Saturday 21 November 2009

Lists, and lists of lists

Way back when Peter Davison was the Doctor, and a young innocent Who fan was beginning a never ending obsession, it was hard to get your hands on Who. Doctor Who Monthly was the only source of information for many. There were no constant repeats, no internet, no videos and no audio stories, so no way of seeing or knowling old stories unless you where mates with a film collector.

When Jean-Marc L'Officier´s ´Programme Guide´ books came out, in 1981, it was a big leap forward for us Whovians who needed to know every detail of our addiction. But for me it still wasn´t enough, and I used to find myself making list after list, of stories, directors, writers, companions, monsters, books and mechandise (which I would illustrate with little sketches), indexing my DWM collection and generally keeping myself out of trouble. If something, or someone, appeared in Who more than once, then it was worth a list. I even tried to put every Who story in order of its date setting, which must have taken me ages.


Now we have access to so much material on the net and in books (some bright spark even published his list of lists, which I bought twice), we don´t know where to look first. And I´m still making lists - although they are a bit more advanced than my pencil and paper lists of old.

This blog is a tribute to making lists, and lists of lists, but now with links, photos and pics to help find whatever it was you were looking for but forgot when you got distracted by reading this.

I´ve a bit of an addiction with lists, and nowdays I find myself making lists of all sorts of things, even developing databases of useless information in my bid to give organisation and order to the chaos. I guess (in fact I know) it must reflect some mental disposition, but frankly I´m better off not knowing which one, as I might have to start making a lists of those as well.

Perhaps I´ll make a list here sooner or later...

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