THE DOCTOR WHO RATINGS GUIDE: BY FANS, FOR FANS
Page five

After hopping about from site to site, the Guide needed a permanent home. Unfortunately, Robert was also hopping about from site to site (and country to country), so hosting his own site wasn't possible. Trina Short generously offered the use of pagefillers.com/dwrg, which had enough space to handle the Guide's rapidly growing requirements.

The Guide also found fame when it became the first site to be reviewed in Doctor Who Magazine's then new column on fan web sites, which gave it a very positive review. The number of reviews continued to grow, passing the incredible 5000 mark on March 30 2004.

With the casting of Christopher Eccleston as the ninth Doctor, the Guide's logo needed to be redesigned once again. However, the sum total of Robert's graphic design skills was zero. Rob Matthews stepped in and designed the following logo in July 2004:

You'll notice the "Victorian outfit" assumption and the Telemovie font meant this dated fairly quickly. However, Rob Matthews was on the ball again and updated the logo in March 2005. Just as the TV series regenerates, so too does the Guide.

Poor Rob Matthews had to redesign the logo not long afterwards, yet again. And yet again he did a superb job. He actually designed this shortly after the 2005 season was completed, but Robert felt that the Eccleston logo needed some more time in the sun, so it wasn't unveiled until the Guide's return from haitus in January 2006.

Eventually, Tennant stepped down and Matt Smith took over. Rob Matthews once again designed the logo and, once again, we waited until the eleventh Doctor had appeared onscreen to unveil it in April 2010.

This logo had to be tweaked slightly in November 2010 because, as Rob Matthews put it, "It's become highly conspicuous that the ol' logo features ten Doctors, plus the actor Matt Smith."

In August 2013, the Guide was faced with a new problem: how to handle reviews of books that Robert had written. As Robert has several Doctor Who books out, it was probably only a matter of time before one of them got reviewed. To avoid any conflict of interest, Matthew Kresal was brought in as associate editor and given complete freedom and veto power over any review of one of Robert's books. Robert has absolutely no say in the matter, which is how it should be. Matthew can be emailed at timdalton007 at yahoo dot com.

In August 2014, the miracle occurred yet again: Peter Capaldi took over as the Doctor. And with another new Doctor came another fabulous logo by the fabulous Rob Matthews. How does he keep doing it?

In October 2018, the show regenerated, so it was time for the Guide to as well. Matt Harris provided the logo this time, giving us something different that was still recognisable. A bit like this TV show you might be familiar with...

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