Exterminate! Regenerate! by John Higgs

This magnificent book is officially out next week but I've just received mine, and a proof copy found its way back in time to me at the end of last year. I couldn’t put it down.

It’s an absorbing, engaging and gossipy history of all of TV Doctor Who (1963 to now), full of new insight and detail. John takes an unflinching, warts-and-all approach, at times detailing bad — sometimes shocking — behaviour by people involved in making the show and also by its fans. Some moments here make for very uncomfortable reading. But while unflinching in addressing these elements, the book on the whole is a joyous celebration and cultural history of a British institution, shrewdly picking out why this knockabout series has had such lasting, wide-ranging impact.

So much is squeezed into 400 pages: it feels both comprehensive and breezy, and therefore bigger on the inside. I love that equal weight is given to each era of the series, and how non-judgmental John (usually) is of any given period: he’s an objective observer, so we can judge for ourselves. 

As a hardcore nerd writing books and for Doctor Who Magazine, and popping up on documentaries, I know quite a lot of the source material used here, which means I’m in awe at how John has come up with something fresh. Repeatedly, I thought, “Oh, I’d not considered it like that before…” It’s a provocative read and I don’t always agree with John’s conclusions. But then that’s part of the fun — a book to grapple with and argue over, and be part of.

The link between the Doctor’s relationship with his granddaughter in the first year of the series and Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop (pp. 52-56) is particularly inspired. If John is right about this, it may well have been influenced by the BBC serial version that ran for 13 episodes 1962-63, with Patrick Troughton as Quilp, Ron Grainer providing music and Betty Blattner supervising make-up. 

The idea of the Time Lords being, effectively, the BBC (introduced p. 107 and returned to several times) is also brilliant. The thing about the snow globe commissioned by director Ben Wheatley (p. 339) is completely new to me and magnificently boggling. 

And I’m really taken by the idea of Doctor Who as “megafiction”, almost as if its huge volume, longevity and reach mean it has passed the point of singularity. Here, feel it … It’s alive.

See also:

• In his book The KLF - Chaos, Magic and the Band who Burned a Million Pounds, John discusses the alchemical magic brought to Doctor Who by original story editor David Whitaker (and, in the edition, cites me)
• Me on Love and Let Die by John Higgs

Socks (2023-25)

Some very sad news. On Monday, the vet called to say that one of our two cats had been brought in, having been hit by a car. Poor old Socks did not survive the encounter. It's been a horrible shock and the kids have been distraught.

Socks, who was not quite two years-old when he died, and his sister Mittens came to live with us in September 2023. They were both manic - "They don't sleep!" we were told by the rescue place from which they came. Since then, Mittens has mellowed but Socks dug into the wild-eyed madness.

There was the time he leapt from the top of the stairs at the main light in our hallway, sending all the bits of the chandelier-effect lampshade everywhere in an almighty crash. There was his habit of biting my feet if I ever stopped moving about. On the morning of New Year's Day, when we were all a little fragile, he brought the Dr a live pigeon and let it go in our bedroom... 

The number of daft things he did. The speed at which he burned through his nine lives.

Then there's all the comfortable, companionable stuff. He liked to curl up in a cardboard box beside me as I worked. He slept each night on the Dr's feet. He had a selection of sunny spots in the garden to laze about in. 

I miss the patter of his feet at a little before 5 pm each evening, in the never-dimming hope that his dinner might just once be early. We all miss him just being around. What a character. What a keenly felt loss.