Almost fifty years after he first crossed the small screen, Doctor Who remains a science fiction touchstone. His exploits are thrilling, his world is mind-boggling, and that time travel machineknown as the Tardisis almost certainly an old-fashioned blue police box, once commonly found in London.
Paul Parsons's plain-English account of the real science behind the fantastic universe portrayed in the Doctor Who television series provides answers to such burning questions as whether a sonic screwdriver is any use for putting up a shelf, how Cybermen make little Cybermen, where the toilets are in the Tardis, and much more.
Taking the show as a starting pointepisode-by-episode in some casesParsons dissects its scientific concepts. In addition to explaining why time travel is possible and just how that blue police box works, Parsons
discusses who the Time Lords are and how we may one day be able to regenerate just like them
ponders the ways that the doctor's two hearts might work and introduces us to a terrestrial animal with five
details the alien populations and cosmology of the Whovian Universe and relates them to what we currently know about our universe
compares the robotics of the show with startlingly similar real-world applications
This slender, equation-free discussion is penned by a Ph.D. cosmologist and is ideal beach reading for anyone who loves science and watches the showno matter which planet the beach is on.
Preface Acknowledgments The Eleven Doctors Part I: Doctor in the Tardis 1. Who Is the Doctor? 2. Time and Relative Dimension in Space, or Tardis 3. Into the Vortex 4. Regeneration 5. One Giant Leap for DIY 6. Partners in Time Part II: Aliens of London and Beyond 7. Other Worlds 8. Carnival of Monsters 9. The Cybermen 10. The Daleks 11. The Slitheen 12. The Autons 13. The Silurians and the Sea Devils 14. The Sontarans 15. Martians, Go Home! 16. The Krynoid 17. Stupid Apes 18. Exile to Earth 19. The Human Empire 20. Invasion Earth Part III: Robot Dogs, Psychic Paper, and Other Celestial Toys 21. Scanning for Alien Tech 22. Just What the Doctor Ordered 23. K-9 and Company 24. Psychic Paper 25. Space-flight 26. Space Stations and Moonbases 27. Bombs, Bullets, and Death Rays 28. Force Fields 29. The Matrix Part IV: Mission to the Unknown 30. Event One 31. The Eye of Harmony and Other Black Holes 32. Journeys through E-Space 33. Strange Stars and Mirror Planets 34. The More Things Change 35. The End of Time Epilogue List fo Episodes by Doctor Further Reading Index
""Parsons, a scientist and journalist, is an unabashed fan of Doctor Who and does a good job of making the convoluted plots and characters decipherable, even to non-aficionados, and of explaining the research and science, often cutting edge, that has even a change of making the plots possible... Useful as popular reading and in courses covering the science of science fiction.""
