Do they really?

[shivver]

Here's something that I just remembered that I've wondered about.

Back when I first fell headlong into Doctor Who, in 2013, I was working for a different development studio than the one I am now (actually, it was three companies ago over the last eight years - if you want job stability, independent software development studios are not a good choice) and one of the developers, Ian, was English. Ian was a little older than me (read: old enough to have grown up watching the classic show since the Third Doctor, possibly the tail end of the Second) and sported a thick accent which most of us Americans often couldn't decipher, even ones more comfortable with non-RP accents than I. I have since learned to recognize his accent as something perhaps Midlands, similar to Matt Smith.

When I started talking about DW at work, Ian took it upon himself to educate me to be a proper fan. However, only one thing he told me stuck with me, and it was this: "Never refer to the Doctor by number - the Third Doctor, the Seventh Doctor, the Tenth Doctor. We use the actor name - the Pertwee Doctor, the McCoy Doctor, the Tennant Doctor." He implied (or maybe he stated it outright; it was eight years ago, after all) that using numbers would mark me as an American (as if that wasn't obvious already) and an ignorant wannabe fan.

He does have a bit of a point, since after all, we refer to the Delgado Master, the Ainsley Master, etc., rather than the First Master and the Second Master (though we also refer to Romana I and Romana II). However, in eight years of hanging out in this corner of the fandom, I've never heard anyone, British or American, consistently refer to the Doctors by the actor name. Occasionally, yes, but not consistently.

So is/was that really a thing? There are a number of possible explanations. First, most people I'm in contact with in-person and on the web are American, so I mostly see American phrasing; however, I do have a number of British friends, many of whom are reading this right now, and they tend to use number rather than name. Second, since I'm mostly active in the fanfic community, I see the phrasing that's used there, and it's number; you won't see "Eccleston Doctor" as a selectable tag on ffnet, Teaspoon, or AO3. (Ship names would also get pretty complicated, if you can't use "Ten/Donna" or similar.) Third, Ian's been living in the States for a very long time (he's married to an American and has been here all that time), and perhaps the convention in Britain has changed and he's just not aware of it. Fourth, maybe he was just winding me up.

Whatever. It's not like I'm going to change now. :)

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

I've never come across it! But then, pre-internet access, my only contact with fandom was through DWM. But, honestly, DWM used the numbers, so either your friend was in some enclosed offline group that did use the names and didn't realise it was Just Them, or they were indeed winding you up. Maybe their group was very mindful of the possibilities raised by The Brain of Morbius that might one day reveal the numbering scheme to be wrong??

The only time I've ever come across people using name!Doctor is when they are outside the run, or we don't know where they fit in the run, like the BFA UNbound Doctors (Jacobi!Doctor, Collings!Doctor) or the War Doctor in the gap before the special.

Other than that, I got nothing!

[shivver]

Oh god, numbering schemes! Perhaps it was a serious consideration back then, but I think now we're all better off if we just all agree that numerical consistency is not important, or possible. Even at the last Gallifrey One (2019), which was a couple of weeks after "Fugitive of the Judoon", there were people upset about the Ruth Doctor because they couldn't stand not being able to assign her the right number.

I recently ran across a blog post somewhere about the first season of Twelve's run, written by a guy who stated up front that he was using the "correct" numbering for the Doctors. It was the most difficult thing to read because you had no idea who he was talking about. The worst part was that he not only included War in his system, but also Meta. Thus, the main Tennant Doctor was the Eleventh Doctor, Smith was Thirteen, and Twelve was Fourteen. Perfect example of a person more concerned with his own authority than with good communication. I got about four paragraphs in and gave up.

[thisbluespirit]

Heh, yes, we just need to accept that the current numbering is the way it's going to stay and enjoy the fact that it's no longer really correct, rather than that kind of confusion.

Ruth must be minus-something, I suppose!

But that might have been what it was.

[unfeathered]

Totally not an American thing, as far as I'm aware. I'm a Brit who grew up with Doctor Who (from Tom Baker onwards) and in my experience it's the NON-fans who call the Doctors by name - though usually by the actor's whole name e.g. Tom Baker rather than Baker Doctor (you'd run into problems with that one anyway)! That's how I grew up referring to the Doctors, and still do to my non-fan husband.

I didn't come across people calling them by their numbers until I turned up on LJ in 2007, and for some time I was confused as I thought "Ten" must be somehow short for "Tennant!" It took a while to start thinking of the Doctors by number, even though I'd grown up knowing what number they all were.

I always assumed the reason we didn't refer to the Masters by number is because we never knew what number they actually were. Or something.


As an aside, I am thoroughly intrigued by the reference to Matt Smith being from the Midlands as I've never seen him in anything other than DW and totally never got a Midlands accent from that! :-D

[shivver]

Now that's intriguing, that non-fans used names in your experience. Strange how these different conventions crop up among people.

When I was growing up in the 70s/80s, I did catch a couple of episodes of DW (though never a full story, which is probably why I didn't fall into the fandom until recently; I never got to see how good the show really was), and I remember very clearly watching Tom Baker and Peter Davison. Interestingly, I knew at the time that the two characters were the same person, but I have no idea why I would have known that. I also know that they were just "the Doctor" to me, though probably I thought of them as "the one with the scarf" and "the blond handsome one". (Yeah, I only needed one episode to develop a crush on Peter Davison.)

I probably shouldn't have identified Midlands per se. I could tell that Matt Smith's accent wasn't RP or Estuary, or Essex or anything Northern (Yorkshire, Mancunian, etc.). I kind of think of English accents in terms of direction, oddly enough, and felt it was west of London and probably north. So I checked his Wikipedia entry and he's from Midlands, so I figured that was it. :)

[unfeathered]

It is interesting! I mean, Doctor Who is a huge thing over here, it's something we've all grown up with and everyone is aware of it. Even if they don't watch it, everyone knows about the TARDIS (you see all sorts of references to things being TARDIS-like, i.e. bigger on the inside) and Daleks and probably regeneration. So it's the sort of show everybody talks about even if they're not a fan and different Doctors definitely get referenced by the actors' names.

On a different note, Peter Davison was TOTALLY my first crush. He presented a children's lunchtime show when I used to come home from infant school for lunch (i.e. aged around 6 or 7) and then there was All Creatures Great and Small so I was soooo excited when I discovered he was going to be the Doctor as well! I was all of ten. :-)

As for Matt Smith, I am notoriously terrible with accents, even British ones, so it's not very surprising I didn't pick up on it, especially as he is pretty well-spoken as the Doctor. But now I know, yes, I can hear a bit of Midlands in there!

[unfeathered]

LOL, just realised my arithmetic was wrong last night - I was eight in early 1981, not ten! :-D

[purplecat]

I'm a brit and it sounds to me like I'm the same age, or just slightly younger than Ian. While I wasn't any kind of name-fan back in the pre-Internet days I had DWM from Issue 62 (1982), was a member of DWAS (pretty much the only fan club of the time in the UK), and read fanzines, DWB, etc., etc. Joined the Doctor Who society when I got to university and there linked up with other fans in person.

Which means, I think I have a pretty good claim to know the general terminology used by mainstream Doctor Who fandom in the 1980s. Never came across "The Pertwee Doctor" etc. - I'm not sure we even talking about "The Ainley Master" to be honest, though I couldn't swear to it. This isn't to say there weren't fandom pockets with different terminology - there could have been a school down the road with a keen bunch of young fans discussing "The Pertwee Doctor" but I don't think it made it into the more general fandom communication channels and parlance.