Musings about Who fandom and haters

[gogmagog]

This comment on doctorwho pretty much sums up my feeling about Who fandom:

I think half the fandom doesn't actually like the show. I guess it's the "Star Wars fans hate Star Wars" phenomenon.

I'm not a good Doctor Who fan. I like it too much.

...SO MUCH WORD. But then, most of the fandoms I've ever been in have been like that; as bad and wanky as Who fandom gets, it will never be as self-destructive as Buffy or even the smaller Veronica Mars fandom (in which there was actually talk of a campaign on LJ to get the show CANCELLED during its final season, because canon wasn't going the way some shipper fans wanted it to).

Honestly, the only Doctor Who episode I've actively disliked was "Fear Her," and that's only because the script was ridiculous (though even it had its moments) and the guest actors were just REALLY BAD (and unfortunately really prominent). I haven't seen any stories from Old Who that I really disliked (though of course quite a few stories had some bits that dragged, overall I've enjoyed every story I've seen; though I do have yet to see some of the infamously bad stories like "Time-Flight" or "The Twin Dilemma").

I guess I just feel that if, for example, I'd disliked every episode of a season of a show, I'd stop watching, y'know? (And I do know a couple of Who fans who got quite tired of the show's direction in season 2 of New Who, and instead of getting wanky about it on the Internet just stopped watching it until it improved in their eyes with season 3.) I mean, it's one thing to stick with a show you used to like a lot for a bit because you hope it'll get better, but seriously, I've seen people who have disliked pretty much every episode of New Who because it's not Old Who, and yet KEEP WATCHING (and then bitching). And that completely puzzles me, because life is too short to spend that much time on something you don't enjoy (but maybe that's just my philosophy).

And the obvious response is that I should take my own advice and just ignore the bitching; and I try to, but frequently it's on public communities/sites and not clearly labeled, so I end up stumbling on it. And honestly, it's not so much that it bothers me (I'm not a "HOW DARE YOU HARSH MY SQUEE" kind of person, really!), it just puzzles me.

Comments

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

Doctor Who is different from most other fandoms (the closest analogue is superhero comics) because rather than being a work created by one single creative team that will be get cancelled when they get fed up with it it's an open-ended work which has traditionally had regular complete changes in creative team and wide shifts in style and genre between different creators. Hence people who object to things that the current creators are doing will often still keep watching it because they hope it'll get better again once the next creative team takes over and because they're scared to stop watching until that point in case they miss out on vital plot continuity stuff.