If you missed Doctor Who: The Complete History when it came out as a regular partwork, you can now buy the first 20 volumes as digital ebooks — with the rest of the series promised soon.
The series of hardback books charted the behind-the-scenes details of every story for the first 12 Doctors, all the way up to Twice Upon a Time, and beyond, including a few select extended media tales like Shada, Dimensions in Time, and Time Crash, across 90 issues.
The first 20 volumes are available now digitally, for £8.99 each, or all 20 in a bundle together for £99.99.
The rest of the series will be available at a later date.
Note that these are the first 20 volumes in order of Doctor — not in chronological order. Issue #1, for instance, which first came out in 2015, covered Gridlock, Daleks in Manhattan/ Evolution of the Daleks, The Lazarus Experiment, and 42. Because those are Tenth Doctor stories, the issue isn’t included in this debut bundle. Instead, it includes details about serials starring the First, Second, and Third Doctors, spanning An Unearthly Child to The Time Warrior.
People are always sceptical about partworks, but personally speaking, I don’t especially understand why. Sure, some — notably the models where you build something across numerous issues — feel like a rip-off because you’re spending so much on something you could probably get otherwise for a fraction of he overall cost (albeit with partworks, this cost is spread out so doesn’t hit the wallet too hard).
However, the book collections are pretty great: The Complete History came out fortnightly, admittedly a punishing schedule, but each was £9.99 as standard and came with a huge amount of information. In the past, I’ve collected The Ultimate Marvel Graphic Novel Collection and its sister titles, with each graphic novel collecting together issues in hardback that would otherwise be at least £5-10 more in paperback. Similarly, The Agatha Christie Collection, which ran from 2012 to 2015, was comprised of facsimile hardback editions of every Christie book — the whole collection is a prized possession and has allowed me to indulge in something I utterly love.
So, partworks: they’re not all.
You can buy the digital editions of Doctor Who: The Complete History over at PocketMags.
