View source for Dr. Who Fan Looking For Fellow Time-Lords To Swell Club's Ranks

{{article
| publication = The Wichita Eagle
| file = 1983-10-04 Wichita Eagle Beacon.jpg
| px = 550
| height = 
| width = 
| date = 1983-10-04
| author = Laura Addison
| pages = 7Z
| language = English 
| type = 
| description = 
| categories = fan clubs
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| text = 
Andrew Ayala is on the lookout for Time-Lords.

He wants to get more members for the Time-Lords of Kansas, the "Dr. Who" fan club to which he belongs. The 8-month-old club has 18 members, but Andrew knows there are other "Dr. Who" fans out there. He just doesn't know who they are or where to find them.

"Dr. Who" is a British TV import about a man who travels through time and space to other societies where he fights evil. It ran for 15 years in England before it came to the U.S. five years ago. [[broadwcast:KPTS|KPTS, Ch. 8]], has been carrying it for two years, at 6 p.m. weekdays.

Andrew, 13, realizes that "Dr. Who" fans don't just happen overnight.

"It takes time to acquire a taste for it — like Perrier." He had to put in about three months of "watching it clean through," he said.

The club members range in age from 10 to 40, he said.

Andrew, who lives at 535 S. Fern, is assistant editor of the club's still-nameless "fanzine" and holds membership button NA2216 in NADWAS, the North American Dr. Who Appreciation Society. He came into the group last summer, when he met Jackie Drummer in a summer school computer class.

Drummer, editor of the fanzine, is a student at Friends University and was also taking summer school classes for graduation requirements.

"She just looked at me and said, 'Do you like Dr. Who?' And I said, 'Dr. Who?! I live, breathe and eat Dr. Who.' "

And his mother agrees that pretty well sums it up.

"He really does know everything about Dr. Who," says Linda Ayala. "Sometimes we don't even know what it is he's talking about."

There is a lot to talk about, for Dr. Who fans. Andrew likes the show because he says it is based on fact. "Not like 'Star Trek,' which was almost all fiction."

"Travel through the time vortex, where time and space meet as one, is theoretically true," he says, being careful to add, "That's part of Einstein's theory of relativity."

He likes trying to figure out where Dr. Who is.

"Sometimes he takes about three episodes to fool you; sometimes he doesn't know."

"In most (other) shows, you get confused over which is the good guy and which is the bad guy. In this show, you're certain of it. I kind of like that."

Andrew's mother doesn't see anything threatening in his immersion in the series, nor does she consider him a TV freak.

"I'm no more concerned about him watching too much TV than I am about him practicing his violin too much," she says.

But even though she isn't bothered by Andrew's interest, she doesn't care to share it, either.

"We all try to avoid it," she says. "Sometimes we send him out of the room."

The club meets at The Shadow's Sanctum Comics and Video at 630 E. Harry on the third Sunday of each month.

The group plans a Dr. Who 20th birthday party Nov. 18 In the Union Station Pub in the basement of the Campus Activities Center on the Wichita State University campus. The party will be free and open to the public. For more information about the club, contact Ivan Snell, owner of Shadow's Sanctum, 263-2270.


Caption: Andrew Ayala, "Dr. Who" fan, is also a student in a publications class at Allison School.
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