DOCTOR WHO FAN TYPES
by Various Authors
1) The Raving Maniac - The fan has seen all the episodes, read all the
rejected scripts, has every last second of existing Doctor Who down to the
smallest Highlanders clip, spends hours every day watching the camera edit
of "Vampires From Space", he has all the target novels organized by
number, all the NAs, and MAs and has read most of them, every morning
they awaken in their Tom Baker clothes, kiss their life sized wall
poster of Roger Delgado and smile for their total
devotion to Doctor Who and his rewards and blessing most recently
witnessed with the JVR footage
2) That Brainless Guy\Gal - at home they would sit stuffing their faces
with crisps. twiglets, and anything edible as they guzzled cheap soda-pop
and would occassionally click by and find Doctor Who on BBC, ABC, or PBS.
They would laugh at the rubber monsters, smile, and then fall asleep with sugar in their blood.
3) The "No I'm Normal Really!!!" Fan - this fan tries to seem normal,
and safe, and not like the psychotic freak they are. They may be
bank managers, insurance agents, or hold any regular office job.
At night they retire to their guilty pleasure of watching Pyraminds
of Mars and reading The Also People. These fans have houses that
aren't spotted with miscellanous science fiction paraphernalia
and entering their livingrooms you'd think they had no clue who Gerry
Anderson is. These fans are deadly and dangerous, it's only a few
more years till they dress up in some nightmare outfit from A Clockwork
Orange or Judge Dredd and start wildly attacking co-workers with
model bazookiods after years of playing the straight line.
4) The "Invisible" fan - This is the guy or gal who everyone over looks,
they wear cheap tacky dark clothing that makes them magically
disappear into the background, they never add to conversations
and one quickly forgets they even exist. No one ever goes to their
homes but if they did they would find an unsettling display of
full sized props, models, large wall posters, thousands of dollars
worth of Dapol Daleks, Svens Models, Action Figures, original Action
Man Dolls, and books signed by Terrance Dicks, Dave Stone, Douglas
Adams, David McIntee, and oddly Santa Claus but they don't want to
talk about that, they never want to explain anything. This person
MIGHT freak out like the "normal" fan but it's unlikely and they
would probably stop their rampage and apologised if you
asked them too.
5) The "Bored" Fans - these fans live in some hideous place like
Wyoming or Scunthorpe. There is no hope of meeting other fans,
everyone look at you bizarrely when you try to read copies of
Mission Impractical in public or when you are caught watching
The Robots of Death on tape. It seems hard to get what you
do want and even though you've seen perhaps half the stories
you can't find the others and no one will help you get them.
Eventually you think of moving somewhere exciting but you
don't. PLEASE HELP THESE PEOPLE!!
6) The "Colin baker" fans - you may like any or all of the Doctors
but you are also a big Colin baker fan. Other fans mock you and
suspect you wear tacky coats and kitty pens in private. No one
understands you love of The Trial of a Time Lord and almost all
of Season 22, slowly you try to show that Peri was a good companion
with the 6th Doctor but no one believes you, everyday you feel
persecuted by other people.
7) The "Slyvester McCoy" Maniacs - Some people like Slyvester McCoy,
some people are fans, but then there are those who are the Maniacs
a special breed of fan. All the Doctors were leading up to him,
they spend $200 for the question mark umbrella, they have a
bizarre dream of him with live ferrets in his pants, they have pictures
of him adorning their walls, and closets, and floors, and ceilings,
long letters somewhere between fan and love letters are sent frequently
poems in his honor are written, t-shirts with quotes from him printed,
at the convention breakfasts he is definitely not safe with them
hovering around waiting for his word to drink the kool-aid or his
blessing so they may live.
8) The "Tom Baker" Maniacs - These people are uniquely deranged as
their theories and views of the show are immune to reality.
Tom Baker was the first Doctor they ever saw, they believed he
WAS the Doctor, when he regenerated they screamed in terror,
when they discovered other people had played the Doctor before
him they were shocked and just resigned themselves to the
"The Doctor is Tom Baker, and some other people have played
him as well" They talk only of his adventures and everything
Tom baker says is the last word on the truth. These are
the people who wrote the BBC and complain the Tom Baker Years
tape just wasn't long enough. They consider the 4th Doctor
Prime Computer and new Zealand Telephone commericals canon
OVER any non-Tom Baker story. They wear scarves, have the sonic
screw driver, and firmly believe The Power of Kroll is underrated.
9) The Troughton Supporters - these fans have all the existing Troughton
stories and loved them, Troughton is there favorite Doctor and other
fans ask them how this is possible when all of his stuff is gone.
Troughton Supporters shake their heads and people won't take the
audios and telesnap reconstructions as evidence as they watch
and pay daily homage to Graham Strong and David Hollman.
10) The Pertwee Fanatics - They love the gadgets and actions, and
when people talk trash about Pertwee they get tell them to
shut up, punch them in the face with some venusian akido
and rush home to watch The Daemons with Roger Delgado.
Their motto "Bad CSO?? It's nothing."
11) The Hartnell Fans - No one cares about them, so ultimately the
safest fans, they watch the original stories, have a few audios,
a few telesnaps, they've read the Plotters and Venusian Lullaby,
maybe a few more, over all their fandom is harmless except for
finding themselves urgung to say "My Boy", "Hmm", and they
can't keep a sentence straight.
12) Davison Fanatics - These are largely non-exisent, no study can
yet be done, preliminary data suggests they eat celery to avoid
gases from the Praxis range.
modified from the types origionaly By Charles Daniels
Further research has discovered further subgroups:
13) The Undergraduate. Generally a maths student in steel-framed glasses, he
occasionally has a girlfriend and he also watches Star Trek. Usually called
Nick, Dave or Chris. Is rather quiet at parties. Will spend hours on end in disturbingly intense discussions of obscure children's television programmes.
14) The Old-Timer. Was a founder member of DWAS in the seventies, knew all the
authors before they were famous and occasionally phones up John Scott-Martin
for a chat. Once almost fell in love with a companion. Has spent a truly staggering
amount of money on Doctor Who, not to mention a significant proportion of his
waking life. Now claims that Doctor Who is a bit stupid really and that he's
only still in fandom because of all his friends there, so it's a mystery why he
keeps hanging around the newsgroups...
15) The female fan. A very rare species. She probably didn't
believe the rather disturbing rumours about Doctor Who fans until she found out
for herself. Going to her first convention was an extremely bizarre
experience.
16) Bookie: Someone who's collected every Doctor Who book.
By Finn Clark.
Curiously, a few additional (possibly spurious) fan types have been
identified.
17) The combo fan. A strange mixture of the more normal types (2,3,4,5
(except it was one of the Timewyrm books at Microsoft's major site in
Blighty),9,10,11 and 13). May spend hours and hours per week (or even
day) trying to create digital representations of a cyberman finger on
his/her home computer with the hope of eventually creating the whole
thing. tends to look asleep at any time between 7AM and 11PM.
18) The Alternative fan. A drastically enthusiastic fan of Doctor Who
in every media it hasn't been done in yet. Apparently good-natured
from a distance, this fan becomes fervently involved in any project
surrounding his/her favourite (non-existant) episodes. Has a tendecy
to revert to claiming his/her self to be a sentient form of plant
life.
19) The underpaid fan: Whilst many fans generally presume this to be
their type, the truly underpaid fan works slavishly to increase the
enjoyability of Doctor Who. They may write up scripts for free
distribution, or produce plays of lost/un-produced but approved
material. They may even have original works published by the BBC as
ongoing Who (although the term "original" here may be under some
duress on occasion). May occasionally be attacked by other fans in an
attempt to show that this type earns even less than their wage packets
suggest. The species may be on the decline. With luck their demise will show other
fans what they were missing all along, albiet a tad too late to change
the situation.
20) The "untrue" fan. Decries any statement, whether good or bad,
about Doctor Who made by any fan of another type. Heatedly debates the
topic if responded to, and proves their point of view with a string of
statements which often verge sufficiently close to the truth to allow
the less hardy fan of another type to waver. May occasionally be found
rifling through books at the store looking for "facts" to denounce.
Generally inhabits the darker regions of the Internet although may be
seen produly strutting about at fan club meetings.
By Cliff Bowman
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