So Geekin’ Out thought that it would be fun to celebrate the Fiftieth by looking at some of the very worst things that Doctor Who has ever done. Rather than just bashing the show, though, we thought that we would take the most unpopular aspects of the show and showing why they aren't really that bad.
Never ones to shy away from a challenge, we start this occasional series by presenting the case for the defence in ‘The Doctor Who Audience vs. …Adric”. Bugger.
Is it too late to do the “Five Sexiest Monsters”…?
Look at those curves...
Near the end of Tom Baker’s run, producer John Nathan-Turner decided that the time was right to reintroduce the male companion figure to Doctor Who, a role that had not been filled for half a decade. With Lalla Ward’s popular Romana II due to depart halfway through Season 18, taking K9 with her, the hunt began for the character - and actor - that would take their place.And so it was that in Full Circle we were introduced to a charismatic, rebellious, cynical and magnetic young man - a character who rebelled against authority, had a deep contempt for the rules (with a sneer to match), but also deep down (hidden perhaps even from himself) possessed a strong sense of honour, courage and justice. This square-jawed anti-hero was a fascinating creation.
The new companion was his wimpy, maths-nerd little brother who wasn’t cool enough to join the rebel gang.
Yaaaaaaaay!
They say that first impressions are everything: the first impression of Adric unfortunately sets the tone for his entire run: a whiny kid in pyjamas with a done-by-mum pudding bowl haircut and a badge for mathematical excellence. That his first story then had him - as a story point - compared unfavourably to every other young guest character, let alone his far more interesting brother, with the various characters essentially telling the audience from the start that, yeah, Adric’s a bit crap really was an unfortunate decision that only confounded the difficult start that his costume and look had given him. The show had essentially doomed him from the outset.
Not that the characterisation got any better from that point out. Adric was an arrogant, overly-smart wimp, with a pompous superior attitude that we rarely saw any justification for on-screen. This, coupled with a reputation for constantly betraying the TARDIS team, made for a character who did nothing at all to warrant any sympathy or support from the audience from the moment of his introduction until his death near the end of the subsequent season. An unlikable or arrogant companion can work, in the right hands, if there is a hint of character development thrown in, if they grow as a consequence of travelling with The Doctor, or even if these negative traits just seem at least to be deliberate, but nothing in the scripts we were given does anything of the sort. Adric’s entire characterisation can be summed up in one word - “smart”. And since the title character of the series is famous for being the smartest man in the room, you have to wonder… what the hell was the point of Adric?
Oh, don't puppy-eye me, Waterhouse. Seriously, it's creepy.
Casting Matthew Waterhouse didn’t help, either. Not only was he, let’s face it, a pretty poor actor, but he was massively inexperienced, and also a self-confessed Who fan and completely thrilled to just be a part of the show, so the poor lad always just took whatever was thrown at him, never having the balls - as a more experienced actor may have done - to point out that certain scenes as written or as directed weren’t working, and that maybe he should try them a different way. This had a very detrimental impact on his performance. He has also gone on record as stating that Tom Baker was always a bit of a dick to him, and by all accounts the Season 19 cast weren’t too kind to him either - Peter Davison and Janet Fielding especially seem to continue teasing the kid even now through the DVD commentaries (and, hell, The Doctor and co. as characters were never shy about teasing Adric on-screen either - he was a companion so bad that he made the rest of our heroes look like bastards too). Waterhouse was clearly having a miserable time throughout his short run on the show, and that reflected on-screen - Adric just looked so fed-up and unhappy in every scene he was in.
The Doctor, realising that, yep, Adric is still there
So - we have a bad character, disliked by cast and viewers alike, played by a bad actor, going through zero character development. How the hell do you start to defend that?Well, let’s be honest, nobody is going to claim that Adric is any good. But does he really deserve all the hate he’s received over the years? Truthfully (and not just because it‘s what this article has to argue), no.
First, let’s look at Waterhouse’s acting. No, he’s not very good. That’s undeniable. But honestly, Davison (and the very occasional turn from a clearly-bored Tom Baker) aside, nobody comes out of this era of Who well. When the painfully tedious Chris Bidmead took over as script editor, he routinely set about removing any traces of personality from any of his characters in favour of telling “entertaining” stories about computers, machines and “hard sci-fi ideas” (in quotation marks for a reason, Bidmead…). Nobody in his tenure really gets any material to work with. And of the three companions of his era, it’s hard to find faults in Adric that weren’t shared by other characters: Tegan was just as sulky and argumentative as Adric, while Sarah Sutton’s Nyssa was just as flat and dull in her line delivery (and just as boringly clever). Indeed, Adric was originally supposed to survive Earthshock - it was Nyssa that was viewed as the weakest link, and it’s only intervention on Davison’s part that lead to Adric getting the chop instead.
It doesn’t help that there were too many regular characters to give anyone a chance to shine. Companions were routinely sidetracked just to leave enough room for the story, either by being held captive for considerable periods, being forced to stay in the TARDIS to watch monitors for episodes at a time, or - in Nyssa’s case - just plain staying in bed for an entire serial. Waterhouse may have been a dreadful actor, but he never really even got a chance to at least try.
At least when Adric gets sidetracked it’s funny. He literally spends the whole second half of Black Orchid eating.
Also, the lack of character development claim is a bit unfair. For the first time since Jo Grant made a passing reference to going on a night out with Mike Yates, we have just a hint of romance between two companions. Adric and Nyssa share many moments that convey a mutual attraction between the two - they are clearly very fond of each other, but neither ever quite acts on it. This is the sort of on-TARDIS romance that is a staple of the current run of the show, so in a way, Adric was a character well ahead of his time. Of course, neither Waterhouse or Sutton are particularly able performers, so it’s easy to miss this budding relationship on first watch through, but when you do pick up on it, it’s really quite a sweet little subplot.
Sexual chemistry ahoy!
And as for his reputation for constant betrayal, this is actually a bit of a myth purported by those determined to hate the little nerd. In some serials, such as State Of Decay, Adric is only pretending to betray his friends in order to infiltrate the enemy. In others, such as Castrovalva, he is clearly siding with the enemies under duress - he is, after all, a prisoner and is being tortured into helping. Admittedly, in Four To Doomsday he sides with the frog monsters who want to kill all humans, but, nobody’s perfect.
Eh, they seem trustworthy enough
When you consider that the next male companion to be introduced was actively trying to kill The Doctor for much of his run, and was always trying to wriggle his way out of saving his friends if it put himself at risk, and he has become one of the more popular companions of the 80s, it’s a bit harsh to hate Adric for this.
We haven't forgotten...
Adric finally starts to show some true potential in Earthshock, his final serial. After finding himself the token “odd-companion-out”, confined to the TARDIS for the first two episodes, the character really comes into his own in the latter two episodes, finding himself paired up for screen time with The Doctor for one of the few extended periods of time in Five’s era. Here, Adric starts to show his noble side, and his courage: when he is captured, he insists that his friends don’t put themselves at harm to rescue him, and when he finds himself on a ship headed on a collision course with Earth, he deliberately tricks everyone else into leaving, staying behind to face certain death while he tries to save the human race. Managing to move the ship back in time, he is left on board as the craft crashes to Earth, wiping out the dinosaurs, but ensuring that mankind is safe. It was a shocking move at the time, and still gives a chill now. And, most importantly, Waterhouse is actually really good in this whole serial. Aside from an unintentionally hilarious sequence where he uses as computer terminal from the furthest distance possible (the actor clearly scared of the pyrotechnics that are about to be unleashed), the young actor absolutely nails this performance. Anyone not moved as Adric stands, outwardly calm but tightly clutching his dead brother’s belt, and waits for the inevitable crash is dead inside.
Then there’s the impact of his death on the series as a whole. Adric’s dino-bothering demise is not the first time that a companion has died, nor is it the last (hell, just two seasons later the Fifth Doctor kills one of his crew himself). But somehow this is the death that has the most impact on The Doctor, then and since. The ghost of Adric looms over the rest of Five’s tenure (occasionally literally). From this point on, the Doctor’s era becomes increasing seeped in violence. Body counts rise, to the extent that at times the survivors can be counted on one hand (indeed, Warriors Of The Deep has just one guest star left standing, and I’m pretty sure that that’s just because the writers forgot all about him halfway through the final episode).
Hang in there, Guy In Red
The Doctor is not immune to this violence, but rather he embraces it, becoming more reckless and brutal - Six has the reputation for having the most violent era, but Five is the Doctor who embraces his dark side the most, gunning down enemies, flooding bases with deadly gas, performing a mercy-killing on his own companion - he even contemplates flat-out executing Davros in cold blood. The loss of his companion has really hit him hard, setting him on a downward spiral. As arcs go, this isn’t as pronounced as the sort of complex fare that modern show runners RTD and Moffat have delivered, but it’s definitely there. And it’s the whole reason that Five bows out - his exit in The Caves Of Androzani is entirely a result of Adric’s sacrifice. Here is The Doctor, again facing the possibility of a companion dying as a result of travelling with him, and this time he will do everything necessary to stop it, including sacrificing his own life. It is no coincidence that Five’s last word is “…Adric…”
This sort of multi-season character arc is the type of thing that is synonymous with the show now, and arguably Adric’s violent exit can be seen as being as much of a starting point for NuWho as the Seven/Ace relationship.
So, yeah, Adric may well have been poorly written, and poorly acted, but he wasn’t really any worse than many of the other companions in the Fifth Doctor’s era, and his legacy has actually had more impact on the series than almost any other companion.
Bad companion? Yes. But the worst companion ever?
Not guilty.
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