Design for Doctor Who: Vision and Revision in Science Fiction Television (Who Watching)

Britton, Piers D.

ISBN 10: 1472984153 / ISBN 13: 9781472984159

Published by Bloomsbury Academic, 2021

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Design for Doctor Who: Vision and Revision in Science Fiction Television (Who Watching)
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication Date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1472984153
• ISBN 13: 9781472984159
• Binding: paperback
• Condition: Fine

About this title

Synopsis

The long-running popular TV series Doctor Who is, Piers Britton argues, a 'uniquely design intensive text': its time-and-space-travel premise requires that designers be tirelessly imaginative in devising new worlds and entities and recreating past civilizations. While Doctor Who’s attempts at worldbuilding are notorious for being hit-and-miss – old jokes about wobbly walls and sink plungers die hard – the distinctiveness of the series’ design imagery is beyond question. And over the course of six decades Doctor Who has produced designs which are not only iconic but, in being repeatedly revisited and updated, have proven to be an ever-more important element in the series’ identity and mythos. In the first in-depth study of Doctor Who’s costumes, sets and graphics, Piers Britton offers an historical overview of both the original and the revived series, explores theoretical frameworks for evaluating Doctor Who design, and provides detailed analysis of key images. Case studies include the visual morphology of Doctor Who’s historical adventures, the evaluative character of cosplay, and the ongoing significance for the Doctor Who brand of such high-profile designs as the Daleks and the TARDIS interior, the ‘time-tunnel’ title sequence, and the costumes of the Fourth and Thirteenth Doctors.

About the Author

Piers Britton is Professor and Director of Visual & Media Studies at the University of Redlands, Southern California. He is the author of TARD/Sbound (I.B.Tauris, 2011) and co-author of Reading Between Designs: Visual imagery and the generation of meaning in The Avengers, The Prisoner and Doctor Who (U.T. Press, 2003). He writes mostly on costume and production design for television and film, and is currently developing a book-length study of design for television and film, provisionally entitled Immaterial Culture: Theorizing Design for Screen Entertainment. He teaches on screen genres, television aesthetics, the arts and art theory in the Renaissance, and gender in art and the media.