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Paul MC Smith @wonderfulbooks.co.uk · 18h

Amazing artistry

Andy Lambert @and-e-roo.bsky.social · 1d

A bit of Pyramids art for your Monday...f

Photoshopped montage for the Doctor Who story, "Pyramids Of Mars" - with Tom Baker as a moody looking 4th Doctor dominating the centre of the image, overlooking a pyramid-shaped construction with three robotic Mummies stood at it's entrance. Flanking Tom on either side, just behind him is the story's main protagonist, Sutekh - a masked Egyptian style alien, with his helmeted servant on the right, his arms crossed against his chest. At the top of the image is an Egyptian sarcophagus. At the very back is a suggestion of a burning priory, and the image is contained with a nebulous vortex.

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Reposted by Paul MC Smith

Simon Guerrier @0tralala.bsky.social · 2d

A big long post on Massacre in the Hills, the second Mounties novel by Terrance Dicks, featuring bucks, blizzards and - content warning - a racist 19th century term: 0tralala.blogspot.com/2025/11/mass...

Massacre in the Hills, by Terrance Dicks

0tralala.blogspot.com

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Reposted by Paul MC Smith

Dr. Uncle Beard 🦊 🌈 @unclebeard1978.bsky.social · 3d

Sharp scratch! #DoctorWho goes to hospital with two medical themed #crosswords @ #CrypticWho crypticwho.com

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Reposted by Paul MC Smith

Paul MC Smith @wonderfulbooks.co.uk · 3d

It's November! Month of the Whonniversary, on which the Celestial Toyroom Annual 2026 from @dwasonline.bsky.social will be available in print. Celebrating the Fifth Doctor era with reviews and features, including a lovely piece by @thelightdreams.bsky.social about the show's electronic music.

Pages from the Celestial Toyroom Annual 2026, Alex Storer writes about his interest in Doctor Who's electronic music

Cover of the Celestial Toyroom Annual 2026, painting of the Fifth Doctor by Carolyn Edwards

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Paul MC Smith @wonderfulbooks.co.uk · 3d

It's November! Month of the Whonniversary, on which the Celestial Toyroom Annual 2026 from @dwasonline.bsky.social will be available in print. Celebrating the Fifth Doctor era with reviews and features, including a lovely piece by @thelightdreams.bsky.social about the show's electronic music.

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Paul MC Smith @wonderfulbooks.co.uk · 3d

Coming soon, Chromakey #10 Animation Special thechromakeymagazine.wordpress.com

Cover of Canadian cult TV fanzine Chromakey issue 10, Animation Special featuring Dangermouse, Johnny Quest, The Herculoids, Night Hood and more

Paul MC Smith @wonderfulbooks.co.uk · 5d

Did the pupils denote the humanised Daleks, or am I just recalling a debunked fan theory?

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Reposted by Paul MC Smith

Simon Guerrier @0tralala.bsky.social · 8d

On the first original, non Doctor Who book by Terrance Dicks: The Mounties - The Great March West (1976) 0tralala.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-...

The Great March West, by Terrance Dicks

0tralala.blogspot.com

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Reposted by Paul MC Smith

Paul MC Smith @wonderfulbooks.co.uk · 9d

Four weeks today the Celestial Toyroom Annual 2026 from @dwasonline.bsky.social will be available to buy in softback or (much nicer) hardback. Lots of good stuff celebrating the era of the Fifth Doctor. Designed by yours truly ☺️

Celestial Toyroom Annual 2026 cover, painting of the Fifth Doctor by Carolyn Edwards

Spread from the Celestial Toyroom Annual 2026, Michael Crouch celebrates the Fifth Doctor, artwork by Andy Lambert

Spread from the Celestial Toyroom Annual 2026, Jamie Hailstone reviews The Visitation, artwork by Andy Lambert

Sprread from the Celestial Toyroom Annual 2026, Dale Smith considers the rise and demise of the sonic screwdriver

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Paul MC Smith @wonderfulbooks.co.uk · 9d

True, though they're a small proportion of the runtime. And in that instance dwarfed by the amount of other stuff cut for the book!

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Paul MC Smith @wonderfulbooks.co.uk · 9d

Infographics are more than a nice picture with some numbers, or an illustrated list (a problem I had with DWM’s previous ‘Sufficient Data’ page). Done well they express data in a form that clarifies meaning and provides insight. Hang this poster with the cover art showing instead – they’re artful. 🔚

The other side of the DWM poster, showing every audiobook cover - much more worthwhile

Paul MC Smith @wonderfulbooks.co.uk · 9d

Ultimately this is a poor choice of dataset. The length of each book compared to its source is variable based on the whims of the author and the publisher’s indulgence. The audiobooks are then further randomised by who’s reading. There’s no correlation to express or underlying trend to tease out.

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Paul MC Smith @wonderfulbooks.co.uk · 9d

Whichever one finds more visually appealing is subjective, but these present the data in an objectively more precise and informative manner than the poster. That is just a jumble of colours with all but no expression of meaning. Such a wasted opportunity.

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Paul MC Smith @wonderfulbooks.co.uk · 9d

Plotting in story order reduces some clustering and makes finding specific titles easier. This also frees up colour to denote something other than Doctor. I tried year of publication but it showed no notable trend, so here it’s by author (though not sure that reveals much either).

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Paul MC Smith @wonderfulbooks.co.uk · 9d

But even taking the principles of the published chart – bubble ratios with largest at centre – there are more informative ways to present them. Here the distance from the centre is plotted relative to the ratio, with bands to make it clearer what this means.

Same data back as proportionally sized bubbles (tho that's not great) but positioned in story order around the circumference and distance from centre depending on size of ratio. Coloured by author groupings

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Paul MC Smith @wonderfulbooks.co.uk · 9d

Using squares retains the linear relationship. The height of the darker portion is the ratio of TV to book, while the widths are in proportion to audiobook duration. It’s easier to see where, for example, the audiobooks are double the length of the TV serial (11th row onwards).

Same data as a block chart, with height showing ratio of TV:audiobook vertically and width relative audiobook duration

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Paul MC Smith @wonderfulbooks.co.uk · 9d

Here are a couple of alternative treatments. Sticking with bubbles, arranging them in order of decreasing ratio makes the differences more apparent. A non-central alignment makes the ratio more apparent though still hard to compare areas.

Same data as bubble chart ordered highest to lowest ratio

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Paul MC Smith @wonderfulbooks.co.uk · 9d

We can also see that the least extended are largely Second, Third and Fourth Doctor tales – though perhaps a more useful colouring scheme would be by author, to show which were more or less prone to bulking up their word count.

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Paul MC Smith @wonderfulbooks.co.uk · 9d

The predominance of 4-parters does produce tight clustering, though, making titles hard to pick out. If it's the ratio of audio to visual that’s of main interest, then a bar chart is the clearest. Here the most extended are immediately clear, along with the uniformity of the bulk of the range.

Same data expressed as a ratio on a bar chart, highest to lowest

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Paul MC Smith @wonderfulbooks.co.uk · 9d

Adding ratio bands shows the two Terence Dudley adaptations, while of comparative length to others, greatly extended their sub-hour scripts. And while The Romans is the shortest book, it adds proportionally more to its 4 parts than Seeds of Doom does to its 6.

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Paul MC Smith @wonderfulbooks.co.uk · 9d

It also highlights any outliers: the Douglas Adams tales whose book versions were based on longer draft scripts rather than the TV episodes; John Peel’s over-egging of The Power of the Daleks; how The War Games, though 10 episodes, gained only a standard length novelisation.

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Paul MC Smith @wonderfulbooks.co.uk · 9d

A better way to show the relation between pairs of numbers is to plot them on a scatter chart. This immediately shows the clusters around 2, 3, 4, 6 episodes that Classic Who stories were mostly produced as, and how this didn’t automatically produce novelisations of the same length.

TV and audiobook durations of Doctor Who stories on a scatter chart

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Paul MC Smith @wonderfulbooks.co.uk · 9d

While the bubbles are coloured by Doctor, these aren’t grouped by similar ratios, so there’s no way to see when or if a specific Doctor’s run might have had more extensive or succinct novelisations.

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Paul MC Smith @wonderfulbooks.co.uk · 9d

For example, the most disparate Seventh Doctor story is Ghost Light (audiobook 5.7x as long as the 3-part serial). Yet here Dragonfire (3.7) and Delta/Bannermen (3.3) are placed closer to the centre. Similarly, Sontaran Experiment (3.7) is more central than Shada (4.6).

Centre group of the DWM poster. No evident relation between ratio and position

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Paul MC Smith @wonderfulbooks.co.uk · 9d

It says the bubbles with the biggest difference are nearer the centre, and The Pirate Planet is roughly in the middle. But there’s no indication how or if another bubble’s distance from this is determined. There’s no sense of concentricity to the arrangement.

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