Adventures With The Wife in Space [Book Review]

When I first stumbled across Adventures With The Wife In Space I was incredibly jealous. Why? Because here was I watching Doctor Who from An Unearthly Child to The Name of the Doctor and blogging about it, trying my best to find something interesting and amusing to say and I'd been out-witted by Neil and Sue.

Their take on things was annoyingly funny. And even when I disagreed with Sue's scores (5/10 for Robots of Death I ask you and don't get me started on the wonders of The Web Planet) the blog was well-written and interesting and I wondered why I was bothering.

Fortunately, my ego got the better of me and I've carried on slowly blogging my way through the Whoniverse. But I still have to admit to admiration for Neil and Sue's blog.

Perhaps the best thing about it was here were two people who seemed normal doing something pretty abnormal. I mean what sort of weirdo watches Doctor Who from 1963 to 1996? But neither Sue nor Neil (for all his protestations of geekdom) seemed particularly weird.

And this comes across in the book, which is fantastic. [So if you've got a short attention span there's the review in a nutshell.] It's fantastic partly because it is pretty damn funny, partly because there are parts of it that any Doctor Who fan can relate to but mainly because it isn't really about Doctor Who. It's about growing up and - most importantly of all - it's a love story.

For, if anything, this book shows that Neil and Sue have got Doctor Who in its proper perspective and that there are clearly more important things in the world and this book does a fine job of demonstrating that.

It also goes to demonstrate that actually watching Doctor Who is a social thing. It features that Tom Baker quote about Doctor Who being watched on different levels by different people in each household and that just reinforces my belief that I have the most fun as a Doctor Who fan when watching episodes with other people, even people who know diddly squat about the programme and end up asking loads of basic questions. And no one is better at taking the piss out of Doctor Who stories than Doctor Who fans.

I said at the beginning of this review that my first reaction to Adventures With The Wife in Space was jealousy. There's still some jealousy there now, but for different reasons. So I recommend this book whole-heartedly: it's funny, it's smart, it's about Doctor Who but most of all it's about love and affection.

Read it. You'll like it.

PS Appendix 1: Glossary is very funny