Major Geek-y Dr Who question

[KatyMac]

Sad but true

I NEED to know what the little circles/shapes/hexagons are on the spines of the Dr Who books

Do they have a meaning?

Are they a form of numbering

Am I really sad?

I have 17 of those books sitting on my bookshelf & had never noticed the shapes were all different!

They are Time Lord language symbols - when you see the monitor screen in the Tardis,it is 'wriiten' in this kind of symbol. The shape with the circles cut out of it is like the big collar/headdress things the time lords used to wear.

Am now going to study the books to see if I can see a sequence...

I think there is one at the beginning of each chapter - but I haven't been sad enough to sit down and check if they are the same in each book (& therefore 1,2,3 ect)

I love how geek-knowledge has become part of the 'brand' now.

I have the tea-towel of Rassilon in an upstairs draw, myself.

Found this by googling Gallifreyan symbols....

"Behind the chapter numbers in the books are symbols similar to the "Gallifreyan writing" seen in the series. The same symbols appear on the spines, and are presumably Gallifreyan numbers. The recurring patterns in the symbols suggest that Time Lords count in base seven."

Retrieved from "http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/BBC_Tenth_Doctor_Adventures"

How's your base 7 maths?

The 'tea-towel of Rassilon' wow

upstairs drawer that should have been. [idiot]

Cool I can do base 7
1,2,3,4,5,6,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,20,21

get the patten?

Well, Chapter 1 has 5 hexagons in an almoat vertical line & at the bottom one circle with cut-outs. Chapter 7 (or 10 in base 7)has the same hexagons but the cut-out shape is one hexagion further up the line & rotated 120° anticlockwise.

I may study this further later, or I may get a life....

120°

I checked my chapter 1 & 7 are the same as yours (I think) aren't I?

DH says that trying to make Gallifreyan numbers fit into any kind of base system is wrong.

He thinks somewhere out there, there is a number system that is as different from ours as ours is from Roman numbers, and in the same way as you can manipulate decimals & fractions in our system and not in the Roman one, this new system would allow us to manipulate numbers such as pi, i (the square root of -1, which doesn't exist) and e, which is approximately 2.718281828 arrived at in a manner with which I won't bore you.
He thinks the Gallifreyan symbols ought to be a representation of this completely new number system.

Don't you think it's lucky we married each other, rather than boring two completely innocent people to death....?

Can I meet him...huh...huh...can I...huh??

But surely chapters would still run from 1, to 2, then 3 especially if they were english (human) chapters labelled in Gallifreyan?

Well it's probably acceptable as the transliteration (if that's the right word) of a base-system series.
DH has gone to fetch the Chinese take-away, so I can't ask him atm.....

LOL and my bf thinks I am bad

Ours are in order on the shelf. We just matched the symbols on the spines to the ones on the chapter headings. How pathetic is that lol? Especially as I can't see any logical pattern to them at all. Yes I know, must get a life.

But aren't there more books than chapters?

I have 17 books & 'The Last Dodo' has 18 chapters, so if i have the first 18 books, I'll be OK....

Well personally I am hoping for more than 18 books aren't you?

Well, I meant OK for the moment.

I'm sure I saw a new one in Smiths the other day, but I don't buy them full price. 10 of mine came in paperback in a boxed set from the Book People for £9.99 & the others were £3.73 (Why £3.73? Odd amount) each from Tesco

DD used WHSmiths vouchers for 5/6 (not sure) of hers
Plus got lots for Christmas but weDD only has 13

They used to have just numbers on the spines!

Which were sometimes different from the numbers inside and/or on the covers...

Which often bore no relation to the order in which they were released!

If anyone really wants to know the full, tedious, detailed, story of DW book numbering and the thinking behind it, I can tell them, but it outgeeks anything so far on this thread...

Yes please

I don't think it relates to the new ones - just the old paperbacks they used to do....? (The "novelisations".) They didn't number them at first, then they started numbering them in release order - which bore no relation to screen order - at about no. 85. The 84 (or whatever) books which they had already released were then retrospectively numbnered - in alphabetical order!!

I don't think the new ones have numbers as such - the symbols are just "Gallifreyan" stuff.

List of new series ones in release order here

My 'Target' Dr Whos are not actually shelved in order of transmission atm ,as we're painting the room they usually live in,and I just shoved them in on another bookcase, but the earliest number I can find is 68, which is An Unearthly child - but it's a 1985 reprint of a book first published in 1981.

Apart from that, the first one we have with a number is 79, which is Terminus, by John Lydecker, signed by Steve Gallagher, pub 1983. So presumably they started numbering in 83, but numbered the reprints with the numbers they would have had if they'd been numbering them when they were first published iyswim.

Incidentally, we have not only the novelization of An Unearthly child , but also 'Dr Who and the Daleks' which is an adaptation of the first story told in the first person by Ian. We have 2 Armada copies(which i think was the first edition) and one Target edition.

18 of my old ones don't have a number
4 do ranging from 7 to 115

BTW my new(ish/er) books with Ace in them have no numbers??