TARDIS Eruditorum

TARDIS Eruditorum
Publisher:	Eruditorum Press
Type:	Reference books
Release date:	2011 - present

TARDIS Eruditorum was a critical history of Doctor Who appearing in the form of a series of reference books written by Elizabeth Sandifer, with the books expanding on a series of blog entries of the same name. As a critical history, it attempted to document the story of Doctor Who as a cultural phenomenon, as well as how Doctor Who reflected the broader culture happening around it. As of January 2024 the books cover up to the end of the Ninth Doctor era, and Sandifer has begun to post entries for Series 11 on her website.

Publisher's summary

TARDIS Eruditorum tells the ongoing story of Doctor Who from its beginnings in the 1960s to the present day, pushing beyond received wisdom and fan dogma to understand that story not just as the story of a geeky sci-fi show but as the story of an entire line of mystical, avant-garde and radical British culture. It treats Doctor Who as a show that really is about everything that has ever happened and everything that ever will.

Subject matter

While this project is a cultural history, it was done with a slight future bias. The term used for this was "psychochronography" - stringing together memories, histories and ideas to discover new things about our world. It was explicitly stated not to be reviewing stories in the context of their time.

Still, this blog is not about reviewing stories in the context of their time (there's been enough quality writing on Doctor Who that does that, most notably Miles and Wood's sublime About Time sextet). It's about understanding a story of Doctor Who that continues to this day.Elizabeth Sandifer

To this effect, Eruditorum engaged with other critical scholarship concerning Doctor Who and commented on their analysis as well, as part of the ongoing story. This included About Time, The Discontinuity Guide, Doctor Who Bulletin, Running Through Corridors and Peter Haining's Doctor Who: A Celebration.

Features

Recurring sections

Aside from general commentary on Doctor Who stories, there were recurring segments or sections that would occasionally appear to discuss other issues as they were relevant to Doctor Who of that era, or Doctor Who of that era would provide commentary on them.

• Time Can Be Rewritten: Coming back to the era being discussed with a work produced later on. For example, a section on The Day of the Doctor being discussed in the Tennant era section.

• Outside The Government: Covering spinoffs episode by episode so as to better understand the full story of Doctor Who in this time period. Note here that Sherlock was treated as a spinoff, because although it is not set in the same universe, production issues and thematic issues from the two shows were taken by Sandifer to overlap.

• You Were Expecting Someone Else: Non-televised Doctor Who from the same time period. Though this qualifier was dropped during the eras where the program is off the air and non televised works continue to be made. For instance, Human Nature does not have this tag, but The Missy Chronicles does.

• Pop Between Realities: Commentary on other facets of pop culture, or occasionally the real world. In this case, Star Wars, Mary Whitehouse or rec.arts.drwho.

Fundamental concepts

Over time, the project picked up a variety of recurring themes it continued to find throughout Doctor Who and comment on.

• Doctor Who as Alchemy: The interchangeability of an object and the symbolic representation of the object, as well as a variety of symbols associated with this pursuit, and how these things all blend together in certain Doctor Who stories.

• Narrative Collapse: How certain stories in Doctor Who will threaten the very foundations of the narrative, removing all possibility of the show continuing.

• Ontological Forces Within the Narrative: How certain characters are designated as being driving forces within the story that everything else bends around.

• The Problem of Susan: The role of companion as a metaphor for a sexual coming of age story and how sexuality should be addressed in children's media.

Associated Podcast

Over varying parts of the Capaldi and Whittaker eras, Sandifer would occasionally host a podcast, the Eruditorum Presscast, in concert with the infrastructure from Pex Lives. This was more review focused, as it was more immediately responding to the episode, but still approached things from a critical perspective. Various guests to be on this podcast included Mac Rogers, Elliot Chapman, Al Ewing, Rachael Stott, Niki Haringsma, Kate Orman and Peter Harness. These discussions were largely focused on the episode, but also occasionally discussed other issues of note, for example, Kate Orman, on her podcast for Hell Bent, discussed the history of her career and where things sat with her at the time, and Peter Harness, not related to any episode airing at the time, just discussed Kill the Moon and adapting Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell to the screen.

Notes

• Due to the nature of the project, and how it was constructed with an emphasis on how events impacted the present, there were some similarities between it and a whig history.
• The project was originally "completed" in February of 2015, when Sandifer finished covering the show's history up until the end of the Eleventh Doctor, but with the intention of coming back to cover each subsequent era after it was finished. Consequently, it returned in 2018–2019 to document the Twelfth Doctor's run, and again in 2024 for the Thirteenth Doctor.
• The differences between blog and books include refining the content, removing "chapters" deemed to be extraneous (so the blog has some entries the books lack), and adding in new entries not present in the blog.
• "Alchemy" was used throughout both the blog and the books as it was by 19th and 20th century mystics. The current consensus in the history of science is that alchemy in the sense practiced by medieval thinkers was a proto-science that was rather rigorous for its day.
• Elements of Paul Cornell's comic The Heralds of Destruction were inspired by Eruditorum's coverage of alchemy. (COMMENTARY: Heralds of Destruction)
• In Hide the machine used to amplify the abilities of Emma Grayling was called a psychochronograph.
• The author of the work, Elizabeth Sandifer, jokingly said that she "served as the unofficial magical advisor to Doctor Who", after doing an occult ritual at the behest of Peter Harness to make sure The Zygon Inversion wouldn't be delayed after an aeroplane was blown up.
• Sandifer also on occasion took advantage of the fact that the project began online to play around with the structure of her work in ways that were not obviously best suited for books as a medium. This was in addition to more general experiments with structure such as an entry focused on William Blake , parodying the work being discussed , and ordering paragraphs based on an arcane alphabetization scheme.

Cover gallery

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  Volume One

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  Volume Two

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  Volume Three

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  Volume Four

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  Volume Five

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  Volume Six

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  Volume Seven

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  Volume Eight

External links

• TARDIS Eruditorum in blog form
• TARDIS Eruditorum as books
• Pex Lives Podcast