The Black Archive

The Black Archive are a series of critical monographs about selected individual Doctor Who stories, from the series' earliest history to the present day.

Rather than focusing on behind-the-scenes production history as much Doctor Who fan scholarship has done, the series aimed to analyse and explore the stories as broadcast.

The series was published by Obverse Books. Its editing team was led by Philip Purser-Hallard, along with Stuart Douglas, Paul Simpson, and Paul Driscoll. It was named after the Black Archive, a museum of alien artefacts first seen in Enemy of the Bane.

The series' first four titles were published simultaneously in 1 March 2016. Following titles, from Image of the Fendahl up to Full Circle were released each two months. Starting with Carnival of Monsters in February 2018, titles were released monthly; this ended in December 2020 with the release of the fiftieth volume.^[1]

In 2018, Obverse Books launched a sister range to The Black Archive called The Silver Archive that examined television series other than Doctor Who.^[2]

Published titles

Cover gallery

Main article: The Black Archive/Covers

Notes

• Two of the books in the Black Archive series have been the recipients of a prominent science-fiction award, with the monographs on Full Circle and Paradise Towers (both written by John Toon) receiving the Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Professional Production/Publication in 2019 and 2023 respectively.

  

• Black Archive books based on The Pirate Planet (written by Lance Parkin^[4]), The Daleks' Master Plan (written by Alan Stevens^[5]), The Twin Dilemma (written by Gordon Ridout^[6]), Survival (written by Craig Jones^[7]), The Unquiet Dead (written by Erin Horáková), The Tenth Planet (written by Michael Seely^[8]), Mawdryn Undead (written by Kara Dennison^[9]), The Faceless Ones (written by Joseph Oldham^[10]), Frontios (written by Paul Driscoll^[11]) and Orphan 55 (written by Matthew Kresal^[12]) had also been announced as part of the release schedule for previous years, but these books have thus far remained unreleased for unknown reasons.
• The Eighth Doctor is the first (and thus far the only) Doctor to have had all of their TV episodes be the subject of a Black Archive book (this largely being due to the fact that the Eighth Doctor has only had the lead role in two television stories thus far).

External links

Official The Black Archive page at Obverse Books

• Official Twitter account

Footnotes