The Unsilent Library: browsing the catalogue

The Unsilent Library, edited by Simon Bradshaw, Antony Keen and Graham Sleight (SFF Foundation' £10) is dangerous bedtime reading. Anyone prone to academic treatment of Doctor Who will probably enjoy it, but be prepared to be kept awake by new ideas. This particularly goes for technocratic humanists brought up by the 'old series' in the 1970s. Going to Una McCormack's essay on Gridlock (the episode which reconciled me to the tenth Doctor), we are bid to read Foucault, and probably advisedly given how my own quasi-instinctive understanding of society would probably be dismissed as 'carceral' by Foucauldians. Watch out for much chewing over the role of quasi-Messianic Time Lords in a non-metaphysical universe. This is a book on Doctor Who, as showrun by Russell T Davies, to develop opinions and change minds. It's tremendous that the series can inspire books like this; there's a thriving school of acafandom now concerned with Doctor Who, and long may this continue to be the case.