Character Highlight: Adric (Doctor Who)

I’ve mentioned before, more than once, that Adric is my least favorite classic series companion.  Admittedly, he improves a bit on rewatch, but my opinion of him started out low enough that the improvement doesn’t make much difference.  Still, I’m nothing if not a completist, so he needed a write-up.  Be advised that nothing I write on here is all that objective, and this is simply my opinion.

Boy genius and certified piece of work, Adric first meets the Fourth Doctor, Romana II, and K9 when they come to Alzarius.  After that adventure, he stows away on the TARDIS and serves as something of a bridging companion between the Romana years and the new companions who shortly join him and usher in the Fifth Doctor era.

There are a few main traits that come to mind when I think of Adric.  Obviously, he is unquestionably brilliant, with a strong mind for mathematics.  As with many brainy companions (see also Zoe, Liz, Romana, and Nyssa,) this means he sometimes saves the day through his smarts, applying analytical calculations to the Doctor’s more freewheeling ideas or stepping in to do the heavy mental lifting because the Doctor is otherwise incapacitated and/or occupied.  However, while I like it when these other companions are confident about/proud of their intellect, seeing Adric do the same annoys me.  I find him to be irritatingly smug, talking down to his friends (even when, like Nyssa, they’re also highly intelligent) and generally acting like he’s owed something because of his brilliance.  I don’t even know what exactly that is – respect, deference, preferential treatment? – but it does seem like he feels entitled to it at the expense of others, and that it should be given on principle because he’s Just That Smart.

The other trait I largely associate with Adric is his self-serving tendencies.  There are times watching his episodes when it feels like you could make a drinking game out of all the times Adric appears to sell out his friends and join the bad guys.  Sometimes, this is purely a self-preservation exercise, choosing the side that won’t get him killed.  Sometimes, it’s because they’ve promised him power, wealth, or the recognition he craves.  And sometimes, he claims it’s because he was just pretending in order to gain the upper hand, really maintaining his allegiance to team TARDIS all along.  As for this last point, there are times when I buy that and others when it just feels like an excuse he gives when he slinks back to the Doctor later in the serial; whether he’s putting on an act or not, the fact of the matter is that it’s always entirely believable that he’s betrayed his friends.

For the sake of fairness, though, I want to look at mitigating factors.  Adric is hardly the first genius character to be annoyingly arrogant, so that’s more about the execution of the trope than its existence, and for all his tantrums, there are times when he admits he took things too far (also, Five is prone to clashing with Adric and is in occasional need of his own reality check not to get so huffy about things.)  Additionally, I do really like the fact that Adric is an alien.  One of my favorite moments of his is in “Castrovalva” when he announces to the folks from the Pharos Institute that he and Nyssa “got the messages” humans have been sending into space and decided to reply in person.  With him, the Doctor, and Nyssa all being from different planets, I like the dynamic of Tegan being the odd human out – it makes for a fun combination of experiences on the TARDIS, and Adric is part of that.