Buzz Off

Wherever you are, whoever you are, remember this - there's more to life than Doctor Who. It doesn't matter if you're a record producer, a magazine editor, a national frontist or some guy who once set up a website - each of us is capable of getting lost in the whole Whodom, but at the end of the day we've got to find some time on our own.

I mean, even TV producers can get a little bit lairy. Take friend Russell, who recently referred to obsessive fans as "mosquitoes".

He claims that a vocal minority is dominating fandom.

"They are not real fandom," Davies stated. "They are a core of mostly men who like to complain. Fandom is bigger and richer than that, and they are only about 1,000 people who give everyone else a bad name and build their life around a show."

Tell us again, Russell, what have you been doing for the last 5 years?

Seriously though, any popular show, book, movie, toy - whatever - has a movement of fans around it, each with a varying bunch of opinions. You've got to deal with it.

For instance - and this would be very presumptive on my part and only for the purposes of this example - if RTD was referring to elements on this website, or at worst me (!), it would be a simple matter to point out that everyone has an opinion, and a right to express it. To paint a very negative picture of a vocal minority of Doctor Who fans of being 1000 complaining blokes is irresponsible, and bloody immature.

As far as I am aware - and correct me if I'm wrong but I've been in online fandom for 14 years now - the most vocal segment of Doctor Who fans are found at the erstwhile Outpost Gallifrey. The forum of that site - the biggest Doctor Who discussion forum on the web - are renowned for their amazing ability to declare each successive episode of Doctor Who as "BEST EPISODE EVER!", unable as they are to apply any critical reasoning.

Plus there are several thousand members at that website, so the question remains - exactly who is RTD talking about...?