Both The TimeTraveller’s Companion and Defending the Earth: The UNIT Sourcebook, the last
two sourcebooks for Cubicle Seven Entertainment’s Ennie-award winning DoctorWho: Adventures in Time and Space roleplaying game have looked to the
television series’ past as much as they have its present. They have
acknowledged the history of both the series and its setting whilst also
exploring the most recent developments and involvement of the Doctor with UNIT
and time travel and the Time Lords respectively. The third and more recent
supplement for the RPG all but ignores the most recent incarnations of the
Doctor to delve deep back into his past. Which in the year of Doctor Who’s
fiftieth anniversary seems more than appropriate, and to celebrate that anniversary,
Cubicle Seven Entertainment is going to do it again and again. The supplement
in question is The First
Doctor Sourcebook, the inaugural entry in the Doctor
Sourcebook series, which means that there are another ten entries in the series
to come…
As its title suggests, The First Doctor Sourcebook is wholly
devoted to the adventures of the Doctor as portrayed by William Hartnell that
take us from an encounter with An Unearthly Child in a junkyard on Totter’s Lane to the Doctor’s
first encounter with the Cybermen on The Tenth Planet. It presents an
opportunity for the Doctor – or indeed, the player character Time Lord and his
Companions to be wanderers in the Fourth Dimension. To visit Skaro for the
first time; to visit the past and travel the Silk Road to far Cathay; to foil
the machinations of Mavic Chen; to become the reluctant playthings of the
Celestial Toymaker; and more.
The book is
essentially broken into two parts. The first introduces us to Hartnell’s
portrayal and explores his character, his Companions, the difficulties of his
travels during this period, and the common themes and ideas. Most notably these
include the scope and length of the First Doctor’s adventures, for rather than
a quick visit he and his Companions might stay for months at a time, but then
his adventures might also span numerous worlds. Nevertheless, the Doctor of
this era likes to take his time to interact with different peoples and alien
cultures. Aboard the Doctor’s TARDIS – in some ways as cantankerous and faulty
as he is, this is an age of exploration and adventure, for as old as the Doctor
appears, his adventures represent his first steps out into the unknown of the
universe. Thus he is rarely as forewarned and certainly not as self-aware as
later incarnations will be…
The second
part of The First Doctor Sourcebook is further divided into chapters that
travel chronologically in order through each of the First Doctor’s adventures. For
each of these there is a synopsis followed by a guide to running the adventure
and a listing of any appropriate characters, aliens, and gadgets. The guide to
running each adventure is not a straight forward adaptation, but rather a
discussion of themes and ideas inherent to the adventure. So for example, with
An Unearthly Adventure the authors examine how Barbara and Ian are brought into
the TARDIS and then discuss what lies at the heart of the encounter in the prehistoric
– the desire for an object, in the case of An Earthly Child, the object is
fire. The nature of the object is irrelevant, but how it can be used to tell a
story is and that is the point of the examination. In presenting a fully stated
up Stone Age Tribesman, they also discuss the possibility of playing a
Companion from a primitive time. Rounding the entry for each story is a
selection of Further Adventures hooks that could be run as possible sequels.
Advice and
extra information like this continues throughout The First Doctor Sourcebook.
So for example, there are stats and write ups for the very version of the
Daleks from The Daleks; how to handle long journeys and the theft of the TARDIS
as in Marco Polo; on using telepathy in The Sensorites; and how to portray
non-human or non-humanoid characters as in the Menoptra, Optra, and Zarbi of
The Web Planet. In all of these it does not present extensive write ups of
every character to appear in each episode – that would take up a great deal of
space and anyway, these are easy enough for the GM to create by himself. The
pertinent ones are given though, except for one odd omission, that of the
Meddling Monk from The Time Meddler. As a renegade Time Lord, his stats and a
fuller write up can be found in The Time Traveller’s Companion. Rounding out
The First Doctor Sourcebook is a set of characters for every one of the Companions
who accompanied the First Doctor on his travels.
Physically,
The First Doctor Sourcebook is a slim hard back book, suitably illustrated
throughout with black and white photographs – hopefully by the time Cubicle
Seven Entertainment gets to The Third Doctor Sourcebook it will be in colour. The
volume feels solidly researched and well written, but if there is a downside to
the book, it is that not going to appeal or be of use to everyone, and that is
going to be an issue with each of the subsequent volumes in the series. After
all, almost everyone has their favourite Doctor and also their least favourite
Doctor, and that may be reflected in the Doctor Sourcebooks that they purchase.
With The First Doctor Sourcebook, the adventures presented here may not be as
dynamic or as knowing or as exciting as those of new Who, but there is nothing
to stop the GM from bringing those elements to the Hartnell era or treating the
era as a change of pace. Or indeed as a starting point for a campaign that
revisits each of the eleven eras of the Doctor.
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