The Making of Doctor Who (1976)
It’s often stated that Doctor Who fans have become a creative force within the television industry because so much writing about the series concentrates on the people behind the curtain. It may be a cliché, but it’s true. Before the 1973 Radio Times special, with its Dalek plans and actor interviews, and long before Doctor Who Magazine, there was the first edition of The Making of Doctor Who. Written by Malcolm Hulke and Terrance Dicks, and published in April 1972 (almost two years before Terrance’s first novelisation), it’s the very definition of a quietly pivotal book. Just as Terrance’s novelisations inspired generations of readers, so his non-fiction demystified the process of television production.
Terrance revised the book for a new edition in 1976, but he did far more than simply bring it up to date. He reworked some sections and dispensed with others. He kept a self-explanatory chapter entitled ‘Inside a Television Studio’ and replaced the production diary section from Hulke’s The Sea Devils (1972) with his own Robot (1974-75). With this balancing of the fictional and the factual, Terrance subtly encouraged a fresh way of looking at television itself. (How wonderful that, some 23 years after the original publication of The Making of…, he should provide an introduction for The Discontinuity Guide, a book by three young writers who were trying to encapsulate the experience of watching Doctor Who as fans.)