Exterminate! Regenerate! The Story of Doctor Who

Exterminate! Regenerate!, John Higgs' satisfyingly chunky book about Doctor Who was another birthday present for myself, and I cannot tell you how incredibly enjoyable it was to read. This is not about the character of the Doctor, or even about the history of the production, with behind-the-scenes anecdotes and secrets about filming from the supporting cast (though there is some of that content). Rather, this is a discussion and a history of the phenomenon of Doctor Who -- how it was and is created, what it means in broader culture, the multiple changes that have swung through each switch in actor and producer. Higgs comes to the conclusion that after sixty years, Doctor Who has now achieved a life of its own, irrespective of whether the show is even being made and who it's being made by.

Doctor Who was created as an educational family show in 1963 to fill a BBC scheduling gap. Almost all the staff who were approached to make it declined, not wanting to sully their reputations by working on something as grubby as science fiction, so the first director and producer were a young woman and an Indian man -- thus, as Higgs points out, the viewpoint of the outsider was baked into the very creation of the programme. A TV show like this differs from the creation of a character like Sherlock Holmes, the product of one writer's imagination; the Doctor was woven from many different contributions.

At different times, Doctor Who has been an Earth-bound action series; a scary, Gothic, horror show; a philosophical examination of eternity, identity and morality; a charming romp; a twisted, paradoxical story interweaving multiple timelines. The Doctor themself has appeared young and old, female and male, Black and white -- a curly-haired, long scarfed agent of chaos; a hot 'space boyfriend;' a warm, friendly blonde; a cranky old man (okay, that last one a couple of times) and even a borderline psychopath, stretching and transforming the character over and over without destroying their integrity. The adventures screened on television are just the tip of an iceberg of other stories, novelisations, audio narratives and fan fiction, and the concept of Doctor Who is now self-sustaining, with many involved in the current incarnation themselves life-long fans of the show.

Beautifully, Higgs quotes one companion who said that the Doctor has two hearts because one belongs to the character and one to the actor who plays them. I also loved his drawing a parallel between the all-powerful Time Lords and the bigwigs of the BBC, who themselves would put the Doctor 'on trial,' demand the impossible or confine him to Earth (for budgetary reasons). Exterminate! Regenerate! is an insightful, hilarious, absorbing and fascinating overview of a strange and wonderful phenomenon that has long outgrown the control of any of us paltry humans. Long live the Doctor!