Tat Wood


Tat Wood is co-writer of the About Time episode guides to the television series Doctor Who. This book series, begun in 2004, emphasises the importance of understanding the series in the context of British politics, culture and science. Volume Six was, barring a guest-piece by Robert Shearman and input from Lars Pearson, almost entirely Wood's work. Volumes Seven, Eight and Nine were co-written with Dorothy Ail after Miles left the project. Wood and Ail updated the e-book editions of volumes Five and Six. The updated Volume Three, substantially expanded solely by Wood but retaining a few pieces of Miles's work, was published in 2008 and longlisted for the BSFA Award for non-fiction. A revised Volume Four is due in 2020.
In addition to this series, Wood has contributed to non-fiction works for other publishers, including Relative Dissertations in Time and Space. The Cult TV Book. TARDIS Outside In volume 2 and Outside In Boldly Goes. In November 2014 he gave a talk for the 'ON TV' symposium held in Sheffield by University of Northampton. He and Ail wrote World History in Minutes for Quercus Books in 2015.
Wood has also written for Doctor Who Magazine, Starburst, TV Zone, Film Review and Xpose on subjects as diverse as crop circles, art fraud, the problems of adapting children's novels for television and the Piltdown hoax. In a 1993 edition of "Dreamwatch", he wrote a piece entitled "Hai! Anxiety", in which the Jon Pertwee era of the series was – unusually for the time – held up to sustained criticism.
He is also active in Doctor Who fandom, notably as editor of the fanzines Spectrox, Yak Butter Sandwich and Spaceball Ricochet. Some of his fan writing was included in the anthology Licence Denied, published in 1997.
After a year working in France he is now resident in the U.S.