May 17th, 2026
13 comments
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The Doctor Who Production Diary The Troughton Years
Available to order from www.telos.co.uk
In the second of a series of books, noted Doctor Who historian David Brunt presents the most detailed and comprehensive day-by-day record ever published of the show’s production during the years 1966-1969 when Patrick Troughton played the Doctor.
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MR ALAN N SILVESTER
June 4th, 2026 - 1:44pmOrdered. The Hartnell edition was exceptional, so I’m really looking forward to this volume.
cosmosboy98
June 3rd, 2026 - 11:02amThe discussion around this book / the high praise for it’s precursor has inspired me to purchase the Hartnell Production Diary. Very much looking forward to delving in!
KEV SIMMONDS
May 25th, 2026 - 1:57pmI know the second Doctors working schedule was extremely hard for them to cope with.All hours they worked which was one of the reasons Patrick Troughton wanted to leave.It was something like 60 hours plus a week.And I’d love to know a bit more about this.
Peter
May 26th, 2026 - 3:03pmIndeed, it’s going to be interesting seeing just how crazy and up-against-the-wire the schedule for this era was (S4 episodes were going out 1 week ahead of transmission come start of 1967. Also, none of the regulars were in studio for Space Pirates 6 — all their scenes pre-filmed and dropped in to free them up for pre-filming on War Games). The beauty of the format of these production diaries is that you can see day-by-day just everything that was going on, and it’s staggering at times.
Bookcollector
May 26th, 2026 - 4:34pmIts touched on in the handbooks series published by virgin books in the 1990’s. The first and second doctor ones really delved into the production side. The schedule was punishing for troughton during his era. It was due to this that the production method was changed during pertwee’s era making it less gruelling for the lead actors
Simm Master
June 1st, 2026 - 11:56amThis is by far one of the most useful books of the series in terms of completely-new information due to the fact that it covers the most stories without any physical visual release to have the info text that would normally reveal some of this information already!
(Not that the others aren’t; they have presented and will present lots of new information as well; I’m simply saying that this will surely have a slight unfair advantage on that basis.)
Simon
May 19th, 2026 - 3:09pmThe first book was excellent and busted a lot of long standing myths about the early days of the series by going back to the actual documents.
bob hellier
May 18th, 2026 - 6:16pmive got the william hartnell one looking forward to this one
Fred
May 18th, 2026 - 8:29pmWould you recommend? I love reading about the history of the programme but would rather avoid buying something where it’s all stuff we already know.
Gordon
May 19th, 2026 - 8:44amI’d highly recomend it. The first one was an extremely well researched and produced book dealing with the day to day production side of the show. It’s THE book to get on the history of early history of the show.
Peter Munro
May 19th, 2026 - 9:02amI agree with Gordon – and I know we’ve had the beginnings of the show presented in a similar manner before in things like DWM Specials, 1st Doc handbook etc. It’s where all of the info you could possibly need is collated in one place. Exhaustively comprehensive and invaluable seeing it all laid out in chronological order. I plan on buying them all if all eras are done like this (the 1980s is covered in a JNT production diary book).
I ordered this Troughton production diary the second it was announced last year; can’t wait to have my copy of it soon.
Gordon
May 19th, 2026 - 9:32amThe first one wasn’t a small book either at 668 pages. I think David has said he’s doing up to either the end of the mcoy era or the tv movie. He expects Tom to need 2 volumes but he’s working at a doctor at a time. The amount of information available really expands in the 70s due to its renewed popularity so there is more to research
The11thHour2010
May 19th, 2026 - 11:57amIt’s most definitely worth getting due to both the amount of new information outright and the new presentation of all the information on a daily basis, giving a stronger indication of when work on different stories was happening at the same time (whereas the other reference works only run through one story at a time).
The only reason I haven’t yet finished the first volume is because I am holding myself to strictly only reading about what happened exactly 60 years ago today (which is also why I’m relieved this book is scheduled to be available a good few months before we reach that point, and also why I had to slightly race through the opening section of it since it was released a decent way into the era turning 60)!