Andy Lane, The Babylon File: The Definitive Unauthorised Guide to J. Michael Straczynski's Babylon 5
****
I took far too long to get around to this landmark series (after a couple of false starts over the decades), and making most of the journey in the company of the retro book I would have actually had at the time helped with the '90s immersion. As an unauthorised guide it's nicely opinionated, even if he's pretty crazy at times (such as calling the genuinely upsetting racial violence analogue "a fun and lightweight episode"), and free to be respectfully cheeky. Seeing the dots connected across the first 3.5 years helped get me through the rough patches.
1997-98 (collected 1998) / Ecomics / 80 pages / USA
**
The series gets a lot of praise for its plotting, but budget and other necessities mean that a lot of that happens out of sight and mind. Fortunately, there's authorised supplemental canon to patch some of those holes. Unfortunately, Minbari stories are pretty dull.
2020 / Ecomics / 96 pages / USA
***
Taking its cues and themes from a specific microgenre of episodes, this would have been a worthwhile addition and is one of the better DS9 comics, though it's mainly notable for its isolation as the only one of those in bloody ages.
James Van Hise, Kay Doty and Alex Burleson, Trek: Deep Space Nine – The Unauthorized Story
**
You wouldn't turn to this hasty half-season primer for authoritative insights, but as a combination of overly repetitive magazine and opinionated barely-retrospective, it makes a nice time capsule commemorating the first 'Trek spin-off. I especially enjoyed the candid dismay at the series seeming to abandon its promising premise for generic crap almost immediately. Just wait.
Tommy Donbavand, Doctor Who: Shroud of Sorrow
**
I'd be tempted to single-mindedly obsess over the unwieldy franchise's 2010–13 ephemera if even its more promising novels weren't in the habit of tailing off unreadably as they go along. It wasn't worth my distracted attention after a while, but it started out well with a credibly cheesy horror plot, pop psychology analogy and subtle and less subtle anniversary nods. I should stick to the short stories.
