Doctor Who_ Wonderland - Mark Chadbourn [0]
Mark Chadbourn
First published in England in 2003 by
Telos Publishing Ltd
61 Elgar Avenue, Tolworth, Surrey KT5 9JP, England
www.telos.co.uk
ISBN: 1-903889-14-6 (standard hardback)
Wonderland © 2003 Mark Chadbourn
Foreword © 2003 Graham Joyce
Icon © 2003 Nathan Skreslet
ISBN: 1-903889-15-4 (deluxe hardback)
Wonderland © 2003 Mark Chadbourn
Foreword © 2003 Graham Joyce
Icon © 2003 Nathan Skreslet
Frontispiece © 2003 Dominic Harman
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
'DOCTOR WHO' word mark, device mark and logo are trade marks of the British Broadcasting
Corporation and are used under licence from BBC Worldwide Limited.
Doctor Who logo © BBC 1996. Certain character names and characters within this book
appeared in the BBC television series 'DOCTOR WHO'. Licensed by BBC Worldwide Limited
Font design by Comicraft. Copyright © 1998 Active Images/Comicraft
430 Colorado Avenue # 302, Santa Monica, Ca 90401 Fax (001) 310 451 9761/Tel (001) 310 458 9094 w: www.comicbookfonts.com e: orders@comicbookfonts.com
Typeset by
TTA Press, 5 Martins Lane, Witcham, Ely, Cambs CB6 2LB, England
w: www.ttapress.com e: ttapress@aol.com
Printed in England by
Antony Rowe Ltd, Bumper's Farm Industrial Estate, Chippenham, Wilts SN14 6LH
123456789 10 11 12 13 14 15
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A catalogued record for this book is available
from the British Library. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of
trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior
written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and
without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Foreword by Graham Joyce
The first literary debate I ever engaged in was a playground discussion about a television programme that had set all the kids on fire. Five or six children stood in a circle, bug-eyed as they reported what they'd seen on Saturday afternoon. It was an episode of Doctor Who, the first to have featured the Daleks. Black and white television which had a full Technicolor effect on the mind. It was all so new and so stunningly original, and it came with an eerie glow, some gas or ectoplasm that released itself from the cathode-ray tube every time the Doctor Who theme tune came on. Or maybe that was just the valves overheating. Yes, valves: I pity the later generations of kids denied the numinous pleasure of peering through the cardboard slats into the back of their TV set to see tiny bulb filaments lighting or dimming slowly like rows of eyes. Whatever it was, I could smell Doctor Who when it was on.
It was the smell of awe.
It was the beginning of the 1960s, and although science fiction wasn't invented in the 1960s, television-series science fiction pretty much was. Here's a premise to open up the synapses, kiddies: a man gets in a box that is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. As well as being one of the incredible feats presented in Doctor Who, it's also what television is. Get used to it, because it will become commonplace, a compulsion even. It worked like a drug.
A Doctor Who story set against a backdrop of free love and drug-taking is a potent cocktail. In the hands of a lesser writer it might not have worked. But told by master story-teller Mark Chadbourn it is explosive. While to some it may appear controversial to mix the two things, to me it seems perfectly logical. The Doctor would have moved through Haight-Ashbury quite enjoying the air of experiment and head-tripping, floating slightly above the frantic hedonism of the times, perhaps delighted that for once in his long, long life, his eccentric garb didn't seem at all out of place.
Wonderland brilliantly conjures up the mood and time of the place. I don't know if Mark Chadbourn was ever there, but he writes so well he makes it seem as though he must have been. The story perfectly captures the mood