Guerrier Simon - The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who

CONTENTS

The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who is a mind-bending blend of story and science that will help you see Doctor Who in a whole new light, weaving together a series of all-new adventures, featuring every incarnation of the Doctor.

With commentary that explores the possibilities of time travel, life on other planets, artificial intelligence, parallel universes and more, Simon Guerrier and Dr Marek Kukula show how Doctor Who uses science to inform its unique style of storytelling and just how close it has often come to predicting future scientific discoveries.

This book is your chance to be the Doctors companion and explore whats out there. It will make you laugh, and think, and see the world around you differently.

Simon Guerrier has written countless Doctor Who books, comics, audio plays and documentaries. As research for one of his Doctor Who stories, he studied GCSE astronomy at the Royal Observatory Greenwich which resulted in an A* and the plot for another Doctor Who story. Simon regularly writes for Horrible Histories Magazine and medical journal The Lancet Psychiatry. With his brother Thomas, Simon also makes films and documentaries most recently The Fundamentalist Queen, about the wife of Oliver Cromwell, broadcast on Radio 3 in December 2014.

Dr Marek Kukula is the Public Astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, the home of time and space. Originally he wanted to be a Time Lord when he grew up but settled on astronomy as the next most exciting thing, going on to study quasars and distant galaxies with the Hubble Space Telescope. Marek regularly appears on BBC science shows such as The Sky at Night and Bang Goes the Theory to explain the latest astronomical discoveries and has also turned up in Doctor Who Confidential, where he showed Karen Gillan how to view Saturn through a telescope.

I, too, used to believe in magic, but the Doctor has taught me about science. It is better to believe in science.

Leela, Horror of Fang Rock (1977)

The TARDIS is outside.

So?

So, all of time and all of space is sitting out there. A big blue box. Please, dont even argue.

The Twelfth Doctor and Clara Oswald, Last Christmas (2014)

How could anyone resist a chance to explore all of time and space? The Doctor offers his companions and us, watching at home a chance to venture out into the universe and discover its extraordinary wonders.

On these journeys, we uncover the most astounding secrets. Somewhere out there are creatures made of pure energy and monsters that exist in only two dimensions. There are worlds made of diamond, and stars which are alive. You can rewrite history, regenerate from injuries and, best of all, you can travel to anywhere or when in a blue police box that is bigger on the inside than the outside

At least, according to Doctor Who.

This isnt a book about what bits of science Doctor Who might have got right or wrong in the more than fifty years that it has been on TV. Getting the science right isnt necessarily the same thing as telling a good story although, as well see, its surprising how often bits of real science work their way into the Doctors adventures. In fact, the series has occasionally been ahead of its time using the latest scientific theories as the inspiration for stories such as Earthshock (1982), or, in stories such as Planet of the Daleks (1973), including outlandish-sounding ideas that scientists only later demonstrated to be real phenomena.

This book wont detail how you can build your own versions of the technological gadgets that weve seen in the series robot dogs, sonic screwdrivers or fully working time machines. That said, there is a bit in about growing your own potatoes.

And this book isnt about the intentions of the people who have made Doctor Who over the years, and whether or how much they cared about getting the science right. Though that does come up, for example when we discuss the creation of the Cybermen.

Instead, our hope is that the experience of reading this book will be a little like travelling in the TARDIS with the Doctor. Our fifteen thrilling, original Doctor Who stories are inspired by the latest and most boggling scientific ideas. Each story is followed by an examination of the real science involved. Using the stories in this book and from the Doctors TV adventures, well explore the strangest, funniest and most astonishing elements of the cosmos.

We hope its a book to thrill you, make you laugh and think, and ultimately see the world and the universe around you differently. Doctor Who has been taking us on adventures for more than fifty years, and science is also a great adventure, constantly revealing new things to amaze and astonish us. We hope this book will make you watch Doctor Who with new eyes. And we hope it will be just a first step inspiring you to explore the world of Doctor Who and the equally extraordinary world of science still further.

A book, in fact, thats bigger on the inside

Please note: This book uses examples from all 813 television episodes of Doctor Who, from An Unearthly Child (1963) to Last Christmas (2014). There will be spoilers. Scientific data and Doctor Who statistics are correct up to February 2015.

Lovell Platform from Genetrix, we have a green board for descent. Await go confirm.

An alert pinged in Lieutenant Devika Cullens earpiece. She glanced across the cockpit to Probe Specialist Rick Attah, who flashed a reassuring grin, then yawned. He reclined in his chair, hands behind his head. They were hanging by a thread 54 kilometres above the surface of Venus, and he looked ready to take a nap. Devika shook her head. Space exploration: a game for the young, as Dad once said.

Genetrix from Lovell, crackled Valeriya Alexandrova over the comms. You have go confirm, cleared for umbilical detach.

Acknowledged, Lovell.

Hey Valeriya, Rick broke in. Wanna crack open an alcohol-free tonight?

The Russian sounded less than keen. You have job to do down there. Fraternising with mission co-ordinator is not part of that job.

See you in the mess at twenty hundred.

Devika rolled her eyes. You two done?

Rick grinned and sat up. His body language flowed from bored 24-year-old to alert mission specialist. Ricks fingers danced across the instrument panels before and above him. Pressure exchange nominal. Good to go.