The Books of My Life: The Doctors Are In

I have been watching Doctor Who for some time now. I have seen all of the episodes of the third Doctor, the fourth Doctor, the fifth Doctor, the sixth Doctor, the seventh Doctor, the War Doctor, the ninth Doctor, the tenth Doctor, the eleventh Doctor, and the twelfth Doctor, and am looking forward to seeing the upcoming episodes of the thirteenth Doctor beginning later this year. Graeme Burk's and Robert Smith's The Doctors Are In: The Essential and Unofficial Guide to Doctor Who's Greatest Time Lord (Toronto: ECW, 2015) covers all of the Doctors up to but not including the thirteenth, which continues to be a problem inherent to this and previous books by Burk and Smith given that Doctor Who is an open text.

Some of the same problems that limited my enjoyment of Burk's and Smith's early book, Who is the Doctor, are present again in The Doctors Are In. While I have always accepted each Doctor Who episode for what it is--the social scientist and historian in me--Burk and Smith, on the other hand, like many other scholar fans, don't accept some episodes for what they are and instead rhapsodise normatively about what they would like those episodes to be. Thankfully, Burk's and Smith's polemics are not as evident in The Doctors Are In as they were in Who is the Doctor. Given the historical nature of The Doctors Are In the history quotient is ramped up while the polemic quotient is ramped down a bit making this a somewhat more enjoyable and enlightening read than the previous book for me.