Doctor Who: The Dalek Handbook Hardcover – July 19, 2011

I was initially less than thrilled about the idea of this book when I first heard about it. After all, air one more Doctor Who episode regarding the Daleks, and this book can easily become redundant. But after reading most of this, I must admit, it's still a good read for the Dalek fan.Realistically, it's not perfect. But realistically, what is? The authors try to make sense of the Daleks' convoluted time line, and do this reasonably well, even though they embellished a bit. And since I never tried to publish a book on this matter, my applause to them for trying.Additionally, since there is some insight to some of the behind the scenes information on various episodes, I gained a further appreciation for them. For example, why was Terry Molloy's masque so different from the previous one? This has now been brought to light. And poor David Gooderson...Aside from this, I thought the scattered info on Dalekmania was, well, too scattered, and would have rather have it presented it one lump sum. But the more I read this, the more I appreciated the fact that it was presented in a way that was specific to the era. And so again, I applaud the fact that they presented it this way. Nice gob gentlemen.Although I would have loved to have more information on my favorite baddies, this is titled, "The Dalek Handbook," not "The Dalek Encyclopedia." So take it for what it is. That being, a quick reference guide with some really informative behind the scenes information. Ideally, I would have had the chapters as the individual stories, since the authors did use the chronological airing of the stories, and find an inventive way to explain certain discontinuities. So why didn't they just make each chapter a story, bridge the information in between, and make it an easier reference guide? Prerogative of an author, I suppose. But if they would have done that, I would have been more than happy to buy two copies of this book. One to sit prettily on the shelf, and one to crack open, ruin the spine, and dog-ear the pages for fast access on my beloved baddies.For the Dalek fans, I am biased to say, this is a must for your collection. For the Doctor Who fans who like the Daleks, I think you can't go wrong from adding this book to your library. As for those who don't care for the Daleks, you should be EXTERMINATED!

The good:This book seems to have just about everything you could ever want to know about the history and rise of the Daleks crammed into it's pages. It largely runs from the shows beginning through to Nu-Who. There are boxes with interesting information about what happened behind the scenes, as well as other aspects of dalek-specific pop culture outside of the tv series.The bad:The layout itself isn't done poorly, but looks as though it was designed to be on a much larger page. That means that the font size seems skirt between 8 and 9 point font. There also aren't many paragraph breaks and the result is mildly intimidating and aggravating. I should also note that the pages themselves are not glossy, as most books like this with image-heavy layouts are. I'm not sure how well the ink and images will hold up over the years, but we will see.I had purchased this for my six year old son to look at and practice sounding out some of the words in the side boxes. Considering how tiny and crammed everything is, I don't foresee him picking this up to do more than browse through the pictures quickly.Overall, I'm still glad I made the purchase, even though it won't get used as I'd originally hoped. Instead, I'll be able to read and share the info with the little one until he's old enough to read and appreciate on his own.

Doctor Who, certainly as the longest running sci fi series (as far as true fans are concerned), needs references. Since we are discussing a program that has history since November of 1963 something like the Dalek Handbook is very handy. In this book Tribe provides a good reference on the Daleks, Davros, and the evolution of this foe of the Doctor and the Time Lords that beats anything else out there. Is it perfect? No. But it is done very well in the style of his previous TARDIS handbook. Any fan of the series should have this book along with the TARDIS handbook.I certainly hope the publisher and authors would add a couple more volumes to this series on perhaps a few other topics. I would suggest the following additional volumes:Cybermen Handbook (on original and alternate universe cybermen)Sontaran HandbookThe Time Lords and their Renegades Handbook (cover the Master, the Rani, Romana, Rassilon, Omega etc)

This was a gift for my daughter on her seventh birthday. She is the pig-tailed little girl shielding her eyes from the typical princess images at the store, or occasionally stretching out her imaginary plunger and shouting, "Ex-ter-mi-nate!!" at them.The Dalek information is very thorough, and starts with the original series. It was clearly not written for little kids, but my little Whovian adores it. Thus far I haven't seen anything inappropriate for young eyes, and older Whovian eyes will treasure the photographs and images as well.

The Daleks. What more can you say about them? For millions of years they have cut a swath of carnage across the cosmos. Just when you think they are gone, they come back stronger then ever. In this book, you will find out everything you ever wanted to know about this deadly enemy but were afraid to ask. From the Planet Scaro to Mother Earth, the Daleks have been many places and in many times. What are they planning? What is their mad creator, Davros, up to now? Look no further and get this book.

This book is, without a doubt, one of the best books I've ever read. The history, the Dalekmania, and all the other topics I dare not spoil for you, are greatly written and presented, and therefore deserves this rating. To Dalek fanatics, or just Doctor Who fans in general, I would recommend giving this a read or two, or three, or four...

If you love Dr. Who and/or you love the Daleks YOU NEED THIS BOOK, it's much better and easier to follow than "TARDIS the Dr. Who Wikia" or finding and watching/reading all episodes, comics and books, if you want to know more about the Daleks.

This truly is a lovely book. Despite the picture on the front of the book in which the new Dalek paradigm is portrayed rather prominently, this book discusses the Daleks from the beginning in the Classic series until today. Contrary to quite a few other recent publications (like the dictionary and the time traveller's guide) the space taken up by the Classic series is sufficient, even for someone who has been a fan since the early 70's when I was a highly interested 8-year-old. There is a lot of background stuff on Skaro, the Thals, the Dals (!?) and the Kaled's, and the Time War. All Dr. Who's confrontations with the Daleks are discussed extensively (including those serials with episodes that do not exist any more), while the authors even try to make something of the disturbingly complicated Dalek timelines in relation to the timelines of Earth.Furthermore, information is provided about comics, plays, novels, audio plays and adaptations, and computer games as well (all categorised as Dalekmania). A nice touch is the fact that the Daleks have even asserted their right to be the supreme beings in this universe. You can find this statement in the colofon among the authors' rights, the BBC rights and the mentioning of the Daleks' creator Terry Nation. It made me laugh almost as much as when the Daleks were speaking German in the new series 4 episode Journey's end. I admire these kind of things.Another nice touch is the illustrative showing of Daleks in all the time periods, starting in 1963, and ending with the new paradigm. I admit to be less than enthousiastic about this latest version. Despite the added size and mass, they seem to be more of a plaything or a toy than the earlier versions that were more spooky and scary. Even if you could sometimes see quite easily that they were well past their date of minimum durability for a TV prop!But they always remained true to form. The only saving grace on t.v. is the voice, but alas, that connot be put into a book like this. The first Daleks in the new series (serie 1-4) were great, highly recognizable and, as one of the designers states in the book: as daleky as you can get with no real changes in the design (even if they changed quite a lot of so-called little things).Contrary to this negative evaluation of the new, toyish and even somewhat cute (instead of frightening and Daleky), Daleks, the ironsides were actually quite good. And hurray, the authors included a picture of an ironside actually serving tea with the tray on the sucker arm. Great picture.Thankfully, the new Daleks only take up a relatively small part of the book, which otherwise is packed with all the other versions we love so much! I would advise any fan to buy this. Excellent and great fun.

I bought this book off Amazon for my brother for Christmas, with the condition that once he'd read it, he would let me read it. When the book came, I was a little bit disappointed because it was smaller than I thought it would have been, but since he is convinced that the Daleks are the ultimate Doctor Who monster, he was more than happy with it. For the meagre sum of £6.99 you get 160 pages of Dalek related information. This is split into 3 sections per chapter. The best thing you get is the fictional history of the Daleks, as well as other races connected to them, like the Thals for example. Part of these include a Dalek timeline, which can be a bit confusing. Next you get the behind the scene section, how they designed the Daleks, how they got the voices, creating (recreating) Davros. There are also black and white photographs, colour photographs, drawings and sketches and a blueprint. The only two bits of behind the scenes I skipped were who was inside the Daleks and who voiced them. The last section per chapter is Dalek Mania, which basically tells you all about the magazines, comic strips, graphic novels and merchandise. Having not finished the book, since Christmas Day, my brother loaned me it and I read it in two days. The writers have packed a lot of information; some of which is not in the other Dr Who books I have read, into the little book and I thoroughly enjoyed reading about the fictional history, the behind the scenes, not so much. I still, however, recommend this title.

As the owner of the original Dalek Handbook (including A Space Travellers Guide) which was published during the mid-60's, I was keen to see how this BBC Books latest version faired and I was pleasantly surprised.The book is jammed cover to cover with facts, photographs and illustrations on everything to do with the Daleks on-screen, film and stage and in the media including TV21, Dalek annuals and novelisations. Exploration of the Dalek roots is covered from Davros and the Dals and Thals through the Dalek conquests involving Mechonoids, Cybermen and the Doctor.If I had to make one criticism it would be that some of the smaller photographs are of very poor quality and this should not be the case with recent digitally remastered copies of the original stories now available on DVD.Overall, though, I would highly recommend this book to any Doctor Who and Dalek fan.

Read the book in a few days and enjoyed it very much!A lot of information packed into this little volume.It's a sturdy hardback giving us the history of the Daleks from their conceptionto their many visits in different time zones. It gives their heirarchy, a lot ofartwork on designs that went forward [and those that didn't].Everything you want to know about the Dalek's is here [games info/info on comics/ideas/how they do the voice/websites etc.]Recommended read.

I liked the pictures and it had some interesting facts that I didn't know before. Its obviously lovingly produced but the 3 stars are because I was very disappointed that writers felt that they had to create some sort of Dalek timeline/s. It well produced and great that is in hardback. It came in a timely manner, well packaged so no damage occurred.