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Adric
(1980 - 1982) |
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Matthew
Waterhouse |
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Born in
1961 in Hertford Matthew Waterhouse joined the BBC
as a clerk working in the news and information
department. At the same time he was actively pursuing an
acting career. His first acting part was as a public
schoolboy in To Serve Them all My Days in
1980. However, even before started work on this
programme he auditioned and got the role as Adric
in Doctor Who. At the time started playing
the part of Adric he was just 18 years old. Since
leaving the show he has worked in theatre appearing
as Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream, as
Peter in Peter Pan and as Edmund in The
Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe. He has also starred
in a one-man show, The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn which he adapted from Mark Twain's novel.
Matthew has recently become involved in a TV production
called Ghostlands of which so far only three pilot episodes have
been produced. Also involved in this production are Jacqueline Pearce,
of Blakes 7 fame, and Sylvester McCoy who played the Seventh
Doctor. |
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 Adric's tragic short life began on a planet
in E-Space called Alzarius, where he and his brother Varsh were
orphaned by the deaths of their parents Morell and Tanisa. Varsh
coped with his losses by rejecting the society of the Starliner
inhabitants to become a leader of a group of teenagers called
'outliers,' in consequence abandoning his younger brother. While
remaining in the Starliner, Adric excelled in mathematics, even
being awarded a Badge for Mathematical Excellence that marked
him as a member of the elite among his people. Nevertheless,
he tried to join his brother's group of misfits.
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| Full Circle |
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An environmental condition called Mistfall
caused the population to flee to the safety of the Starliner
they and their ancestors had been tending for generations.
Injured in a tumble and frightened half out of his wits,
Adric stumbled into The Doctor's TARDIS and
collapsed. The Doctor and Romana cared for him and helped
to resolve a situation caused by creatures called Marshmen.
With no family left alive (Varsh had died fighting the Marshmen)
Adric hid in The Doctor's TARDIS.
It took
some time for The Doctor to realise that Adric had stowed away and
at first he intended to return the boy to his people. But, as in
several other cases, he took the young orphan under his wing. When
Romana said good bye at the Gateway The Doctor brought Adric with
him into N-Space, Adric often looking up to the Fourth
Doctor as
an almost fatherly figure as he learnt more about his new universe.
Adric's
mop-topped alien character was that of a brooding teenager with mixed
feelings. Rather naïve, he played up to anyone who showed him
any attention, switching loyalties easily at first - such as when
he was briefly won over by the vampire Aukon to join their ranks
("State
of Decay") and the deranged Monarch to help him
convince Earth he was no threat ("Four
to Doomsday"), but
always returning to The Doctor's side of things, even proving himself
useful. Curious, selfish, brilliant, yet sometimes slow to grasp
the obvious, he bombarded The Doctor with questions and got himself
into difficult situations from which he tried to extract himself
and others with odd results. The Doctor was usually able to come
to the rescue, but that would not remain so always.
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| Warriors' Gate |
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Adric's relationships with The Doctor's other companions proved both difficult and brotherly, likely hindered by his own issues with the idea that he and The Doctor were no longer solo companions. He adored Nyssa, his intellectual
equal, but seemingly looked down on her as merely a girl,
although he later revealed that he had actually been in
love with her. His interactions with Tegan
turned fiery
at times, though there was a bond beneath the surface. Adric
wanted to be The Doctor's right hand man and resented the
intrusion of the others, the situation becoming more difficult after the Fourth Doctor’s regeneration as The Doctor’s younger-looking Fifth incarnation
seemed better suited to an ‘older brother’ role
rather than the father-like authority figure of his previous
self. He felt jealous of
the time The Doctor spent explaining things to the girls
and at one point demanded to be returned to his own people,
though the journey would have put the whole crew at risk.
Though he never gained the expertise of a Time Lord, Adric was able to operate the TARDIS a few times, once by accident (during his first adventure with The Doctor) and later by sheer determination, guiding it through a 'short hop' into the mansion where a Terileptil had trapped The Doctor and Tegan. He later attempted a more complex trip back to Heathrow in 1981- even though Tegan didn’t want to go back any more- but ended up materialising on an island off the cost of Britain instead, attributing this to his background in E-Space causing him to calculate using negative equations where he should consider the positives, although he later speculated that this was the result of the sentient numbers known as ‘the I’ drawing them in to try and contain The I Predator from attacking our plane of existence ("Iterations of I"). Despite these victories, he still
sometimes felt unappreciated by his fellow companions- particularly
wishing to be closer to Nyssa, having developed feelings
for her due to their similar backgrounds - but after being
transported to a realm where his own insecurities were given
physical form during a confrontation with The Doctor’s
old foe the Celestial Toymaker, Adric recognised that he
needed to improve his own view of himself if his relationship
with his fellow companions was ever going to change ("Divided
Loyalties").
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Iterations of I (Disc 2)
(John Dorney) |
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As an Alzarian Adric had the special ability to recover quickly from injuries, quickly overcoming minor cuts; even a bullet wound to the leg that would have been crippling for a human was healed on its own in a matter of minutes. His mathematical abilities proved
useful to The Doctor and something for The Master to exploit.
The Master kidnapped Adric at the end of the fourth Doctor's
life and tried to use him as a weapon against the fifth
Doctor in order to sabotage his most recent regeneration.
Adric fought bravely against The Master's control, was rescued
by The Doctor, then guided his friends from the collapsing
city of Castrovalva. Later on, Adric was briefly kidnapped by a corrupt police officer who wanted to use his skills to manipulate the stock market, but he actually managed to escape by jumping out of the helicopter, others noting that a human jumping from that height would have been crippled at best but Adric walked away with a limp that The Doctor was confident would be completely healed in hours ("Iterations of I").
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| Castrovalva |
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Although
somewhat naïve at times- to the extent that he was
once nearly convinced to become a vampire ("State of
Decay") - Adric could be heroic. When the tethered
Doctor left Monarch's Space Liner to rescue the unfortunate
Tegan, Enlightenment set him adrift, Adric subsequently
tearing out her circuitry to allow The Doctor to continue
his rescue despite his earlier belief in Monarch’s
vision of an android society. On Earth in the future Adric
sneaked up on a death-dealing robot created by the Cybermen and damaged it with a rock. Later Adric tried to protect
Tegan from the Cyberman who was ordered to kill her. A few
moments later he convinced The Doctor and Tegan to stop
arguing with the Cyberleader to take him with them, assuring
them that he would find another way to escape. Adric then
raced time and matched wits with Cyber technology to find
a way to keep a transport ship from ploughing into Earth.
Adric
admired The Doctor and tried to emulate him, tried to think
as he did, tried to survive by his wits as he had seen The
Doctor do so easily. At the last, however, his luck failed,
the Cyber-ship he had remained on board crashing into Earth
in the past, triggering the cataclysm that would wipe out
the dinosaurs, as The Doctor watched from the temporarily-disabled
TARDIS, unable to save his friend. Yet, in a roundabout
way Adric had saved The Doctor's life yet again, for it
was with his gold-treated Badge of Mathematical Excellence
that The Doctor managed to defeat the Cyber leader.
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| Earthshock |
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However, as The Doctor and Nyssa were later to learn
much to their shock, Adric had not died in the crash; at
the last minute, he had somehow managed to enter the necessary
Block Transfer Computations into the starship’s computer
to send the entire ship into a pocket dimension based on
an Aztec jungle, populated primarily by giant scorpions
and insects. Although the power of the Computations kept
Adric alive for over five centuries, simultaneously allowing
him to establish his authority other the scorpions, he continued
to seek a means of escape, finally being reunited with The
Doctor and Nyssa when The Doctor performed his own Block
Transfer Computations to try and find the TARDIS after it
had been stolen by Victorian thief Thomas Brewster. Driven insane by centuries
of isolation and bitterness, Adric refused to accept The
Doctor’s attempts to make him realise that he was
now essentially just an elderly teenager, complaining when
he didn’t get his way and believing that the world
should jump to his every whim, attempting to force Nyssa
to become his bride and Empress and force The Doctor to
admit that he permitted Adric to die ("The
Boy That Time Forgot").
Despite his rage at his old friends- made even worse
it was revealed that The Doctor had subconsciously helped
Adric save himself when conducting the ‘séance’ due
to his own guilt over his friend’s death - Adric eventually
accepted that The Doctor genuinely regretted not being able
to save him, using the last of his now-rapidly-fading strength
to return The Doctor and Nyssa to Victorian London before
sending a weak telepathic message to Thomas Brewster, allowing
him to guide the TARDIS back to The Doctor, before he died,
The Doctor and Nyssa arranging and attending a funeral for
their old friend before they finally departed with Thomas
in the restored TARDIS. Unfortunately, this was not the last time Adric's actions would impact on the Fifth Doctor's life, as a dormant computer program Adric had written to take the TARDIS back through a CVE when it passed in close proximity to one was activated while The Doctor was trying to take Tegan, Turlough and Nyssa to a meeting with Nyssa's son - who she had actually named after Adric ("Prisoners of Fate") - which resulted in the TARDIS being trapped in the now-dying E-Space ("Mistfall"), eventually forcing Nyssa to stay behind to open the portal that would allow The Doctor, Tegan and Turlough to take the TARDIS back home ("The Entropy Plague").
Even after his final meeting with Adric and the subsequent funeral, The Doctor continued to feel guilty over his inability to save his old companion, with such diverse enemies as the Quantum Archangel ("The
Quantum Archangel"), the Timewyrm ("Timewyrm:
Revelation") and Faction
Paradox ("The
Ancestor Cell") taunting and tormenting later Doctors with the
memory of Adric’s death to try and convince him to
work with them or put him emotionally off-balance. On one occasion, when the Seventh Doctor crossed his own timeline and met his fifth self shortly after his regeneration ("Cold
Fusion"), he was particularly grateful for the chance to see Adric again, treating him warmly despite his dismissive attitude towards his past self, the Seventh’s companion Roslyn
Forrester comparing the Seventh Doctor’s treatment of Adric to a grandfather working with a grandson, reflecting The Doctor’s continued regret over his failure. |
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