I've been doing a fair amount of Doctor Who reading of late. There's nothing too unusual in that as, while researching the writing of my factual books, one tends to read through all manner of obscure and arcane tomes ranging from bound copies of 1960s Radio Times to copies of fanzines published in 1979 which had a circulation of about ten. However that is reading for research, and after a time, it becomes a pleasure not to have to read something and to be able to select based on pure choice.

So I was very pleased when Jean-Marc Lofficier came up with the idea for The Nth Doctor (Virgin p/b) - a collection of synopses and notes detailing all the failed attempts to bring Doctor Who to the big screen, or just back to the TV screen, between the show's cancellation by the BBC in 1989 and the BBC/Universal co-production of 1996.

Jean-Marc has arranged the synopses in order of development and so the book takes us through the 1987 Mark Ezra script for Green Light, then through seven scripts and treatments by Johnny Byrne carried out for the same company between 1988 and 1991. When Green Light's option expired, Philip Segal stepped into the frame, and the 1993 Denny Martin Flinn script, and the 1994 scripts by John Leekley and Robert deLaurentis are discussed. There is even a section on Adrian Rigelsford's aborted 30th anniversary show, The Dark Dimension.

The synopses are littered with quotes and examples from the scripts themselves, as well as numerous footnotes in which Jean-Marc explains and points out where and how certain aspects of the storys either related to past Doctor Who continuity or potentially fitted into a continuity, tying together all these never-made scripts into one entity. These sections are clearly marked so that readers can decide themselves whether to go along with Jean-Marc's assumptions, or to ignore them in favour of their own theories.

I really enjoyed this look at what Doctor Who might have been. The Nth Doctor is a nice addition to Virgin's range of non-fiction Who and covers an area about which little was previously known, and, as Jean-Marc acted as advisor to several of the production companies and individuals involved, he is perhaps best placed to chart Doctor Who's rocky road through the first half of the nineties.

The other book I have been reading is Classic Who: The Harper Classics (Boxtree h/b), a look at the Doctor Who work of director Graeme Harper. Harper was at the helm of The Caves of Androzani and Revelation of the Daleks, two eighties Doctor Who adventures, and the book takes us behind the scenes of these productions from Harper's point of view. Thankfully the volume, the third from author Adrian Rigelsford, does not contain the incredible array of inaccuracies, spelling mistakes and interview quotes of unsubstantiated origin which made his The Doctors: Thirty Years of Time Travel totally avoidable, but nor does it contain anything really new, being a lightweight, almost bland read. I covered Revelation of the Daleks myself in Virgin's Handbook for the sixth Doctor, and there are certainly areas which Harper skims over in the recollections printed here. Perhaps this is the problem of only having input from a single person, rather than from several.

***

On the video shelves by the time you read this will be The Leisure Hive, a Tom Baker story that I remember was awaited at the time with almost breathless anticipation.

Producer Graham Williams had moved on at the end of the previous season, and the season finale, Douglas Adams' Shada, had been cancelled by strikes. Now, a new producer, John Nathan-Turner, was promising radical changes to the show, and a shake up of almost every aspect. There was much discussion amongst us mere fans as to what the new titles would be like, whether the new title music would be any good, what might happen to the character of the Doctor and, top of the list of concerns, would the show actually be any good.

Like others I had become somewhat weary of the comedy element that had crept into Doctor Who over the previous couple of years. This culminated in The Horns of Nimon which, although enjoyable - partly as an enjoyable romp but mostly because the Nimon voices were simply excellent - it just didn't have the lasting appeal of, for example, The Talons of Weng-Chiang.

So, there we were, eagerly awaiting the first episode of The Leisure Hive. What we got was, at the time, stunningly good, and it still looks good today. The entire show is full of gorgeous lighting and camera angles. The musical score, courtesy of Peter Howell, soars and punctuates every minute of the action, and the monsters, the Foamasi, are wisely kept in the shadows until the very end when they are revealed to be little more than giant budgerigars. The title music was acceptable - less haunting and more brash than that which we had become accustomed to - and perhaps the only disappointment was the title sequence which did away with the 'traditional' time tunnel in favour of a rather weak space journey with the Doctor's face appearing out of the stars, and a simply horrid 'neon tube' logo.

Unfortunately the cost to achieve the look and style meant that the show went well over budget, and the director, Lovett Bickford, was not to work on Doctor Who again. Imagine what might have happened if the budgets had been increased to accommodate this new visual flair. As I recall, Doctor Who was up against Buck Rogers in the 21st Century at the time, a programme which simply dripped American glitz and glamour. Doctor Who was by comparison a poor relation to this flashy American import and the ratings reflected this. Thankfully, as the eighteenth season progressed, things improved and Nathan-Turner's vision of eighties Doctor Who appeared to have been successful.

The Leisure Hive brings all those memories back and the production stands the test of time. A nice way to start the new year.