Doctor Who - Philip Segal

Finally in large-format paperback, the first full behind-the-scenes investigation of the BBC's attempts to resurrect their most enduring drama series in the 1990s.

Doctor Who was voted in 1998 as the most popular drama series ever produced by the BBC, a result which shocked its critics and embarrassed the corporation which had cancelled the 35-year-old series nearly ten years before. In its time it enjoyed enormous popularity and was sold to 87 different countries. Today it retains a hugely loyal cult following, even amongst children who are too young to remember Saturday teatimes before the age of the home video.

But in the wilderness years of the 1990s, there had been one glimmer of hope - the TV movie starring Paul McGann as the eighth Doctor which it had been hoped would spawn a new era for the programme.

Doctor Who: Regeneration chronicles the BBC's seven-year struggle since cancelling the series in 1989 to develop it as a US co-production. It offers a fascinating glimpse in microcosm of the politics of television and the BBC in the 1990s, as well as the creative development hell of making what turned out to be only a one-off TV movie with Fox in the States. Most of the issues remain pertinent to the debate which rages both within broadcasting and the hugely loyal fan-following around the world - how can a programme like Doctor Who be made in today's commercial television market?

The book includes a wealth of pictures, including sketches, storyboards and screen-tests none of which have ever been seen. It examines a number of aborted story treatments and scripts which have also never been published.