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From: That Certain Third Doctor Fan (That Certain Third Doctor Fan)
Newsgroups: alt.drwho.creative
Subject: Adric, the Third Doctor, and "Fannish Gestalts"
Date: Sat, 09 Sep 2000 02:43:59 GMT
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Douglas Killings' defense of Adric can be found at this URL:
http://www.enteract.com/~detroyes/teotp/defense.htm

A Reply on the Fannish Gestalt

The idea of a gestalt---that some entity can be larger than the sum of
parts that make it up---has been applied to the reactions of fans to
the much maligned character of Adric.

It has been observed that liking Adric creates a vehement response
from Dr. Who fans, that it can polarize a discussion, that it can
raise eyebrows and elicit immediate scorn.  I am happy to report that
I am one of the few people immune to this effect.  I don't care either
way about Adric.  I do know what he looks like.  I have seen about
five minutes of a story that he was in.  I don't know which story it
was.  He made no impression on me whatsoever.  I'm not saying this to
insult Adric fans.  Quite the opposite.  Another episode that I saw
that included Turlough also made no significant impression on me.
Neither did Nyssa when I saw her in a story.  In fact, that young lady
might have been Peri, not Nyssa.  I'm not even sure which one it was.

Killings' assessment for liking Adric runs along these lines:  "Adric
felt and acted like a real, living, 16-year-old to me. I never knew
Sarah-Jane Smith or Leela or Romana or the Brigadier or any of those
people as anything other than reasonably interesting fictional
characters."

I'm ready to accept this statement at face value.  I'm sure it's true
*for Douglas Killings.*  That doesn't make it true for everybody.  The
fact is, I identify very strongly with Sarah Jane Smith as a person,
(because I was exactly her age when I saw her for the first time, in
"Robot") and Adric is as foreign to me as can be.  That's why I
neither like nor dislike Adric.  I don't have enough in common with
him to have any strong opinion.

But the following comment in the assessment of Adric made me sit up
and take notice.  "Those that really, really, vehemently hated Adric
tended to be slightly arrogant, a little whiny, and more than just a
little argumentative. In other words, rather like the character they
hated."

You know, there are some times when pots just should not point out the
color flaws of kettles.  I'd really like to see a fannish person who
is not "slightly arrogant, a little whiny, and more than just a little
argumentative."  We're all tuned in to some big dream that was ignited
in each of us by Doctor Who (or Blake's Seven, or Star Trek, or Black
Adder, or Buffy, etc.), and each of us is clinging hard to that little
bit of dream.  And that intense, private vision creates a huge
temptation to defend turf, to think our particular dream is better
than anybody else's dream, to elicit sympathy for our take on things
in the wide world of fandom.

I don't give a toss either way about Adric, mostly because I'm hooked
on the Third Doctor, but I'll still have to step up and claim the
distinction of being "slightly arrogant, a little whiny, and more than
just a little argumentative."  It has nothing to do with Adric.  It
has to do with the experience of Doctor Who and how it effected me.
Like so many fans, when I watched the series I was lifted out of
myself, out of my surroundings, out of a narrow view of the world that
was thrust upon me, and I was enabled to better consider all the
possibilities that are out there.  I am working on eliminating the
whining and arguing from my attitude, but it does stand to reason that
I will jealously protect that thing that gives the world so much
color.

When I started to write fan fiction as an adult, I looked around for
other people who had written Third Doctor stories.  All I could find
were parodies and satires.  There was a rumor that a fellow named
Stephen something-or-other from Australia had written a really good
Third Doctor story.  But I never found it.

So I wrote one and asked a long time contributor to Doctor Who on the
internet to critique it for me.  He told me it was "not too bad" and
he advised me to keep writing.  I turned out "Every Dead body I Meet"
(later changed to "Book of Five Rings") as my second story, followed
by "Four Jacks," it's sequel.  Then Jon Pertwee died in May 1996, and
I wrote "Hounds and Hares" as a tribute to him.  That was the story
that launched my web site of Third Doctor fiction in earnest, for it
was a very successful story, and I got e-mails about it every day that
I posted a new episode.  When I re-posted it, one episode at a time, I
was also flooded with e-mails from interested readers and fans of the
Third Doctor.

Unfailingly, I have heard people criticize the Third
Doctor---especially when I was just starting my web site.  Some fans
think that he's pompous, arrogant, rude, a name-dropper, sexist,
chauvenistic, short sighted, and too class conscious.  And then, of
course, there's Jo: the dimmest bulb in the entire string of companion
lights, with the possible exception of Mel.

I thought the Doctor was heroic and that Jo was an awakening person: a
person awakened by the Doctor's influence.  Even the Third Doctor's
harshest critics agree that one of the closest of Doctor-companion
friendships was that of the Third Doc and Jo.

Even for an argumentative person like me, there was still no clear
reason to argue these points.  Obviously, if you want to look at the
Third Doctor in terms of his worst moments, you'll see his arrogance,
rudeness, shortsightedness, and chauvenism. And you'll see that Jo can
be pretty stupid, especially in season eight stories.

The answer was to share my vision.  To keep creating stories that show
that vision that I saw when I watched the Third Doctor.  I had to look
past rushed scripts, faulty writing, badly cut stories, and see what
was behind it all:  that glimpse that did show through in so many
stories.  The Doctor as the imperfect moral guide who awakens and
enlightens Jo, and Jo as the awakening responsive creature who
foretells her own moral awakening by unconsciously affecting the
Doctor's imperfections before she is even awakened.

The e-mails that openly disparaged the Third Doctor became less and
less as I continued to produce stories and as I improved existing
stories with re-writing.  (By the way, I owe a huge debt of thanks to
Rebecca Anderson Bohner, "The Outsider," and JFGTESAR.  These three
people read and critiqued story after story for me. Philp Craggs also
did some work on two of my stories, and Clive May continues to help me
"clean up my act.")

 Occasionally, I still get an e-mail that tells me that what I write
about the Third Doctor is good, but he was not this "good" in the
series.  But overall, I have converted a small following to the
benefits of liking the Third Doctor.  I have about 40 - 50 regular
readers, and a couple hundred who wander in and out.  no doubt there
are still plenty of fans who don't touch Third Doctor stories, but I
have noticed a few other stories that include him popping up here and
there.  Not parodies or satires, but real adventure stories.  To see
other people writing about him with respect and affection makes me
very happy.  I still think that "Cascade" is the best internet
adventure going.  And, of course, I do get e-mails from people who
share my ardent love for the Third Doctor and who agree with me that
he was and always will be, the one true Doctor of Doctor Who.

My point in all of this is that the question of whether or not a
character is any good is not a matter of who is like the character and
who is not.  Nor is it a question of being whiny and argumentative.
It's a question of how much time a person is willing to put into the
task of creating a canon of stories that draws upon the original
character, fleshes him out, and presents him to the reader according
to the dream and the vision of the writer.

In short, if you diligently write interesting stories about Adric,
you'll draw readers who will like Adric more than they used to.
You'll get their attention.  You can change their minds about Adric.
But if you diagnose that people don't like Adric because there is
something wrong with *them,* you aren't doing Adric any favors, and
you put yourself under a dramatic irony that is too obvious to even
mention out loud.

A lot of the perception of Doctor Who lies in our hands.  We can guide
that perception any way we like, provided we keep writing genuine
fiction:  not parodies, satires, poems, or drabbles, but genuine
fiction.  Stories are the heart and soul of Doctor Who. Parodies,
satires, poems, and drabbles all have their place.  But the
preserving, repairing, and continuation of Doctor Who rests upon the
ongoing adventures that are created.  Period..  Pick any character you
want, and start writing your vision and your dream.  Bring that
character to life in the way that you see him or her, and you're
already off to a good start at changing reader perceptions.

--Jeri Massi

You can see the *Always the Third Doctor* website at this URL:
http://www.pipeline.com/~jeriwho/index.html