a superb follow-up to 2010’s The Lodger. Motifs from the earlier episode returned, such as “You Must Like It Here”, which shows up in “Stormageddon, Dark Lord Of All”, and “Thank You Craig”, which is echoed in “Fragrance”. The sound of Closing Time is much more filmic, and somehow weightier; it really feels as if we are revisiting the world of The Lodger but with a fresh approach, and, of course, the shadow of the Doctor’s oncoming death looming over.

The final episode of the season, The Wedding of River Song, opened with a bang. A montage showing “all of time” happening at once was accompanied by an epic rock track, “5:02 PM”, featuring a loud choir, electric guitars and saxes. In “Forgiven”, the theme from “Melody Pond” (also foreshadowed in Series Five’s “A River Of Tears”) comes to a breathtaking resolution, breaking into a reprise with similar orchestration to “The Sad Man With A Box”. “Time Is Moving” is a funky, jazzy riff on the Eleventh Doctor’s theme, with locomotive-style percussion (appropriate to its usage in the “train-office” scene near the beginning of the episode). The episode’s namesake track is a final reflection on River’s theme, building to darkly emotional horns and gentle flutes and glockenspiel. After a rock interlude, we hear a brief nod to Amy’s child theme, on a beautiful solo flute (in fact lifted from “Amy’s Starless Life”).

And yes – the very last track was put in at the special request of the many Twitter users who asked for it. Murray is quite right – it’s a fitting end to the album, and encapsulates all we love about the Eleventh Doctor and his adventures.

The overall tone of this album is much subtler than any of the previous Doctor Who soundtrack releases. It covers a wide spectrum, but it definitely feels consistent. The music of Doctor Who has been becoming more and more filmic since 2005, and this album is the absolute pinnacle on that front. I look forward hugely to hearing what Murray Gold comes up with for the next series!

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.