To an extent, the CUE is a commentary on the excesses of fandom. Jokes are consistently made about fandom's obsession with everything from merchandise collection to continuity debating, and for some these may well hit uncomfortably close to home. Personally, I find this wonderfully amusing and compelling, even if I'm at times party to the selfsame acts that Lyons and Howarth make fun of. I think it's a mistake for fandom (of any show, not just Doctor Who) to take itself or the programme it adores too seriously, and the CUE may well serve as a reality check for some.

Even when not acting as a social critic, the CUE offers up some hilarious jokes at the programmes expense... and even at the expense of the authors themselves (see, for instance, the entry under "OWEN, DAVE")! But a little too often, these jokes are far between. Though I'm sure in several places I'm missing the humor by virtue of having been born on the wrong side of the Pond, several more are just obvious misfires. And while this could be forgiven, the fact of the matter is that CUE asks the reader to shell out as much money as a full-length novel for a few pages of jokes which can easily be read in ninety minutes. And I expect the situation is worse with more casual fans, for whom much of the humor will make no sense at all, simply being too obscure.

Ultimately, then, it is difficult to recommend the CUE to any but the more diehard of fans, though of course this will depend to a large degree on one's sense of humor. Perhaps the best thing to do with the CUE is to flip through it in the bookstore first: pick any one page at random, and if you find more than two-thirds of it unfunny, obscure, or just pretty pointless, then you'll probably be better served if you put it back on the shelf.

6/10.

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