The long-running popular TV series Doctor Who is, Piers Britton argues, a 'uniquely design intensive text': its time-and-space-travel premise requires that designers be tirelessly imaginative in devising new worlds and entities and recreating past civilizations. While Doctor Who's attempts at worldbuilding are notorious for being hit-and-miss - old jokes about wobbly walls and sink plungers die hard - the distinctiveness of the series' design imagery is beyond question. And over the course of six decades Doctor Who has produced designs which are not only iconic but, in being repeatedly revisited and updated, have proven to be an ever-more important element in the series' identity and mythos. In the first in-depth study of Doctor Who's costumes, sets and graphics, Piers Britton offers an historical overview of both the original and the revived series, explores theoretical frameworks for evaluating Doctor Who design, and provides detailed analysis of key images. Case studies include the visual morphology of Doctor Who's historical adventures, the evaluative character of cosplay, and the ongoing significance for the Doctor Who brand of such high-profile designs as the Daleks and the TARDIS interior, the 'time-tunnel' title sequence, and the costumes of the Fourth and Thirteenth Doctors.

"The power to influence our concept of style lies in the hands of designers in television. Most people today can recognize 'a look' that a character projects. Steed and Emma Peel [of The Avengers] were the first to convey 'a look, ' and their designers should be saluted. At the heart of this book lies the story of how the look came about." -- Madeline Ann Kozlowski, Professor of Drama, University of California, Irvine, and Emmy Award-winning costume designer for Pryor's Place

From the alien worlds of Star Trek to the realistic operating room of ER, the design of sets and costumes contributes not only to the look and mood of television shows, but even more importantly to the creation of memorable characters. Yet, until now, this crucial aspect of television creativity has received little critical attention, despite the ongoing interest in production design within the closely allied discipline of film studies.

In this book, Piers Britton and Simon Barker offer a first analytical study of scenic and costume design for television drama series. They focus on three enduringly popular series of the 1960s-- The Avengers, The Prisoner, and Doctor Who-- and discuss such topics as the sartorial image of Steed in The Avengers, the juxtaposition of picturesque and fascistic architecture in The Prisoner, and the evolution of the high-tech interior of Doctor Who's TARDIS. Interviews with the series' original designers and reproductions of their original drawings complement the authors' analysis, which sheds new light on a variety of issues, from the discourse of fashion to that of the heritage industry, notions of "Pop" and retro, and the cultural preoccupation with realism andvirtual reality.