As I noted in my last post, the wide-ranging mind of Matt Hills could not be constrained to a single quote. Last week, he gave us a quote for fan studies; this week, he gives us his go-to piece of criticism for thinking about Doctor Who, about which he has both written a monograph Triumph of a Time Lord: Regenerating Doctor Who in the Twenty-first Century (2010), and co-edited a collection of essays, Adventures Across Space and Time: A Doctor Who Reader. (2023) – FC
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An Indicative Quotation for studying Doctor Who:
The ‘merchandised reading’ of Who in the 1970s was wildly uneven. Often aimed at primary school children, comic strips, jigsaws, books and toys reworked the programme as a very basic adventure story, shearing it of its themes and complexities. The Doctor would routinely be referred to as ‘Doctor Who’ as if it were the character’s name (it is not, that is the title of the programme). In/on merchandise, the programme might be referred to as Dr. Who… whereas the televised version has never used the contracted form. The Doctor would also be shorn of his ethical nature, routinely blowing up or killing aliens without a thought or scruple. Daleks, themselves often reduced to the status of simple killer robots, would be depicted in garish primary colours which rarely bedecked their on-screen counterparts. (Booy 2012: 13)
In terms of work on Doctor Who, then, I have a soft spot for Miles Booy’s (2012) Love & Monsters: The Doctor Who Experience, 1979 to the Present. This analyses what it has meant to be a UK-based Doctor Who fan across a period of time that largely coincides with my own experience of the fandom, focusing on tie-in and spin-off publications rather than the central text, and covering fan-consumed materials that are surprisingly rarely theorised and discussed, such as the original Doctor Who Weekly comic that became today’s Doctor Who Magazine via a series of metamorphoses. Booy’s work is great for reminding us, and reminding me, how much of fandom can still be about specialist, niche or licensed publications as well as fanfic and fan art and so on.
— Matt Hills (Honorary Professor at the University of Bristol, and previously Professor of Fandom Studies at Huddersfield University).