The Discontinuity Guide
The Discontinuity Guide is a 1995 guidebook to the serials of the original run of the BBC science fiction series Doctor Who. The book was written by Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping and was first published as Doctor Who - The Discontinuity Guide on 1 July 1995 by Virgin Books.
Contents
The book focuses on the fiction of Doctor Who. For each serial, the authors discuss the roots of the story, technical and narrative gaffes, technobabble, dialogue disasters and triumphs, continuity, and a "bottom line" critical analysis of the story. The book also contains short essays on subjects in Doctor Who continuity, such as the Doctor's family, the history of the Daleks, UNIT dating and the origins of the Time Lords.One such essay marked the first publication of the "Season 6B" theory that, from the Second Doctor's perspective, the events of "The Five Doctors" and The Two Doctors took place in a period of the Doctor's life, later wiped from his memories, after the end of The War Games but prior to his regeneration into the Third Doctor during which, rather than immediately regenerate and begin his exile on Earth, the Doctor, reunited with companions Jamie McCrimmon and Victoria Waterfield, performed various missions for the Time Lords.
Publication history
The book was first published in 1995 by Doctor Who Books, an imprint of Virgin Books. At the time, Virgin held the licence to publish Doctor Who books from the BBC, and published licensed Doctor Who novels and other non-fiction books under the Doctor Who Books imprint.The guidebook was subsequently given an un-licensed re-print as simply The Discontinuity Guide in November 2004 through MonkeyBrain Books, with a new foreword by Lou Anders. In 2013, it was published as an ebook — as The Doctor Who Discontinuity Guide — by Orion Publishing Group under its Gateway imprint.
Additionally, the BBC's Doctor Who website incorporated the book's text, along with that of Doctor Who: The Television Companion by David J. Howe and Stephen James Walker, into its classic series episode guide.