Extinction/Regeneration – The Story of Doctor Who
author: John Higgs
Publisher: Orion
Publication date: April 2025
For many people who are not familiar with the work John Higgsit may be easy to enter Extinction/Regeneration Have a wrong impression. This is not an episode of one episode, please take a look at the overall “Doctor” and is named after an obvious name Lawrence Miles and tatwood’s Approximate time series. For beginners, it rarely intersects directly with the show’s story. For example, the robbers are not discussed in the book until the last chapter until the last chapter, and the discussion of the unnamed plot, and there is no detail about the plot, rather than its general premise. Again, never mentioned like the doctor’s wife Kerblam! Such a story.
At the same time, however, this is not an exploration of the history of doctors’ production like Elizabeth Sandifer Curiosity in the garbage dump. While several elements of production are extensively explored, from the concept of the show to the camera’s little gags, these elements do not dabble the entire section dedicated to exploring almost generated individual stories. However, there is no deep dive into Nemon’s horn’s work, nor is there anything related to the chameleon.
Instead, the book is interested in exploring the city-like doctors, finding its nooks and crannies next to the landmarks and trying to understand it from different angles. A psychological approach that uses the terms familiar to whovians. This is a pretty anticipated approach by John Higgs. Higgs is probably one of the most interesting critics in the field today, often exploring William Blake to KLF’s work. His approach to large topics often produces works that I simply can’t stop reading.
Despite a moment of perhaps unfamiliar with the traditional Whovian (most notably Patrick Troughton’s extramarital relationship and Jon Pertwee’s military career, many elements of non-Whovians even updated fans will bring a sense of familiarity with the depths of the classic series. There’s a narrative about the infamous prison in space, which is probably the most uncomfortable part of a book, and it also talks about Gary Downe.
When Higgs interact with the old uneven material that extincts/regenerates the truly luminous material. The early part of the book involves comparing Hartnell’s Doctor Who to the unnamed grandfather in Dickens’s old Curious Store, which ends up with a very fascinating coincidence. Even a relationship with a familiar backup will bring dividends to Higgs’ work. The inevitable part about Michael’s class provides the old Conservatives with little empathy in Who Doctor Circles, who often treat the man as the most evil monster ever. And the defense of the Chibnall era did a good job of itself, even if it was never directly executed with the internal story.
There are some problems with this book. A small decision was a decision that focused specifically on the TV side of the show. Of course, this is a minor issue, but it has rarely been discussed in books like this. In short, Who Doctor took a long time, about 16 years, and only had one TV movie six years. To provide context, another notable long-running sci-fi TV series was Star Trek, which appeared in the sixties, with the gap that never had any Star Trek working on TV or movies for more than four years. Who Who’s longest gap is the eight years between the aforementioned TV movie and the return in 2005. There is a gap that will take a while for a series that does not involve Beyond Overview. It’s not as huge as in the book comparing the influence of James Bond and the Beatles, and never talked about prisoners, but it’s still a gap.
Another problem with this book is Claudia Boylen’s framework. Extinction/Regeneration is certainly fair to discuss modern fanaticism in its context. Indeed, the book previously discussed the infamous Jan Vincent-Rudzki’s comments on the deadly assassin and spent a lot of time with the inevitable Ian Levine. But the framing of Boylen’s distaste for the Moffat era in the context of her neurodivergence (which neither of her male counterparts receive) springs to mind images of hyperical women who can’t hack it in male contexts, especially with the book’s emphasis on Doctor Who is a historically male fandom.
Similarly, she lacks participation, why she is among all the famous fans of the Modern Doctor Who Landscape, who don’t like the Moffat era (from Mr. Tardis to Diamanda Hagan to John Barrowman). The reason for this involves engagement with Who Magazine and the shows Higgs never seemed to deal with. Fanaticism has never been explored in all trivial beauty.
This may lead to the biggest problem I have with this book, which is the thread it quickly descends. Mainly, the one who can be regarded as a fan of a relative of a religious devotee. This contrasts with the more interesting cases Higgs has proposed before this. But when non-theologians defend science fiction as a religion, they often end up making Christianity once again. (It is clear that Higgs compared the differences between the New Testament and the New Testament of Classical and New Testament.) To further emphasize the absolute boredom of this approach, Higgs discarded it almost immediately, never completely addressing its meaning.
However, I found the book fascinating and interesting. The performance of a sixty strange old man is really enjoyable, telling the story of a stupid old man stealing a magic box and flying away. Perhaps the best part is how Higgs approached Jonathan Nathan-Turner. He didn’t shy away from the uneasy aspects of the man (the painful part of the Sixth Doctor’s chapter focused on the treatment of Peri and her actress Nicola Bryant on the show). However, it does portray a man who is more than just his worst instincts and impulses. A man who tries to achieve this in the industry and faces failure after failure but is still loved by people he is close to. The last sentence about him is the right pinnacle for the entire book when Psychology traverses the 12x route for Who Doctor.
I highly recommend you read Extinction/Regeneration and discover the magic of Who Doctor.
Extinction/Regeneration: Now there is a story about Doctor Who
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