POTTER PICKS

Actor Harry Melling (Dudley Dursley) is a grandson of Patrick Troughton.

Actor Alfie Enoch (Dean Thomas) is a son of William Russell.

TARDIS LIBRARY

Fictional books in the Doctor Who universe

Bartholomew’s Planetary Gazetteer

Read by Romana on Gallifrey (The Ribos Operation)

The Black Orchid by George Cranleigh

Published in 1925, an account of Cranleigh’s travels. The Doctor thought it was fascinating (Black Orchid, Earthshock)

The Book of the Old Time

The official history of the early Time Lords (The Deadly Assassin)

The definitive work on the Weeping Angels (actual title unknown) The only book ever written about the Angels. Written by a madman, barely readable, bit boring in the middle, no pictures (The Time of Angels)

Everest in Easy Stages

Tibetan text read by the Fourth Doctor in the hope of discovering tips on how to climb out of the Chloris Pit (The Creature from the Pit)

Fighting the Future by Joshua Naismith

Donna Noble’s 2009 Christmas present for Wilf (The End of Time)

Flora and Fauna of the Universe by Professor Thripsted

According to the Fourth Doctor, it listed Usurians as poisonous fungi (The Sun Makers)

The French Revolution, author unknown

Barbara Wright lent this history book to Susan Foreman who immediately noticed inaccuracies. Not long after, Ace picked up a similarly titled tome in the very same school (An Unearthly Child, Remembrance of the Daleks)

‘An illustrated guide to the Swampie tribe’

How the Doctor described a heavy, bound book he found on the third moon of Delta Magna, ‘A sort of Bayeux tapestry with footnotes.’ Atrociously written but good pictures (The Power of Kroll)

A Journal of Impossible Things by Verity Newman

The story of a woman who fell in love with a man from the stars, based on the diaries of Joan Redfern (The End of Time)

The Last Chance for Man by Charles Grover

Environmental treatise by the politician and secret leader of Operation Golden Age (Invasion of the Dinosaurs)

The Legend of Pandora’s Box

Amy Pond’s favourite book as a child, and the basis of the Pandorica myth (The Pandorica Opens)

Melody Malone

A pulp detective novel from the 1930s which was in fact a message to the Doctor from his wife, River Song (The Angels Take Manhattan)

Monsters from Outer Space

Read by Ian while the Doctor fiddled with the Time Space Visualiser. Ian described it as good, but a bit far-fetched (The Chase)

The Origins of the Universe by Oolon Coluphid

The author got it wrong in the first line according to the Doctor, who wondered why he hadn’t asked someone who saw it happen (Destiny of the Daleks)

The Secret Books of Saxon

Containing instructions for how to achieve the Master’s resurrection. Never published (The End of Time)

The Sibylline Oracles

A series of texts compiling the prophesies of the Sibyl, founder of the Sibylline Sisterhood of Pompeii. The thirteenth book foretold the Doctor’s arrival (The Fires of Pompeii)

Teach Yourself Tibetan, author unknown

A book read by the Fourth Doctor on Chloris so that he could translate Everest in Easy Stages (The Creature from the Pit)

The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey

Dating back to the days of Rassilon and originally kept safe in the Panopticon Archives, this dangerous tome was stolen by Chronotis and brought to 20th-century Earth (Shada)

Real books in the Doctor Who universe:

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (Chapman and Hall, 1843)

During an 1869 reading of his ghostly little book in Cardiff, Charles Dickens was interrupted by a Gelth-possessed corpse (The Unquiet Dead)

Death in the Clouds by Agatha Christie (Collins, 1935)

The Doctor owned an edition published in the year five billion (The Unicorn and the Wasp)

Doctor in the House by Richard Gordon (Joseph, 1952)

In Mrs Smith’s boarding house, the Doctor picked up a discarded copy of the novel that spawned the film, radio and TV series (Remembrance of the Daleks)

The Doctor’s Dilemma by George Bernard Shaw

The Doctor read Shaw’s play, first staged in 1906, as he and Mel waited to be served in the milk bar that Ace was working in (Dragonfire)

Gutenberg Bible

The first major book produced from movable type on a printing press. Several of the 180 original copies were sold by Count Scarlioni to fund his time-travel experiments (City of Death)

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (Little, Brown, 2002)

The Doctor speed-read a copy in Rose’s flat, commenting on its sad ending (Rose)

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

One of the three Books of Knowledge of Ravolox (The Trial of a Time Lord: The Mysterious Planet)

Monty Python’s Big Red Book (Methuen Publishing, 1971)

Just one of the books found in the planet-sized Library along with ‘whole continents’ of Jeffrey Archer and Bridget Jones (Silence in the Library)

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

(William Collins and Sons, 1926)

Lady Clemency Eddison’s favourite Agatha Christie thriller (The Unicorn and the Wasp)

The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens

(Chapman & Hall, 1870)

The last, and incomplete, work of Charles Dickens. After helping defeat the Gelth, Dickens planned to work aliens into the novel. (The Unquiet Dead)

A Textbook of Botany for Students by Amy F.M. Johnson BSc (Allman and Son, 1902)

Stumbled upon by the Fifth Doctor while in Cranleigh Hall (Black Orchid)

The Time Machine by H.G. Wells (William Heinemann, 1895)

The Seventh Doctor’s reading matter while returning the Master’s remains to Gallifrey. The Eighth Doctor unsuccessfully tried to pick up where he left off after leaving San Francisco in the year 2000. (Doctor Who) Professor Chronotis also relaxed with a paperback edition in Shada.

UK Habitats of the Canadian Goose by H.M. Stationery Office