Bibliography

A partial bibliography of John Christopher's fiction can be found elsewhere on this site. The most useful secondary sources are:

• Books for Keeps 9, July 1981, "Authorgraph no. 9: John Christopher"
• Something About The Author Autobiography Series, volume 6 (1988), by C. S. Youd [i.e. John Christopher] pp 297-312, including numerous photographs from the author's own collection
• Christopher Samuel Youd: master of all genres: a working bibliography, Galactic Central (Leeds, 1987 and second revised edition 1990) by Phil Stephensen-Payne
• Three Tomorrows: American, British and Soviet Science Fiction, John Griffiths (Macmillan, 1980), especially chapter 4, "Disaster, survival and salvation", offers a largely admiring critique of Christopher's works
• Circus 8 (1999), which includes a long interview, and is very well worth obtaining a copy of (see also below)

For the television programme:

• BBC press kit, 1984, printed on green Tripods notepaper and comprising potted biographies of Christopher, Bates, Rowe, Freeman, Theakston, Barry, Shackley, Baker, Seel, Salem, Young, Long and de Gaye.
• Starburst 77 reportedly has something on The Tripods
• Starburst 88, December 1985, interview with John Shackley
• Starburst 89, January 1986, "On The Trail of the Tripods", a location report by Paul Mount of filming in Wales
• Radio Times, 15-21 September 1984, cover story "The Tripods are Coming"
• Books for Keeps 28, September 1984, "The Tripods Are Coming" (including an interview with Ceri Seel)
• Radio Times, 5-11 October 1985, John Craven's Back Pages: "The art of the impossible" (i.e. modelling the City)
• Broadcast, 15 November 1985, "Return of the Tripods to exterminate the Daleks?"
• Radio Times, 4-10 January 1986, letters page lead item "'Marvellous' Tripods Deserve a Third Season"
• Doctor Who Special Effects (1986), by Mat Irvine, p 88 includes a photograph of a Tripod model being filmed against a blue CSO background
• TV Zone 17, April 1991, "The Tripods Are Coming!", critical appraisal by Justin Richards and Peter Anghelides
• TV Zone 22, September 1991, "The Lost Tripods Season": a plot outline by Justin Richards
• The political Diaries (1992) of Alan Clark, a middle-ranking government minister of the 1980s and owner of Saltwood Castle, a major location in series 1, offer an interesting bystander's view of the programme being filmed
• Century 21 Magazine 9 (1992), an interview with Christopher Penfold (largely about work on Space:1999)
• TV Zone 45 (1993), "Christopher Penfold -- Writing: 1999"
• TV Zone Special no 10, August 1993, "The Tripod Days", interview with John Shackley and comments by Christopher Penfold and Richard Bates
• Circus 8 (1999) includes interviews with Bates, director Christopher Barry and composer Ken Freeman

Two indispensable references for British television in general, and another useful source for details of science-fiction shows:

• The British Television Drama Research Guide 1950-1997 with full archive holdings, ed. Richard Down and Christopher Perry, usually called "the Kaleidoscope guide" after its small-press publishing house.
• The Guinness Book of Classic British TV, second edition 1996, by Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping.
• The Encyclopaedia of TV Science Fiction, updated edition 1995, Boxtree Productions and TV Times, ed. Roger Fulton

There is a very extensive literature about Doctor Who, and to a lesser extent about BBC science fiction in general. The most reliable and detailed source covering the internal BBC politics of the cancellation crisis is:

• The Handbook: The Sixth Doctor: The Colin Baker years 1984-1986, Virgin Publishing 1993, by David Howe, Mark Stammers and Stephen James Walker

The same authors' First Doctor handbook publishes an archive of internal BBC documents tracing the genesis of the concept of Doctor Who in 1963, which offers an interesting insight into the BBC's early views of science fiction.

The mid-1980s crisis at the BBC has now passed into written history, though it should be remembered that only the losing side has really told its story, as the incoming managers are still to some extent in charge of the corporation. For that and other television history:

• The battle for the BBC: a British broadcasting conspiracy? (Aurum, 1994), by Steven Barnett and Andrew Curry, is a much more careful and revealing history than its melodramatic title would suggest
• DG: The Memoirs of a British Broadcaster (1988), by Alasdair Milne, gives the old guard's view: he was director-general 1981-87, and the last senior figure to come up through drama rather than news
• Into the Box of Delights: a history of children's television (1993), by Anna Home, is a survey (confined to the UK) by the head of BBC children's drama: Home was also producer of The Changes and Knights of God, both of which are mentioned within

Acknowledgements

I never intended this web-site to be so large or detailed, and it started out just as an essay in television criticism: but if a job's worth doing, it's worth over-doing, and a great many people have written in, sending me ever more information and helping to make these pages the trivia-fest they sometimes are. My thanks to all those people, but especially to:

• Tyrone L. Cartwright, for raytracing a 1990s version of the logo
• Gerry Forrester, for background on the music
• John Mclay, for a great wodge of press clippings
• Toby Nelson, for capturing screen images and researching the cast
• Stuart Wyss, for scanning in pages from the comic strip
• Colin Brockhurst and Chris Orton, for their excellent interviews in 1999

I continue to be pleased to hear from anyone with information to pass on.