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Doctor Who Books, Reviewed: The Mind of the Doctor by Lillian Crawford
This is a wonderful book and the best book about Doctor Who that I have read for years. In The Mind of the Doctor, Lillian Crawford gives us a profound, informative insight into how and why Doctor Who appeals to so many neurodivergent people. Lillian is a neurodivergent writer and critic who has written for The Times Literary Supplement, The New Statesman, Doctor Who Magazine, Sight & Sound, and BBC Culture. An ongoing theme of the book is her own relationship with the programme and The Mind of the Doctor helps us to understand what it is to be a fan of Doctor Who and why it appeals so much to so many of us. Her account of her personal journey is one we can relate to and there are many times when her experience chimes with mine: how much she loves the show, how she suddenly fell out of love with it and watched it critically for some years before returning to love it. I was particularly struck by her account of trashing her Doctor Who collection in her teens, selling off the lot when she fell out of love with the show: something which I suspect many of us have done. I remember Simon and I sold our huge Who collection when we hit 16 and thought it was time to put childish things behind us – a resolution which you can see we have most certainly kept. Ahem. Lillian’s critical approach to the show spans all its eras, from An Unearthly Child to The Reality War. She makes profound, illuminating links and draws parallels between stories separated by years of political and social change, and leaves us understanding those stories better. One of the most refreshing things about her book is that she doesn’t make value judgements about different periods of the show but finds something positive and interesting to say about all of them. When there are criticisms, they are very gently made: for example, she writes of her difficulty in identifying with Ncuti Gatwa’s socially confident Fifteenth Doctor. As a neurodivergent fan, she explains that he has lost the sense of the Doctor as an outsider, of their social awkwardness, which is something that so appeals to neurodivergent people, and therefore that he doesn’t capture the essence of the Doctor. This is also a book which clearly explains changing perceptions of autism over time, from Asperger’s work 80 years ago to our understanding today that neurodivergent people differ from each other individually as much as neurotypical people differ from each other. Lillian writes movingly about her own childhood and schooldays, and how the Doctor helped her through them: something so many of us can identify with. This is a book which every teacher and educator should read: it is far superior to any of the teacher training sessions on autism I had in a forty year career as an English teacher. I loved The Mind of the Doctor and I will treasure it. The Mind of the Doctor is out now, with an RRP of £14.99 — very much worth it! Like this: Like Loading…
