First of all, I must thank my friend Roni, who inadvertently inspired me to do all of this. A fellow member of the Loyal Admirers of Brendan Beiser, she noticed my conversation with some other members about Doctor Who and asked for more info.
I've been reading all these good things about it, and am beginning to wonder if I should start watching. Anyone who's a Who fan can jump in too...I need info!! ::begs::On 25 July 1998 I set out to find her a web page that would give her all the information she would need, and I couldn't find one. There are, of course, plenty of great Who sites on the web, but nothing that packaged up all the basic information in a nice, neat bundle for new and prospective viewers. So, I thought, if you want something done right, do it yourself! That very day, I began this page, and what you are viewing now is the culmination of six years' worth of effort! And it's all due to Roni, so, thank you! (As an addendum: between myself and Janet Eaton, and thanks to Gray, Roni has now seen just about all the Who there is, and is well and truly hooked! Welcome another devoted fan to the fold!)
I must admit that, over the years, this page has deviated slightly from my goal - while I started out just wanting enough information to answer basic questions and intrigue potential viewers, I soon realized I was dissatisfied with sketchy information on monster pages, etc. So while the episode guide has remained the same (enough to tantalize, I hope, but without revealing too much), my pages on characters and creatures have expanded vastly and are therefore really more useful to people wanting to check details. And then I added a couple of more specialized pages that are really only of interest to long-term fans. But, it's a sacrifice I was prepared to make, and I think the site is more useful and fun as a result.
I should mention that in the time it's taken me to complete this page, a number of truly excellent guides for new Who fans have appeared. The most useful, I think, is Outpost Gallifrey's Doctor Who FAQ which also has links to other useful sites.
Thanks also go to Gray Carper, for being the only other person for thirteen years who shared my love of Doctor Who, as well as for his image-editing help and for providing me with copies of a number of episodes that I didn't have on tape (many of which then also found their way to Roni). I should also thank my good friend Andrew, whose gradual conversion to becoming a Doctor Who fan has been not only vastly entertaining to watch and be a part of, but has also provided me with useful input for this site (which, after all, I intended to aim at precisely his demographic). I realized, when trying to find brief episode descriptions to show him, that even most succinct episode guides (my own included) give away details that I didn't want him to know about upcoming episodes. So, a spoiler-free episode guide now resides on this site.
Most images come from various issues of Doctor Who Magazine, or a variety of other publications, and were scanned by me. The following images are from Steve Hill's Doctor Who Image Archive (renamed): ace2.jpg, barbara2.jpg, barbara3.jpg, ben1.jpg, doctor6b.jpg, doctor7b.jpg, greel1.jpg, jellybaby.jpg, k9b.jpg, kroll1.jpg, jo2.jpg, nestene1.jpg, polly2.jpg, regen.jpg, robot1.jpg, romana2b.jpg, rose1.jpg, shadow1.jpg, sonicscrewdriver1.jpg, susan2.jpg, tardis5.jpg, tegan2.jpg, vicki1.jpg, and zoe2.jpg. The Tragical History Tour was a wonderful image resource for photographs of things I simply hadn't been able to find elsewhere: adam1.jpg, alphacentauri.jpg, arcturus.jpg, clown2.jpg, cryons1.jpg, daleks2.jpg, dinosaur1.jpg, dinosaur2.jpg, draconian1.jpg, gelth1.jpg, gelth2.jpg, grendel1.jpg, imc1.jpg, jack1.jpg, jack2.jpg, jagrafess1.jpg, kronos.jpg, myrka1.jpg, primitive1.jpg, raston1.jpg, reaper1.jpg, rose2.jpg, seadevil2.jpg, skagra1.jpg, slitheen1.jpg and vardans.jpg. I also snagged nyssa4.jpg from fellow V-net user Mekel Rogers.
Finally, I must give credit to those invaluable reference materials that helped me in the construction of this page. Doctor Who Magazine, besides supplying images, also has a very useful Archive feature which sometimes contains useful tidbits I wouldn't have known otherwise (such as the fact that one Macra was white). I constantly checked Dominique Boies' fantastic Doctor Who Reference Guide while I was writing summaries and looking for details of the less-official stories. The Earthbound Time Lords' Doctor Who Scripts Project was a wonderful resource which, I eventually realized, was much easier and more reliable than wading through a pile of reconstruction videos. Finally, there are my two favorite books ever published under the Doctor Who logo, The Television Companion by Howe and Walker (1998), and The Discontinuity Guide by Cornell, Day and Topping (1995) - neither book has left my side for a moment. The former was a lifesaver when I was trying to match characters to names, the latter was a lifesaver when I was trying to double-check spellings (like the constellation of Canthares, which the closed-captioning insists is Captharis - although the most humorous closed-captioning examples that I've found are from Ghost Light, in which Control cries, "Control needs frames now!" and "Give me my frame husks!"), gadgets and story details, and both have very entertaining reviews.
