What the Doctor did next
- Publication: The Times
- Date: 2005-12-24
- Author: Matthew Syed
- Page: Books, p. 9
- Language: English
Can't get enough of your fictional favourites? Well, Matthew Syed says, there may be plenty more stories about them on the web.
WHO WOULD HAVE WON the War of the Ring had Gandalf not returned after his fall in Moria? How did Elizabeth and Darcy cope with married life at Pemberley? Does Dumbledore have a secret crush on Professor Snape? And what would Captain Kirk have said to Doctor Who had they bumped into each other in the bar at the Mos Eisley spaceport in Star Wars?
In the extraordinary cyberworld of fanfic (short for fan fiction) amateur writers post poetry, short stories and fully fledged novels derived from the realms of previously-invented fiction. They can be about what happened after or be-fore events in the original or can fill gaps in plot, character and relationships or, indeed, rectify perceived errors.
I know what you are thinking: what a bunch of geeks. That was my thought, too. But having immersed myself in this surreal world for the past few weeks, I find myself looking rather enviously at these virtual communities and the shared passions that bind them together. My love for fiction suddenly seems frivolous in comparison. No wonder those from planet fanfic describe the unconverted as "mundanes".
The phenomenon was started by Star Trek fans after the show was cancelled in the 1970s and television sci-fi contin-ues to carve some of the deepest niches in fanfic cyberspace. Doctor Who, which returns tomorrow on BBC One, has spawned a number of websites, including A Teaspoon and an Open Mind (at www.whofic.com), which hosts 375 authors. It has stories devoted to each of the 10 Doctors and helpers such as the incomparable robot-dog K9.
Sarah: "Make a wish, K9."
K9: "This unit has been programmed with logical reasoning ability.
"Non-algorithmic thought is not possible for this unit. Non-algorithmic thought is illogical and a waste of processing power."
Sarah: "Non-algorithmic, poppycock. It's your birthday. Surely you can take a break from logic on your birthday."
K9: "Birthday. Human convention. Completely meaningless when applied to machines.
Birthday. Annual celebration marked by exchange of gifts and birthday cake. Cake.
Sweet. Fattening indulgence. Cake not compatible with this unit."
(From The Cruella Response on the website) Fanfic is a phenomenon of mind-boggling magnitude. On the fanfic.net website alone there are more than 200,000 Harry Potter stories and nearly 40,000 Lord of the Rings stories. Fiction Alley (www.fictionalley.org) has more than 70,000 registered users and more than a million posts.
The fact that fanfic derives from existing works raises questions of copyright.
Some authors, such as Anne Rice, author of the Vampire series, have said that they do not want their creations to be the subject of amateur fiction. Such wishes tend to be respected by most websites. Rice has taken legal action against those who persist.
However other writers welcome fanfic provided that it is not written for commercial gain. J. K. Rowling has said that she is delighted that her books have inspired others to write and her website links to sites such as MuggleNet and the Leaky Cauldron. She draws the line, though, at the sub-genre known as "slash".
This was originally applied to fanfic of an adult nature but has come to refer specifically to homosexual or homoerotic relationships not present in the original. A "slash" relationship between Captain Kirk and Mr Spock from Star Trek was one of the earliest subjects of fanfic. Since then there have been relationships between Bodie and Doyle from the 1970s television series The Professionals, Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, Starsky and Hutch, Mr Darcy and Mr Wickham, Harry Potter and Severus Snape.
Almost all slash is written by women for women and typically focuses on emotion rather than sex. Indeed, ATG (any two guys/girls) is a derogatory acronym for slash in which the characters seem incidental to the shagging. The most remarkable piece of (heterosexual) erotic writing that I came across on my cyber travels was a smouldering interpretation of Luthien's encounter with Morgoth in the dungeons of Angband from J. R .R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion. It is simply spellbinding (if Tolkien fans will forgive the pun).
Fanfic must be distinguished from spin-off books published to capitalise on the success of a novel, film or television series. Again, Doctor Who has been particularly successful. A string of novels was published by Virgin under the BBC Books imprint between 1991 and 1997.
Doctor Who has also inspired spin-off science books, including Michael White's A Teaspoon and an Open Mind: The Science of Dr Who (the same name as the fanfic website) that asks such questions as: How do you build a Tardis? Can a robot dog catch a cold? The only problem is that the Doctor is rather incidental. It is a book about science in which Doctor Who is invoked solely to boost sales.
But the remarkable success of derivative literature demonstrates its significance.
As Sheenagh Pugh points out in The Democratic Genre (Seren Books), this sort of literature has been around since time immemorial. Fanfic writers, she says, "resemble Ancient Greek dramatists, working with the characters of myth, the writers of mediaeval morality plays with their cast of Bible characters, or some historical novelist bringing Queen Victoria or Napoleon into her pages".
Perhaps most surprising of all is that, amid the pedestrian offerings (and there are plenty) there is the occasional gem of such superlative quality that it enhances one's appreciation of the original. One from the Harry Potter genre is The Draco Trilogy by a twenty-something New Yorker who writes under the pseudonym Cassandra Claire (access it via the fictionalley website.) You couldn't make it up.
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- APA 6th ed.: Syed, Matthew (2005-12-24). What the Doctor did next. The Times p. Books, p. 9.
- MLA 7th ed.: Syed, Matthew. "What the Doctor did next." The Times [add city] 2005-12-24, Books, p. 9. Print.
- Chicago 15th ed.: Syed, Matthew. "What the Doctor did next." The Times, edition, sec., 2005-12-24
- Turabian: Syed, Matthew. "What the Doctor did next." The Times, 2005-12-24, section, Books, p. 9 edition.
- Wikipedia (this article): <ref>{{cite news| title=What the Doctor did next | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/What_the_Doctor_did_next | work=The Times | pages=Books, p. 9 | date=2005-12-24 | via=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=18 April 2025 }}</ref>
- Wikipedia (this page): <ref>{{cite web | title=What the Doctor did next | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/What_the_Doctor_did_next | work=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=18 April 2025}}</ref>
