Panini launches Essential Doctor Who series with Cybermen special

Saturday, 29 March 2014 - Reported by John Bowman

Publisher Panini has launched a new series of specials called The Essential Doctor Who, with the first title centring on the Cybermen.

It follows last year's 50th-anniversary "bookazines" by the makers of Doctor Who Magazine.

Highlights of the first edition include a new Cyberman, specially illustrated by original designer Alexandra Tynan (formerly called Sandra Reid).

The Essential Doctor Who: Cybermen is a 116-page guide featuring details of every Cyberman episode. There are exclusive new interviews with scriptwriters Neil Gaiman, Gareth Roberts and Marc Platt, choreographer Ailsa Berk, and four of the actors who have portrayed Cybermen.

The publication also includes archive interviews with Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis, who created the Cybermen, as well as features on comics, novels, audio stories and Davis's unmade serial The Genesis of the Cybermen.

Editor Marcus Hearn, who authored the New York Times best-seller Doctor Who: The Vault, said:

Our writers include the estimable Andrew Pixley and our art editor is the brilliant Peri Godbold, so we obviously share our DNA with Doctor Who Magazine. But there are a lot of new voices in there as well, and I hope we've been able to preserve DWM's authoritative tone while creating our own identity.

The special is on sale now at WH Smith and other newsagents.

FILTER: - Magazines