Where to Start: Traveller Buyer's Guide

So, you’ve familiarised yourself (franchisely!) with Traveller. You know your Vargr from your Hivers. You want to delve more deeply into the game. How do you do this? Where do you start? How deep down the rabbit hole do you go? How much money are you willing to part with, from “none at all” to “lots, please?” Here is a potted buyer’s guide to ease you gently into all things Traveller.

As Mongoose Publishing are the new IP-owners for Traveller (though they’ve been producing material in the setting for almost twenty years at this point), it makes sense to focus on their current, 2nd Edition (Updated) of the roleplaying game, as it is the only version currently being developed and expanded on a large scale. However, you can pick up a lot of the earlier editions of the game, especially as PDFs, from Marc Miller’s website and online sellers like DriveThru RPG.

Get Free Stuff! For Free!

Everyone likes free stuff, and Mongoose has you covered here. Last year they released the Traveller Starter Pack via their website which is completely free, and packs in a surprisingly large amount of content.

Traveller Starter Pack

The Starter Pack contains an introductory, streamlined version of the rules, including character creation and combat, and two complete adventures.

The main focus here is the Traveller Explorer’s Edition, which is a 60-page book containing the rules for creating characters, resolving skills and tasks, running combat and encounters, buying basic equipment, crewing spacecraft and even basic world and universe creation. As a concession to this being a free starter set, there’s only two Careers included: Scholar and Scout. However, Traveller’s infamously flexible skill system does allow for characters even of the same Career to be very different to one another.

The two adventures are quite generous. Death Station is a 26-page modern rewrite of a Classic Traveller adventure from back in the day, involving the exploration of a wrecked spacecraft. The rewrite is by Seth Skorkowsky, whose YouTube channel is a rich source of Traveller rules explanations and adventure reviews. Stranded is a 32-page adventure seeing the heroes undertaking a difficult cross-planet journey without their usual resources. Both adventures are well-regarded, and the Starter Pack is worth picking up to just get these adventures even for veteran Traveller players.

This free Starter Pack gives an adventuring group all they need to run a campaign lasting half a dozen sessions or so, or potentially more.

To moderately expand your options, you can add in the PDF of the Traveller Merchant’s Edition for a very reasonable 75p (or $1). This alternate, introductory version of the rules focuses on merchant adventures on a cargo spacecraft. A cut-down version of the trading rules is presented, as well as the Merchant career option. In combination with the Starter Pack, this gives you a moderate version of the Traveller experience for almost no monies. A trip to the Traveller website will also avail free character sheets, spacecraft record sheets, sector and subsector maps, and more.

The ultimate free Traveller resources are also online: Traveller Wiki and the Traveller Map website.

Core Books

The free stuff has given you a taste, but now you want the full, real deal. Where do you go from here?

Your first port of call should be The Traveller Core Rulebook Update 2022. Despite the slightly unwieldy name, this is the 100% full, complete core rulebook for Traveller 2^nd Edition Updated. At 264 pages it’s nicely chunky without being as shelf-destroying as many core rulebooks for other TTRPGs.

The book features no less than 12 Careers (well, 13 with “Prisoner”) and has the full rules for character creation, using skills, resolving tasks, operating vehicles and spacecraft, even building and designing your own spacecraft, as well as rules for using psionics and on living the rich life of a merchant. This is the full rules experience, but has little setting information: the idea is you purchase other books for setting information or create your own (or consult the Traveller Wiki, of course).

With the Core Rulebook and the aforementioned Starter Pack adventures, you already have enough materials to get off to a flying start. But there are several other core books that are worth considering, though still absolutely optional.

Players absolutely love stuff, namely weapons and equipment. What else are they going to spend their mission rewards on? This makes the Central Supply Catalogue Update 2023 an easy early purchase, featuring as it does a vast array (185 pages’ worth!) of new guns, gear and gadgets to enhance and expand any Traveller adventure.

Players also love more options, more ways of playing the game, more stats, skills and character generation ideas. This makes the Traveller Companion Update 2024 an easy recommendation. This book features ideas on how to convert the rules to handle genres such as horror or comedy (the book opens with a Douglas Adams quote), with different (and faster) character generation methods for those who want to get into the action more quickly. There are also rules for much more in-depth combat, including zero-gee vector battles, and more detailed rules for terrain, allies and recurring enemies.

The next step is spacecraft. Traveller is all about blasting into the big black on a trusty stellar cruiser, so having a variety of ships to choose from is fun. High Guard Update 2022 features tons more information on spacecraft operations, combat, ship weapons, designing new ships, crew roles, fleet actions and boarding actions. The book is rounded off by a massive 150 pages featuring numerous spacecraft from the Third Imperium setting, from tiny fighters to massive capital ships.

Other books in the core range are more specialised and you should only consider them if planning a campaign heavily revolving around those concepts. The Robot Handbook is excellent for anyone planning an adventure revolving around robots and cybernetics, but of limited utility to anyone else. The Vehicle Update 2025, due out later this year, expands the repertoire of ground and air vehicles for the setting beyond the basic types in the core book. The World Builder’s Handbook is great for any Referee (the Traveller version of a Dungeon or Gamemaster) more interested in creating their own worlds, whilst Bounty Hunter is useful for adventuring parties filled up with wannabe Boba Fetts.

 

Setting Material

Like Dungeons & Dragons, Traveller was designed as a generic roleplaying system allowing the players and Referees to create their own worlds, star systems and sectors, in their own setting. However, after a while the team found themselves adding names, locations and factions in a consistent manner. The result was Traveller’s official campaign setting: Charted Space, also known as the Third Imperium (earlier editions explored different time periods in the setting, but the current edition has returned to the original time period). Unlike D&D, which eventually developed over two dozen campaign settings joined together by a common multiverse, Traveller developed only a few settings, with the others becoming their own games: 2300AD and various ports of other science fiction universes to the Traveller rules, such as iconic 1990s space opera TV series Babylon 5. 

Getting to grips with the Third Imperium is straightforward. The sourcebook The Third Imperium gives an overview of the entire empire, with a strong focus on the planet Capital, the Sylean core worlds and the surrounding Core Sector. Whilst it’s a good book, the civilised Core Sector is more a setting for adventures revolving around diplomatic overtures, political intrigue and corporate espionage, rather than frontier adventuring. A new Traveller crew might wish to start with the rough-and-ready frontier.

Behind the Claw details the Spinward Marches and Deneb sectors, the original setting for the Classic Traveller adventures and material in the 1970s and 1980s. The Spinward Marches are Traveller’s answer to, say, the Sword Coast or Free City of Greyhawk, a highly-detailed border region between the Third Imperium and Zhodani Consulate where adventure is both frequent and dangerous. Many great Traveller adventures take place in this area, and the sector capital of Regina is the starting home of many a seasoned Traveller crew. The current meta-event campaign The Fifth Frontier War takes place partly in these sectors.

Meanwhile, Solomani Front details Terra (Earth), Sol and the entire Solomani Rim and Alpha Crucis sectors, where the Third Imperium borders the Solomani Confederation, as well as the Vega Autonomous District. This is for adventurers looking for more of a Cold War setting between rival powers, plus those who really wish to visit 57^th Century Basingstoke.

Ah, but what about aliens (even the human kind)? The Aliens of Charted Space has you covered. Volume 1 exposits on the Vargr, Aslan, Zhodani and K’kree. Volume 2 covers the Solomani, Droyne and Hivers.  Volume 3 features the Darrians, Geonee, Dolphins, Orca and Bwaps. Volume 4 explores the Suerrat, Za’tachk, Gurvin and Tezcat. Of the four books, Volumes 1 and 2 covers the iconic seven Traveller species, with 3 and 4 going into more obscure and lesser-known species. All four volumes also have information on equipment and ships developed by those species.

Clans of the Aslan is also worth a look for a deeper dive on the lion-like Aslan, a powerful alien species with mixed relations with the Third Imperium and Humaniti. The book explorers the Aslan social structure and hierarchy, the internal politics of a clan and how Aslan characters might come to be working alongside humans. This is very useful for those players who want to depict Aslan as an alien civilisation with their own motivations and history, rather than just furry humans.

Probably the last thing to look at here, though maybe not for brand-new crews, is the recently-updated Great Rift boxed set, which explores the gigantic Great Rift, a large region of lightly-settled space almost dividing the Spinward Marches from the rest of the Imperium, and dividing the Aslan from much of the Third Imperium. The set explores five entire sectors (Corridor, Reft, Riftspan, Afawahisa and Touchstone) with a large array of maps and details on worlds, alongside ideas for adventures. This is quite a lot of material and probably isn’t for the newcomer, but does provide a huge sandbox for adventures created by Referees.

 

Adventures

Of course, pre-made adventures are something a time-poor Referee may find themselves grateful for. A lot of the work is done for you, and some of these adventures are based on classic material published almost fifty years ago, with a corresponding amount of time of refinement, rewrites and Referee suggestions on how to improve them.

 

The best-place to start here is, again, the Traveller Starter Kit, which includes the Death Station and Stranded adventures for free. Even if your bookshelf is groaning under the weight of bought Traveller material, these two adventures are pretty solid and either could make a reasonable jumping-off point for any campaign.

Mongoose has many adventures for the game, and has started publishing omnibuses including five adventures at a time. These are a great way of getting a bunch of adventure content more cheaply, sometimes with exclusive new adventures added.

The Marches Adventures 1-5 is set in the Spinward Marches and includes two of the all-timer classic Traveller adventures, High & Dry (in which the party is given a starship, but has to first recover it from the crater of an active volcano) and Mission to Mithril (in which the party’s ship is immobilised, forcing them into a hazardous overland journey), along with three other solid adventures.

The Great Rift Adventures 1-5 is set in the Great Rift region and makes a great companion to the Great Rift boxed set, but can be enjoyed by itself. This includes three classic adventures, namely Islands in the Rift, Deepnight Endeavour and Flatlined, along with two other good adventures.

Not available in omnibus yet are the Reach Adventures line. This includes several notable adventures, most famously Marooned on Marduk, another well-regarded starter adventure for a new Traveller campaign.

Similarly well-regarded is Mysteries on Arcturus Station, which combines an updated version of the Classic Traveller adventure Murder on Arcturus Station with a new set-up adventure, The Hunt for Sabre IV.

Of course, these are all adventures designed for short or medium-length play, maybe between 1 and 5 sessions max. Traveller is renowned for its mega-adventures, huge campaigns that will last months or years. Again, I wouldn’t necessarily start with these (unless you are a very experienced GM from other games) but they are very impressive.

The most famous of these – and fortunately the most concisely-presented and cheapest – is Secrets of the Ancients. One of the iconic Traveller adventures, variations of this campaign have appeared for multiple versions of the game, and even inspired the 1992 video game MegaTraveller 2: Quest for the Ancients. This adventure blows open the backstory of the Ancients and explores what happened to them, over a 10-part campaign which moves from being a heist scenario to a combat adventure and even the most elaborate exposition/flashback adventure I’ve ever seen for an RPG. Seth Skorkowsky has a mind-boggling full campaign review exploring what happens in each part of the campaign (spoilers!).

Even bigger in scale, ambition and shiny stuff is The Pirates of Drinax. This is the ultimate sandbox campaign, in which the players arrive in the Trojan Reach Sector and join forces with the King of Drinax, who wants to re-establish the pocket space empire of his forebears, buffered between the Aslan and the Third Imperium. How the players accomplish this is completely up to them, from faking pirate attacks on nearby unaligned worlds (making them amenable to accepting Drinax’s protection) to fancy diplomatic footwork to blackmail to large-scale military campaigns. The boxed set includes a huge map of the Trojan Reach, several tentpole adventures (to take place at different points in the campaign), information on a new, advanced ship for the team to use, and tons of setting information and suggestions for how to guide the players, including what happens if they lose interest in working for Drinax and betray the king, or even trigger a large-scale war with the Aslan. There are also ideas on how to incorporate the Reach Adventures line into this campaign. The boxed set even has its own optional helper book, The Drinaxian Companion, which adds more ideas, adventure seeds and oversight help, and another adventure called Shadows of Sindal which ties into the backstory for Pirates and can be used to either enhance a Pirates campaign or be used as a standalone adventure. Some players play Pirates as a focused linear adventure lasting 10-15 sessions, and others as an absolutely massive campaign lasting five or more years. It may represent the ultimate Traveller experience.

For those who prefer a more Star Trek-ish experience, the Deepnight Revelation boxed set has your crew joining a long-range exploration mission into very deep space. And recently succeeding on Kickstarter is the Singularity campaign, which explores posthuman and transhuman ideas in the Traveller setting.

There is of course a lot more Traveller stuff than this. More specialised books about naval personnel and mercenary companies, books on designing entire sectors, and tons more adventures. But this is more than enough to be getting on with. Something useful to take a look at is the Journal of Uncharted Space series, which is effectively a series of magazines/compendiums of articles, background material new rules, mini-adventures and worldbuilding covering a vast array of subjects. There are now 18 editions of this tome, each adding more than 120 pages of material to the Traveller universe.

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Where to Start with Classic Doctor Who?

Okay, so you've watched some Modern Doctor Who. You've sampled some Tennant, knocked back some Smith and played air guitar to Capaldi. You may have braved the Chibnall years and pondered the wisdom of bringing back Russell T. Davies. You - may whatever gods you believe in help you - want to watch yet more Doctor Who, and the classic show, all 26 gloriously low-fi seasons of it, awaits. But is this a good idea? And if so, where to start watching it? Should you dive into the very first episode from 1963 and hope for the best, or try a curated run of well-regarded stories? These are all valid questions.

Before starting we should note a point of order: Classic Doctor Who uses the terminology "Season" to refer to each of its, well, seasons. Modern Doctor Who uses the terminology "Series," apart from the most recent two batches of episodes, which Russell T. Davies and Disney+ have tried to call "Season 1" and "Season 2" to maximise the vexation of Doctor Who fans and the confusion of new viewers. Fortunately, everyone just calls them "Series 14" and "Series 15," as is right and proper. You can also call them "Season 40" and "Season 41" to really maximise your street cred, or something.

The Daleks appear in a surprisingly modest 16 stories out of 157 in Classic Who's run.

Classic Doctor Who by the Terrifying Numbers

Let's outline the magnitude of the task. Classic Doctor Who ran for 26 consecutive seasons starting in 1963 and ending in 1989, with a single spin-off TV movie airing in 1996. A mind-boggling 696 episodes aired in the Classic Who period (including the TV movie), although a further story, the 6-part Shada, started filming and was abandoned due to a strike. The story has since been completed with animation and audio tracks, taking the total up to 702 episodes. 

If that sounds like "a lot," and you're nervously looking for the exit, you can take some comfort in that almost all of these episodes are only around 25 minutes long, or less than half the length of a modern episode. The exceptions are the 1983 anniversary special The Five Doctors, which along with the 1996 TV special aired as 90-minute TV movies. One story in Season 21 aired as two 45-minute episodes, and all 13 episodes of Season 22 aired as 45-minute instalments. Straightening all that out, Classic Doctor Who would therefore (roughly) equal 362 modern episodes of the show. In comparison, 196 episodes of Modern Doctor Who (including the Christmas/New Years specials) have aired since 2005, so Classic Who clearly still has a lot more material to watch.

However! Doctor Who infamously has a slight problem in that many episodes from the earliest era of the show's history have been "lost." The master tapes were wiped, junked or literally burned. Fortunately, Doctor Who fans having insane tenacity, copies of many of the "lost" episodes were recovered, usually from overseas broadcasters. As a result, "only" 97 episodes of the show are still missing, although this is still one-in-seven of the original episodes. All of the missing episodes are from the first six seasons of the show, exclusively from the black-and-white era and only afflicting the first two Doctors, namely William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton. As a result, that reduces the number of surviving episodes to 605, roughly equalling 314 modern episodes. But! Several of the missing episodes have been recreated in animation and all of the rest by combinations of audio tracks (all of the missing episodes survive in audio, thankfully) and photographs. How watchable you find these are by modern standards will vary tremendously.

The Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) with his final companions, computer scientist Zoe Heriot (Wendy Padbury) and highland warrior Jamie McCrimmon (Frazer Hines)

Classic Doctor Who's Format

OG Who uses a different format to the modern show. The modern show mostly airs as discrete, stand-alone episodes where the primary plot is resolved in short order. The show deviates from that on occasion with two-parters or, in the case of the Flux season (Series 13), a six-parter. Each modern series (apart from Series 11) also has an "arc" or "metaplot," usually a series-spanning storyline which is referenced or pops up briefly even in unrelated episodes before being resolved in the series finale.

Classic Doctor Who does not typically use this format. Arguably only four of the twenty-six seasons (Seasons 8, 12, 16 and 23, for those counting) use any kind of metaplot. However, all of the seasons use the format of being broken up into several serials or stories, which each consisting of a number of episodes. There are 157 serials in Classic Who (including the TV movie), which immediately sounds a lot more palatable than the individual number of episodes. Four-parters - equal to a modern two-parter - are by far the most common format, accounting for well over half of the total number of stories. Six-parters are the next most common format, but every permutation from one to eight episodes is seen at one time or another. There are also single ten and twelve-part stories. Typically, stories and seasons are longer at the start of Classic Who's run and much shorter towards the end.

This has a mixed outcome: on the one hand, stories are generally longer and sometimes hugely longer than modern stories. This can sometimes mean much better pacing than the modern show (which has a tendency to gloss over plot and character beats in a mad rush to tell a story in a bespoke setting with a bespoke cast in under 50 minutes). More than half of the Classic stories are the equivalent of watching two episodes of the modern show in a modest evening mini-binge, so it's generally not that bad.

We should note that first 253 episodes of the series (well, the 156 surviving episodes from that era), making up the first six seasons and first two Doctors, are in black-and-white. For many people, this will be a total deal-breaker, whilst others won't have a problem with that at all. All episodes from the first episode of Season 7 onwards are in colour.

Doctor Who was also almost entirely shot on videotape, with only some location shooting done on film. This makes it very hard to create a consistent HD-quality image for these episodes, although the current Blu-Ray releases are trying some upscaling techniques of varying quality. Apart from the 1996 TV movie, only one story, Spearhead from Space from 1970/Season 7, was shot 100% on film and is thus the only Classic story completely available in HD. Again, this may be a complete dealbreaker for some, others won't care very much.

Fans of collectors' edition Blu-Ray and DVDs are well-catered for

Availability

In the UK, almost the entire Classic run (barring a few stories with copyright issues) is available via the BBC iPlayer service. In much of the rest of the world, the BritBox streaming service hosts the entire run (or almost) of the show.

The entire series is available on DVD, with varying solutions for the missing episodes (animation, audio files/photograph recreations).

The Classic run of the show is currently being released on Blu-Ray with a massive wealth of extra features, and unique HD upscales of the episodes. As of June 2025, Seasons 2, 7-10, 12, 14-15, 17-20 and 22-26 are available, with the remainder to follow. The BBC is holding off on most of the black-and-white/missing episodes seasons, hoping for more episode recoveries or reconstructions to be completed before they get there.

For maximum commitment, you can also read novelisations of virtually every single Classic Who story.

Enough! To answer the question, then, how to watch Classic Who? What's the best approach?

Teachers Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill) and Ian Chesterton (William Russell) are bemused to learn that their student Susan (Carole Ann Ford) apparently lives with her grandfather in a police box in a junkyard, surely a safeguarding issue if there ever was one?

Option 1: Start from the Very Beginning

You are fearless and indomitable. You want to experience the whole thing as the BBC intended. You have no fear of three-hour black-and-white stories with some minor-but-still-questionable 1960s stereotyping and sets made of polystyrene. You will watch a black-and-white animated reconstruction of a missing episode without a second's pause. Your imagination is unbound. Your constitution is strong.

Start with Season 1, Episode 1, An Unearthly Child, the episode that aired the day after President Kennedy was shot, and godspeed. And yes, the Doctor is kind of an arsehole in his first couple of stories. He improves.

The Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) finds himself stuck on Earth, and has to enlist the help of his old friend Brigadier Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney) and Dr. Elizabeth Shaw (Caroline John) to try to repair the TARDIS. Fortunately for Earth, the planet suffers a spate of alien invasions over the next few years.

Option 2: Start from Season 7 (or the end of Season 6)

Starting from Season 7 is the preferred option for many viewers and re-watchers, for a number of very strong reasons. Season 7 is the first season that completely exists, so there is no need to worry about missing episodes from this point forwards, and it's also the first season shot and released in colour. It's also - madly - the only time in Classic Doctor Who (barring the TV movie) that they introduce a new Doctor and a new companion simultaneously (in contrast Modern Who has done this four times and counting). This season also sees a reset of the basic premise, with the Doctor exiled to Earth by the Time Lords and joining forces with the UNIT organisation under Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart to combat alien threats to Earth.

It also helps that Season 7 is a pretty strong season, with at least two of its four stories being acknowledged classics (Spearhead from Space and Inferno), one on the bubble (The Silurians), and the weakest story (Ambassadors of Death) still being a pretty fun, knockabout story with plenty of unnecessary but surprisingly solid action sequences. As a bonus, Spearhead from Space is the only story 100% shot on film, and hence the only Classic story 100% upgraded to HD quality, meaning you start with a great-looking story. On the negative side, the season can feel a bit of a marathon, with Spearhead's focused four episodes succeeded by three seven-part stories in rapid succession. They're still very good stories, but they can chug on a bit.

Season 7 also opens the Third Doctor era, which sees the introduction of the Autons, Silurians, Sea Devils, Sontarans, the Master (providing an able foil to the Doctor) and Omega, and impressive comeback stories for the Daleks and Ice Warriors. It also has the first multi-Doctor story. Fans of Modern Who will quickly feel at home with how many concepts they already know about. Jon Pertwee is a very winning, charismatic Doctor, and Katy Manning as Jo Grant and, of course, Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith are two of the all-time iconic Who companions (Caroline John as Liz Shaw tends to get forgotten a bit, but she is also very good). Roger Delgado as the Master is also outrageously good, and Nicholas Courtney is solid gold as the Brigadier. The quality of the era is also generally quite solid, with multiple classic stories (Spearhead, Inferno and Day of the Daleks immediately come to mind), a whole ton of fun-but-dumb stories, and almost no total misses, though there's perhaps a few too many stories about insanely arrogant bureaucrats, and the script for Invasion of the Dinosaurs is writing cheques the show's visual effects department can't even start to cash.

The main downside here is effectively writing off the black-and-white era until (a lot) later on, which feels a bit of cheat. Some fans vary the "start with Season 7" approach by actually starting one story earlier, with the Second Doctor's swansong The War Games. This is a great story, with good pacing despite its formidable length (ten episodes) and the final episode, where the Doctor is finally caught by the Time Lords and put on trial for interfering in the affairs of other planets, is terrific. Patrick Troughton also makes for an outstanding Doctor. The story was also recently reissued in a colourised, edited format, which is watchable, although I feel it suffers a little from not showing the full scale of the aliens' plans across their different space/time zones.

If you want to watch most of Classic Who in the most approachable way, this is probably the way to go.

If in doubt, ask Doctor Who fans. And no, you can't just watch Blink again. I mean, unless you really want to.

Option 3: Go with a Curated Fan List

An alternative approach is to take advantage of Classic Who's relaxed (and sometimes non-existent) attitude to continuity by sampling a "best of" list. There are multiple variants of these lists, with some fan using the best-rated IMDB list, or others a list of the best single story for each Doctor. These give you a wide-field sample of every Doctor and every era of the show's existence.

The IMDB List

This is simply a list of the ten highest-rated, complete Classic Who stories on IMDB. It is, generally, a credible selection.

1. Genesis of the Daleks (Season 12, 1975, Fourth Doctor)
2. The War Games (Season 6, 1969, Second Doctor)
3. City of Death (Season 17, 1979, Fourth Doctor)
4. The Caves of Androzani (Season 21, 1984, Fifth Doctor)
5. The Talons of Weng-Chiang (Season 14, 1977, Fourth Doctor)
6. The Seeds of Doom (Season 13, 1976, Fourth Doctor)
7. Earthshock (Season 19, 1982, Fifth Doctor)
8. Remembrance of the Daleks (Season 25, 1988, Seventh Doctor)
9. Pyramids of Mars (Season 13, 1975, Fourth Doctor)
10. Inferno (Season 7, 1970, Third Doctor)

The main issue with the list is that it is very Fourth Doctor-heavy, but a lot of people would consider the Fourth Doctor their favourite, with the highest number of classic stories, so that might just be the way it goes.

The Wertzone List

This list was assembled in 2011 (and tweaked in 2018) by a critic of impeccable and handsome character, and is meant to provide a broad sample of the Classic series. The order is order of transmission, rather than quality. The last two entries * are not there are as indication of overall quality, but as the best and only examples of the Sixth and Eighth Doctors (whose runs are otherwise too short and too undercooked to have many classic stories), allowing a new viewer to get a better sample of the whole field. 

1. An Unearthly Child (episode 1 only, 1963, Season 1, First Doctor)
2. The Dalek Invasion of Earth (1964, Season 2, First Doctor)
3. The War Games (1969, Season 6, Second Doctor)
4. Day of the Daleks (1972, Season 9, Third Doctor)
5. The Sea Devils (1972, Season 9, Third Doctor)
6. The Ark in Space (1975, Season 12, Fourth Doctor)
7. Genesis of the Daleks (1975, Season 12, Fourth Doctor)
8. City of Death (1979, Season 17, Fourth Doctor)
9. The Caves of Androzani (1984, Season 21, Fifth Doctor)
10. Remembrance of the Daleks (1988, Season 25, Seventh Doctor)
11. Vengeance on Varos (1985, Season 22, Sixth Doctor)*
12. The TV Movie (1996, Eighth Doctor)*

One thing that I think a lot of fans can agree on is that if you do have watch one Classic Who story, Genesis of the Daleks is a great choice for the Daleks (and horror), and City of Death is a good one for a more comedic, modern-feeling story. And if you find yourselves in a hurry and don't have time to watch The Twin Dilemma or The Horns of Nimon, that's probably just fine.

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Where to Start with Star Trek? (revised)

This is a revision of an article I originally wrote two and a half years ago, here.

The recent arrival of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has spurred a renewed interest in the venerable SF franchise. New viewers want to check out the older material, but the sheer amount of it is daunting. By the start of 2023, no less than 41 seasons of television will have aired in the franchise, totalling 872 episodes spread across eight separate series airing over fifty-seven years (and counting). It would take you more than 621 hours (or almost 26 days, non-stop) to watch all of that material. In addition, there are 13 feature films in the mix, as well as a plethora of video games and hundreds of novels, audio dramas and fan films. If you want to check out this mass of material where do you start?

There are several different approaches you can take and I’ll run through a few of them below. The one thing I would say first is that, with a few notable exceptions, Star Trek is mostly an episodic franchise, where each episode stands alone with its own beginning, middle and end. That starts to shift in Deep Space Nine, which introduces more serialised elements, and by the time of Discovery and Picard the series has become fully serialised, but for the most part the different series are episodic and in fact designed for each episode to be enjoyed by themselves.

Before we get into the lists, it might be worthwhile briefly brushing up on what each series is about.

Star Trek: The Original Series

Live-action: 1966-69 • 79 episodes • 3 seasons • 6 films (1979-91)
Animated: 1973-74 • 22 episodes • 2 seasons

Also called the original series, the classic series or just Star Trek, this series follows the adventures of Starfleet Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the Constitution-class starship USS Enterprise. They explore strange new worlds, encounter new alien life and seek to uphold the utopian values of the United Federation of Planets in the mid-23rd Century whilst dealing with recurring enemies, including the Klingons and Romulans. The story of this series continues in Star Trek: The Animated Series (which is the same, but as a cartoon) and then in the first six Star Trek feature films.

The first episode of the series, The Cage, was filmed two years before the rest of the series and features a significantly different cast of characters (who do go on to play major roles in some of the films and in Star Trek: Discovery, which revisits the same time period).

Star Trek: The Next Generation
1987-94 • 178 episodes • 7 seasons • 4 films (1994-2002)

Set in the mid-to-late 24th Century, roughly 100 years after the events of the original series, The Next Generation focuses on a brand-new, much larger and vastly more sophisticated Galaxy-class USS Enterprise under the command of Captain Jean-Luc Picard. The emphasis remains on exploring new worlds and meeting new races. Although the series mostly remains episodic, recurring and more serialised elements creep in towards its end. Most notable is the introduction of the Borg, an overwhelmingly powerful cybernetic threat which remains a key enemy through the next several series, and the Cardassians, a mid-ranking antagonistic enemy. The story of this series continues in the seventh through tenth Star Trek feature films and the sequel-series Star Trek: Picard, set thirty years later.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
1993-99 • 176 episodes • 7 seasons

To date, the only Star Trek series not set on a starship. Instead, the focus is on Deep Space Nine, a Federation outpost established on an abandoned Cardassian space station orbiting the planet Bajor. The Cardassians conquered and ruled Bajor with an iron fist for forty years before withdrawing, leaving the planet in ruins. The Federation are helping them rebuild, their efforts spearheaded by Commander Benjamin Sisko. Unlike most Star Trek series, which focuses on the Federation and Starfleet crewmembers, this series has a large number of civilian and alien recurring characters. Bajor becomes unexpectedly important when a stable wormhole leading to the remote Gamma Quadrant of the galaxy is discovered, allowing the planet to benefit from increased trade (to the fury of the Cardassians). Early seasons revolve around renewed Cardassian/Bajoran tensions before the introduction of the Dominion, the alien alliance which rules the Gamma Quadrant and is unhappy with the Federation poking around its back yard. Later seasons are more heavily serialised and see the outbreak of full-scale war between the Federation and the Dominion.

Deep Space Nine was controversial during its first airing for being perceived as a lot darker than prior Star Trek shows, but in recent years it has undergone a critical reassessment and is now often cited as the best (or at least the most critically consistent) of the Star Trek series.

Star Trek: Voyager
1995-2001 • 172 episodes • 7 seasons

This series opens when the USS Voyager is flung 75,000 light-years across the galaxy to the Delta Quadrant and has to return home, which is estimated will take over seventy years at maximum warp. Captain Kathryn Janeway and her crew seek to find faster ways home with any means at their disposal, whilst upholding Federation values in a desperate corner of space where no one even knows who the Federation are.

Star Trek: Enterprise
2001-05 • 98 episodes • 4 seasons

A prequel series taking place about a century before the events of The Original Series, this show takes place before the Federation or Starfleet even exist. Instead, it follows the adventures of the NX-01 Enterprise, Earth’s first experimental spacecraft with a Warp 5 drive. The series sees the crew trying to engage in interstellar diplomacy, exploration and commerce with much more primitive technology than even in Kirk’s time, whilst also trying to deal with problems such as a brewing conflict between the Andorians and Vulcans, and Earth’s first fumbling dealings with the Klingons and Romulans. The series is almost completely episodic for its first two years, but in its third season explores a series-long arc where Enterprise has to search for aliens who carried out a devastating sneak attack on Earth. The final season is divided into shorter arcs revolving around the formation of the Federation.

Star Trek: The Kelvin Timeline Films
2009-16 • 3 films

A series of three films (Star Trek, Into Darkness, Beyond) produced by J.J. Abrams, these films are set in an alternate timeline created by time travel. Spock (from the original series) is blasted back in time by his failure to stop the destruction of the Romulan homeworld, pursued by a vengeful Romulan crew. This results in alterations to the timeline, such as a younger James T. Kirk and his fellow crewmembers joining forces and taking command of the Enterprise years earlier than in the original timeline and getting into fresh, new adventures in the mid-23rd Century.

A fourth film in this series has been in development hell for several years.

Star Trek: Discovery
2017 onwards • 55 episodes • 4 seasons (to date)

Another prequel series, this time taking place ten years before the events of The Original Series. The focus is on Michael Burnham, the first officer of the USS Shenzhou who badly fumbles a confrontation with the Klingons, inadvertently leading to a massive war. A disgraced Burnham is assigned to the USS Discovery, a highly experimental starship with unusual technology and an oddball, maverick captain, where she is offered the chance to atone for her mistakes.

The show undergoes a drastic format change in its latter seasons, when the USS Discovery is shifted through time to the 32nd Century.

A fifth season will air in 2023.

Star Trek: Picard
2020 onwards • 20 episodes • 2 seasons (to date)

A sequel series set at the end of the 24th Century, Star Trek: Picard picks up story elements left dangling from the end of The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager, as well as exploring events in the original timeline after the destruction of Romulus (in the original timeline).

A third season will air in 2023.

Star Trek: Lower Decks

2020 onwards • 30 episodes • 3 seasons (to date)

An animated series set several years after the end of Deep Space Nine and Voyager, and almost a decade after the end of The Next Generation, Lower Decks is a lighter-hearted show looking at life on one of the "regular" Starfleet ships that doesn't get the high-profile, glamorous missions of other hero ships in the franchise. The show is noted for being an affectionate satire of the rest of Trek, whilst also keeping its ethos intact.

A fourth season will air in 2023.

Star Trek: Prodigy

2021 onwards • 20 episodes • 1 season (to date)

A CG-animated show set a year or so after Lower Decks, Prodigy is notable as the first show in the franchise not to focus on a regular Starfleet cast. Instead, the show features a crew of young aliens who salvage a Federation starship and use it to try to reach Federation space, fed dreams of what it is like to serve in Starfleet by the ship's advisory hologram, based on Voyager's Captain Janeway. However, various problems complicate their mission.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

2022 onwards • 10 episodes • 1 season (to date)

A spin-off of Discovery and a prequel to The Original Series, this show focuses on the adventures of the original USS Enterprise, but almost a decade before Kirk's time. The show instead expands from the original pilot The Cage by concentrating on the adventures of Captain Christopher Pike and his crew. The show deliberately bucks recent trends by consisting of episodic adventures.

The Curated Sample

This order is not exhaustive but what it does is provide a snapshot of the different series and some of the strongest stand-alone episodes which hold up well today. These episodes are stand-alones (not part of multi-episodic arcs) and are designed to showcase some of the different types of storytelling the series indulges in. A viewer can jump from these episodes into the rest of that series if they like what they see.

The Animated Series is effectively a continuation of The Original Series and it would be hard to recommend individual episodes from Enterprise, Discovery or Picard due to their heavy serialisation (Picard is also best-watched having seen some or all of The Next Generation first).

• Star Trek: The Original Series, The City on the Edge of Forever
• Star Trek: The Original Series, The Trouble with Tribbles
• Star Trek: The Original Series, Space Seed
• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
• Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Measure of a Man
• Star Trek: The Next Generation, Q Who?
• Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Inner Light
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, The Visitor
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Far Beyond the Stars
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, In the Pale Moonlight*
• Star Trek: Voyager, Eye of the Needle
• Star Trek: Voyager, Message in a Bottle

* This may seem to be an exception to the multi-episode arc rule, as In the Pale Moonlight has references to and a big impact on the Dominion War storyline which dominates much of Deep Space Nine’s latter seasons. However, the episode itself is more about Sisko’s journey and how he and Garak bring about a major shift in political events whilst never leaving the station (the Dominion itself does not appear), which can be understood well enough without additional context.

The Pilot Sample

This approach simply has the viewer sampling the first episode of each version of the series to see what grabs their attention straight away, and from there they can choose which series to watch first:

• Star Trek: The Original Series, The Cage (1964)
• Star Trek: The Original Series, Where No Man Has Gone Before (1966)
• Star Trek: The Animated Series, Beyond the Farthest Star (1973)
• Star Trek: The Next Generation, Encounter at Farpoint (1987)
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, The Emissary (1993)
• Star Trek: Voyager, Caretaker (1995)
• Star Trek: Enterprise, Broken Bow (2001)
• Star Trek: Discovery, The Vulcan Hello (2017)
• Star Trek: Picard, Remembrance (2020)
• Star Trek: Lower Decks, Second Contact (2020)
• Star Trek: Prodigy, Lost and Found (2021)
• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Strange New Worlds (2022)

Release Order

AKA the “completionist” approach. This may be the approach everyone ends up taking once they’ve been sucked into the material, but I wouldn’t recommend it for a first run-through. This approach basically means watching the series in order of release and is the best for enjoying the series as it originally aired and was intended (just somewhat compressed).

The primary weakness of this approach is having to watch The Original Series in full before the more recent shows. The original show is certainly great from the perspective of a 1960s TV series and also has many outstanding episodes that have withstood the test of time, but it also has a lot of episodes that…have not. The series underwent an in-depth HD remastering process in 2006 which saw the film quality improved and revamped CG effects added to make the visual quality of the episodes more acceptable to modern audiences, although obviously the writing and performances were not affected.

You can tweak this order for simplicity: there’s nothing stopping you from watching all six films featuring the original cast before watching The Next Generation, and Deep Space Nine and Voyager are divorced from one another almost completely, so you could watch DS9 in full before switching to Voyager. TNG and DS9 do have a few more notable crossovers in terms of characters and storylines, but it also wouldn’t be the end of the world if you finished watching TNG in full before watching DS9.

• Star Trek: The Original Series Pilot, The Cage (made in 1964, but didn’t air until later as part of the original series)
• Star Trek: The Original Series Season 1-3 (1966-69)
• Star Trek: The Animated Series Season 1-2 (1973-74)
• Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)
• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
• Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984)
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
• Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 1-2 (1987-89)
• Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)
• Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 3-4 (1989-91)
• Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)
• Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 5 (1991-92)
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 1 / Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 6 (1992-93)
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 2 / Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 7 (1993-94)
• Star Trek: Generations (1994)
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 3 (1994-95) / Star Trek: Voyager Season 1 (1995)
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 4 / Star Trek: Voyager Season 2 (1995-96)
• Star Trek: First Contact (1996)
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 5 / Star Trek: Voyager Season 3 (1996-97)
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 6 / Star Trek: Voyager Season 4 (1997-98)
• Star Trek: Insurrection (1998)
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 7 / Star Trek: Voyager Season 5 (1998-99)
• Star Trek: Voyager Season 6-7 (1999-2001)
• Star Trek: Enterprise Season 1 (2001-02)
• Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)
• Star Trek: Enterprise Season 2-4 (2002-05)
• Star Trek (2009)
• Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)
• Star Trek Beyond (2016)
• Star Trek: Discovery Season 1-2 (2017-19)
• Star Trek: Picard Season 1 / Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 1 (2020)
• Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 (2020-21)
• Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 2 (2021)
• Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 / Star Trek: Prodigy Season 1 (2021-22)
• Star Trek: Picard Season 2 / Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1 / Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 3 (2022)

Chronological Order
This order lists the series in the order of when the episodes take place in the order of events within the Star Trek universe.

This order has some strengths, as it roughly matches the historical order of events, but it also has some major weaknesses. It puts Enterprise, arguably one of the weaker Trek series overall, up first and also features a number of spoilers for later series (since the Enterprise writers couldn’t resist pulling in familiar creatures and aliens to the show from later periods, no matter how incongruous). You’re also talking about waiting a long time to get to "the good stuff."

• Star Trek: Enterprise Seasons 1-4 (2151-55, 2161)
• Star Trek: The Original Series Pilot, The Cage (2254)
• Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1-2 (2256-57)
• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1 (2259)
• Star Trek: The Original Series Seasons 1-3 (2266-68)
• Star Trek: The Animated Series Seasons 1-2 (2269-70)
• Star Trek: The Motion Picture (2271)
• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (2285)
• Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (2285)
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (2286)
• Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (2287)
• Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (2293)
• Star Trek: The Next Generation Seasons 1-5 (2364-68)
• Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 6 / Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 1 (2369)
• Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 7 / Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 2 (2370)
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 3 / Star Trek: Voyager Season 1 (2371)
• Star Trek: Generations (2371)
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 4 / Star Trek: Voyager Season 2 (2372)
• Star Trek: First Contact (2373)
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 5 / Star Trek: Voyager Season 3 (2373)
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 6 / Star Trek: Voyager Season 4 (2374)
• Star Trek: Insurrection (2375)
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 7 / Star Trek: Voyager Season 5 (2375)
• Star Trek: Voyager Season 6-7 (2376-78)
• Star Trek: Nemesis (2379)
• Star Trek: Lower Decks Seasons 1-3 (2380-81)
• Star Trek: Prodigy Season 1 (2383)
• Star Trek (2385, alternate 2258), Star Trek Into Darkness (2259), Star Trek Beyond (2263)*
• Star Trek: Picard Seasons 1-2 (2399-2401)
• Star Trek: Discovery Season 3-4 (3188-90)

* The chronological order of events also makes placing the Kelvin timeline movies awkward, as they rely heavily on knowledge of events after the original show and The Next Generation but are set much earlier, albeit in a parallel universe. Sticking them here is probably the best approach.

What's the best order then? I'd say order of release for those who want to experience the franchise as it was released and understand it could be a bit of a bumpy ride, otherwise one of the curated approaches might be best.

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Where to Start with...The Sandman?

The Sandman has been a massive hit for Netflix and sales of the graphic novels have gone through the roof. However, if you're an eager new fan waiting to get in on the phenomenon, where do you start? The graphic novels have so many instalments, spin-offs, prequels and editions that boarding this train is perhaps a tad more complicated than it should be.

The Original Series

The Sandman was originally published as 76 monthly comic book issues (75 monthly issues and a special) between 1989 and 1996. These comics were collected into 10 graphic novels. This is the original or "core" Sandman series. The easiest way to start reading The Sandman is to simply read the original graphic novel series in order. This consists of:

1. Preludes & Nocturnes (issues #1-8)
2. The Doll's House (#9-16)
3. Dream Country (#17-20)
4. Season of Mists (#21-28)
5. A Game of You (#32-37)
6. Fables & Reflections (#29-31, 38-40, 50, The Sandman Special)
7. Brief Lives (#41-49)
8. Worlds' End (#51-56)
9. The Kindly Ones (#57-69)
10. The Wake (#70-75)

Obviously ten graphic novels are a fairly expensive investment when bought independently (or in a slipcase edition), so there are other options.

DC recently reprinted the series as four large-format collected editions. These editions are not the prettiest (they are similar to Image's recent one-part binding of the entire first half of Saga: cheap but effective) but they are probably the best way of getting the whole story as cheaply as possible (you also have to be happy with the Netflix advert on the front cover):

1. The Sandman: Book One (#1-20) (UK, USA)
2. The Sandman: Book Two (#21-37, The Sandman Special) (UK, USA)
3. The Sandman: Book Three (#38-56) (UK, USA)
4. The Sandman: Book Four (#57-75) (UK, USA)

The Absolute Sandman hardcover collection uses the same numbering as above but is very expensive, although likely to sustain many more readings. The Annotated Sandman also uses this system but is published in black-and-white and features extensive notes and annotations from Neil Gaiman. 

The Deluxe Sandman hardcover collection attempts to split the difference with nice hardcover editions but keeping the price down by collecting fewer issues, so there are more of them. These are effectively omnibuses with each book containing two of the original graphic novels. This collection has a bonus in that it also incorporates two of Gaiman's other Sandman series (see below) into the main series:

1. The Deluxe Sandman: Book One (#1-16), (UK, USA)
2. The Deluxe Sandman: Book Two (#17-31, The Sandman Special), (UK, USA) 
3. The Deluxe Sandman: Book Three (#32-50) (UK, USA)
4. The Deluxe Sandman: Book Four (#51-69), (UK, USA)
5. The Deluxe Sandman: Book Five (#70-75, The Dream Hunters, Endless Nights) (UK, USA)

One flaw with this series is that the advert for the Audible version of the books on the cover is actually part of the cover, not a sticker, so cannot be removed.

The Sandman Omnibus is astronomically expensive and also partially out-of-print but is also the most concise version of the series, breaking the whole thing, including the spin-offs, down into just three volumes:

1. The Sandman Omnibus: Volume I (#1-37, The Sandman Special)
2. The Sandman Omnibus: Volume II (#38-75)
3. The Sandman Omnibus: Volume III (Death: The High Cost of Living, Death: The Time of Your Life, Sandman Midnight Theatre, Endless Nights, The Dream Hunters, Overture)

This edition was available in a two-volume silver slipcase, a three-volume set and individually, but at the moment you can only afford to get most of these by selling at least three internal organs and your firstborn on the black market.

Gaiman's Sequels, Prequels & Expansions

The Sandman universe soon expanded into a wider universe of stories, books and collections. These are divided into works by Neil Gaiman and works by other hands. These are the works written by Gaiman expanding his original series. Below are the most common graphic novel collections:

• Death: The High Cost of Living
• Death: The Time of Your Life
• Endless Nights
• The Dream Hunters
• Overture

The first two graphic novels spin off the character of Death from the main series into her own stories, whilst Endless Nights is an anthology telling seven stories, one about each of the Endless. The Dream Hunters is a self-contained, spin-off story about Dream and Overture is a prequel taking place immediately before the events of the main series. Endless Nights is sometimes counted as #11 of the main graphic novel series and Overture as #0, although they can be read fully independently of the main series.

These graphic novels are available independently apart from the two starring Death, which are now more usually found in one collection simply called Death (UK, USA), and Endless Nights and The Dream Hunters can also be found as part of The Essential Sandman: Book Five (as noted above) and all five as part of The Sandman Omnibus: Volume III (also see above).

Series by Other Hands

Neil Gaiman has given his blessing for other writers to carry on with stories set in his world, both as mini-series and ongoing series. Some of these series are only loosely or nominally connected to the Sandman universe, whilst others have more definitive connections.

These are as follows:

• Sandman Mystery Theatre (70 issues, 1993-1999, Matt Wagner, Steven T. Seagle)
• The Dreaming (60 issues, June 1996 - May 2001, Peter Hogan, Caitlin R. Kiernan)
• The Girl Who Would Be Death (4 issues, 1998-1999, Caitlin R. Kiernan)
• Sandman Presents (31 issues, March 1999-July 2004, various)
• Lucifer (75 issues, June 2000 - June 2006, Mike Carey)
• Destiny: A Chronicle of Deaths Foretold (3 issues, 2000, Alisa Kwitney)
• Dead Boy Detectives (2001: 4 issues, Ed Brubaker, Bryan Talbot; 2012: 12 issues, Toby Litt, Mark Buckingham, Gary Erskine)
• House of Mystery (42 issues, 2008-11, Lilah Sturges, Bill Willingham, Luca Rossi)

Since 2018, DC has produced a family of titles under the banner heading The Sandman Universe, with writers specially chosen by Neil Gaiman:

• The Sandman Universe (2018, 1 issue, various)
• The Dreaming (2018-20, 20 issues, Simon Spurrier, Bilquis Evely)
• House of Whispers (2018-20, 22 issues, Nalo Hopikinson, Dan Watters, Dominike Stanton)
• Lucifer (2018-20, 24 issues, Dan Watters, Max Fiumara, Sebastian Fiumara)
• Books of Magic (2018-20, 23 issues, Kat Howard, David Barnett, Tom Fowler)
• John Constantine, Hellblazer (2019-20, 13 issues, Simon Spurrier, Marcio Takara, Aaron Campbell)
• The Dreaming: Waking Hours (12 issues, 2020-21, G. Willow Wilson, Nick Robles)
• Locke & Key: Hell & Gone (3 issues, 202-21, Joe Hill, Gabriel Rodriguez)
• Nightmare Country (ongoing, 2022-tbc, James Tynion IV, Lisandro Estherren)

There have also been additional graphic novels not published as individual comics:

• The Little Endless Storybook (2001, Jill Thompson)
• Death: At Death's Door (2004, Jill Thompson)
• Dead Boy Detectives (2005, Jill Thompson)
• God Save the Queen (2007, Mike Carey, John Bolton)
• Delirium's Party: A Little Endless Storybook (2011, Jill Thompson)

There have also been two prose works set in the world of the Dreaming. The first, Sandman: Book of Dreams (1996) features short fiction by authors like Caitlin Kiernan, Tad Williams, Gene Wolfe, Susanna Clarke, Colin Greenland and an introduction by musician Tori Amos. The second, Dream Hunters (1999) by Gaiman himself, is a short, self-contained novel. Most of the graphic novel versions of Dream Hunters include the prose version.

Recommendation

Probably the best overall place to start with is The Deluxe Sandman collection of five hardcovers which covers the entire original comic series plus the most significant spin-offs, followed up by the Death one-volume collection and Overture.

If that's not possible (Deluxe seems to going in and out of availability fairly quickly, despite only being released a year ago), the 2022 four-volume edition is perfectly fine, followed up by Death, Endless Nights, The Dream Hunters and Overture.

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