Telos Publishing charts the travels of a certain blue box with “The Fantastic Journey”

By John Freeman on July 6, 2023

The Fantastic Journey by Daryl Joyce (Telos Publishing, 2023)

Telos Publishing is to deliver a wonderful, unofficial travelogue charting the many appearances of a certain blue box from Doctor Who with its upcoming release, The Fantastic Journey, illustrated by Daryl Joyce.

In this full-colour, coffee-table-style hardback book, Daryl, well-known for his previous Doctor Who pieces, presents a stunning collection of illustrations chronicling the show’s whole history, from the Totter’s Lane junkyard of the debut instalment, “An Unearthly Child”, right up to the most recent episodes.

“It all started out as a mild curiosity in a junk-yard, and now it’s turned out to be quite a great spirit of adventure don’t you think?” … so spoke the Doctor during Doctor Who‘s first season, and from that “mild curiosity”, the show has gone on to explore strange new worlds in this universe and others, taking in all times and places along the way.

For Doctor Who‘s sixtieth anniversary, the team at Telos Publishing considered that perhaps the best way to celebrate would be to remind ourselves of all the adventure, thrills, alien species, monsters, villains, companions and excitement that the Doctor has experienced on his many travels, all with his most faithful of companions, the TARDIS, by his side. Sometimes “the old girl” gets left behind, or sidestepped in time, but most often she is there at the start, and again at the end, waiting patiently for the Doctor and his friends to return in order to whisk them all off somewhere else, where more adventure awaits.

And what better guide than the incredible artwork of Daryl Joyce, who has been at the forefront of Doctor Who artwork for many years? He’s created imagery to accompany many tie-in works, but this is the first time that a work of this magnitude has been attempted … trying to encapsulate most of the Doctors adventures and voyages in one book.

“We did consider trying to cover them all,” says Telos Publishing’s David Howe, “but the book would have ended up twice the size – unmanageable – so with Daryl’s help, we have filtered and filleted the journeys and present the majority … with a few additional sidesteps and images along the way, all to celebrate sixty amazing years of television travel in time and space …”

With a foreword from Doctor Who actress Sophie Aldred, who played companion Ace, join Daryl for an adventure through memory, to scenes and places explored and encountered by the Doctor and his friends …

And here’s to many more years to come!

Daryl Joyce is a freelance illustrator and designer who has created artwork for DVD features, animation, magazine articles, books and TV documentaries. He’s been teasing some of his art for this project, both final and some work in progress, on his social media for some time, now, and the anticipation from fans is near palpable!

Dary work has appeared in Doctor Who Magazine, Sci Fi Now, on the Big Finish range of audio dramas and the BBC’s official Doctor Who site. Although Daryl has a special focus on science fiction illustration, he is versatile and can readily tackle many subjects – including aviation, conceptual design and portraiture.

• The Fantastic Journey, art by Daryl Joyce | 336pp approx. 8.5 × 11-format landscape full colour hardback | ISBN 978-1845832216 | Published Autumn 2023 | Pre-order your copy here direct from Telos Publishing

• Daryl Joyce is online at daryljoyce.co.uk

John Freeman

The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He is currently editor of Star Trek Explorer, published by Titan – his third tour of duty on the title originally titled Star Trek Magazine.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Babylon 5 Magazine, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”.

He’s the writer of “Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies” for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs” with Dave Hailwood.