THE DOCTOR WHO RATINGS GUIDE: BY FANS, FOR FANS

Galley Press
Journey Through Time

Published 1984 Cover image
SBN0 86136 728 6

Starring the first six Doctors and assorted companions

Reviews

A Review by Finn Clark 23/4/04

This probably looked like a great idea. Take the 1981 Adventures in Time and Space compilation of stories for the first four Doctors, add a few more for Davison and Colin Baker and away you go! Yes, it's another huge anthology of stories and comic strips from the Dr Who annuals. This is a splendid book that I'd recommend to anyone who wants to sample World's output... and it's possibly the most frustratingly wrong-headed anthology in the history of Doctor Who.

Most obviously, its pre-Davison stories are all lifted from Adventures in Time and Space. If you bought that book, there's little incentive to buy this. Okay, it also has some Davison and Colin Baker stories, but in 1984 the original annuals in which those stories had appeared were virtually hot off the presses. It's hard to imagine fandom breaking down doors to buy this book back then, which is a shame since I'd have loved to see an all-new selection of forgotten stories from bygone days.

A further problem with cut-and-pasting from its predecessor is the fact that Adventures in Time and Space wasn't the best possible selection. It made intelligent choices subject to understandable constraints, but three years later an editor could have easily gone back and picked all the good stuff that hadn't made it into that earlier volume. This book feels like a rush job, slapped together as cash-in merchandise rather than the tribute to an era that it could have been. Even the cover is a cut-and-paste of that year's Doctor Who annual (itself the worst World cover ever), while Adventures in Time and Space had a lovely cover painting. In 1984 the Doctor Who annuals had one year left to live. There's no reason why this book couldn't have been the best of the best.

The Adventures in Time and Space stories are:

1967 - Mission from Duh
1969 - Death to Mufl
1975 - Dead on Arrival
1977 - War on Aquatica
1978 - A New Life
1979 - Flashback, The Power, Emsone's Castle, The Planet of Dust

...plus the two The Amazing World of Doctor Who stories from 1976: The Vampires of Crellium and On the Slippery Trail. WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!? One story each for the first three Doctors? I'm also baffled by their Tom Baker choices, especially since they don't go back and add anything from 1980-82! The last two Tom Baker annuals were fantastic, with every single story from 1981 in particular deserving inclusion in a "Best of World" collection. Just because an editor three years earlier felt they were too recent for inclusion, that's no reason why a 1984 anthology couldn't go back and cherry-pick!

Then the 5th and 6th Doctor stories are:

1983 - Danger Down Below, The God Machine, The Armageddon Chrysalis, On the Planet Isopterus, The Haven, The Penalty, Night Flight to Nowhere
1984 - The Oxaqua Incident, Winter on Mesique, The Creation of Camelot, Class 4 Renegade, The Volcanis Deal, The Nemertines
1985 - Day of the Dragon, The Real Hereward, The Deadly Weed, Vorton's Revenge, The Time Savers, The Mystery of the Rings

In other words, only one available story for each of the 5th and 6th Doctors isn't reprinted. I suppose that's understandable for a volume published in 1984, but it still makes it seem kinda pointless. This book was an indiscriminate cut-and-paste of four recently published Doctor Who collections (Adventures in Time and Space and the 1983-85 annuals) aimed at people who didn't buy them first time around. It collects a bunch of stories in one volume. That's its sole merit.

Journey Through Time is a huge illustrated novel-length anthology that's lots of fun and a fascinating taster of a forgotten corner of Doctor Who. Apparently this collection was many American fans' only exposure to the wonders of World Distributors, so in the end it must be counted a Good Thing. At least its Davison stories are decent, I guess. Before sitting down to write a review I didn't really have an opinion on this book one way or the other. However the more I thought about it, the less I liked it.