Resisting the romance: ‘Shipping’ and the discourse of genre uniqueness in Doctor Who fandom

Introduction

In recent years the world of media content has seen an interesting trend. Cult franchises, once intensely appreciated by small groups of devotees, are being pulled from the vaults and polished up in the hopes that they might gain the devotion of a much wider audience. Suddenly sharing their playground with a multitude of new arrivals, fans of these franchises are faced with changes both to their texts and to their communities: the meaning of cult, fandom and being a fan become increasingly contested.

This article studies fan response to a major change made in such a remake: the introduction of genre hybridity into the British cult classic Doctor Who, in the form of mixing romantic elements into a quintessential science fiction text. Using grounded theory to analyse the discourse of LiveJournal community doctorwho, this article discusses how the question of romance becomes a litmus test for communal belonging among members. These fans must negotiate a tangle of identities, othering the positions of both the overly devoted ‘anorak’, who denies genre hybridity along with any show changes and the mono-focused ‘shipper’, whose focus on romance blinds them to basic show themes and values. Showing how doctorwho’s definition of the ‘good fan’ emerges from a discourse of uniqueness and exception that elevates the science fiction genre above mundane drama, the article concludes by arguing that the struggle to define the ‘good fan’ demonstrates fandom as not simply the blueprint for wider participatory culture, but its own culture with its own practices and norms.

The adored audience: fandom and the narratives of uniqueness

The terms ‘cult’ and ‘fan’, both taken from religious discourse (‘fan’ from ‘fanatic’), highlight the attributes commonly associated with that audience. Like a religious cult, the cult audience is imagined as a small, closed group; like religious fanatics, fans show intense involvement with and devotion to their texts. Studies of cult texts (Eco, 1986; Gwenllian-Jones, 2004; Hills, 2002) have explored the characteristics that engender such devotion: the quality that all of them point to is the presentation of a ‘completely furnished … narrative world’ (Eco, 1986: 198) to be memorised, investigated and cherished for its evocative nature and hints of greater depths than can be perceived upon casual viewing. From this description naturally follows the framing of the cult audience as a sort of ‘experts club’. Those who partake of the cult experience are those who possess sufficient patience and intelligence to appreciate fully the vast and sometimes confusing narrative tapestry and are capable of interpretive and creative exercises. Thus, the cult audience is powerfully distinguished, its involvement an indicator of sophistication, perseverance and cultural competence.

Cult studies and fandom studies alike have pointed out the salience of this narrative of uniqueness among cult and fan audiences. Jancovich and Hunt (2004) show how film cults form around alternative standards to quality, composed of knowledgeable ‘in-crowds’. Jenkins’ seminal work (1992) countered a popular view of fandom-as-pathology, with a view of fandom as empowerment and fannish isolation with fannish privilege. Tulloch (1995) showed how Doctor Who fans, aware of their position as ‘just a speck in an ocean’ among the greater audience, build their distinction and communal identity around their profound knowledge of the show, its vast universe and most intimate details. His account coined perhaps the most telling term for the status of fans at the time: ‘the powerless elite’.

Fans 2.0: from freaks and geeks to participatory culture

However, the last decade has seen the very foundation of this narrative undermined. Both halves of Tulloch’s term – fandom as powerless and fandom as elite – have been steadily losing ground under technological changes in the media landscape and the changes in turn prompted in the media industry.

Digital technologies, turning every form of media into a single code that makes the manipulation and sharing of existing content easier than ever, appear to have been almost tailor-made to facilitate fannish involvement (Booth, 2010). Even more important is the social change: the model commonly labelled ‘Web 2.0’ views the internet as a platform rather than a provider and users as producers and participants rather than consumers. Tim O’Reilly (2007), who coined the term, refers to the power behind the new model as ‘harnessing collective intelligence’, and indeed, collective intelligence and collective action are described often as the cornerstones of the new concept of participatory culture (Jenkins, 2006). In this view, the producer/consumer dichotomy is swiftly losing its relevance: media audiences are no longer passive receptors but active creators, gatherers and sharers of content. They are capable of seeking out, cautiously selecting and passing on the content they want. If they cannot find such content, they can create it themselves.

In an era of audience fragmentation and multiplicity of channels, a strong fandom presents tremendous potential for media producers: a fiercely devoted and invested crowd of consumers, defenders and free advertisers for their subject of adoration. Ross (2008) describes how fans of the cult series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (WB/UPN, 1997–2003) used the internet to campaign successfully for bringing United Paramount Network access to their city. The clever creator can even use a loyal fanbase as a weapon against the network, as when Joss Whedon – creator of the aforementioned Buffy – appealed to his fanbase to campaign for keeping his new series, Dollhouse (Fox, 2009–10), on air before cancellation ever happened (Bentley, 2009).

As a result, companies and producers are coming up with a myriad of ways to make their viewers behave in what Ross calls ‘cult-like ways’ (2008: 12), with greater involvement and potential for participation: producing series with cult-like features, creating completely furnished narrative worlds ripe with mysteries and trivia, and inviting fans to involve themselves with other viewers on official online forums and websites. Once under-appreciated shows, often falling under the banner of telefantasy, shake off their association with the ‘freaks and geeks’ of fandom, and instead become ‘digital television’s cutting edge’ (Pearson, 2011).

Deconstructing fandom unity

As the position of fandom as a unique subset of viewers gives way under the pressure of new audiences, texts and models, fandom scholars are challenging now the narratives of their predecessors, from the place of fandom in the lives of fans to the inner politics of fan communities. Studies have questioned the transformative potential of fan readings (Hills, 2002; Sandvoss, 2005) and delved into division, conflict and power struggles within fan communities, as well as into the concept of anti-fans and ‘hatedoms’ (Gray, 2003). Both Hills and Jancovich (2002) specifically criticise the narrative of active audience superiority with the claim that cult or fan audiences are engaged in an ongoing bid to define themselves through othering both of the mundane audience, and of the over-invested pathological fan. Jancovich notes that cult ‘fans often reserve their most direct and vitriolic attacks at… the tastes of other fans’ (2002: 312); that fans’ most radical othering is of rival fan groups imagined as less than ‘true’ fans. Rather than forming any homogenous community, cult fans constantly compete for a position of countercultural authenticity opposite the mainstream, accusing other fans of conformism and passivity.

Research questions

A question that remains concerns the experience of the fans themselves as their playground is transformed: how do they feel about the changing face of fandom? Considering Jenkins’ work, it is easy to characterise participatory culture as a sort of fandom writ large: to turn the narrative over and assume that any audience is an active and involved one. Yet instead we might ask if, rather than extend the logic of fandom, these developments undermine it. If creation, participation and communication make up the essence of fandom, then the changes brought on by the new model of production and consumption should be ideal; but if fandom defines itself instead by uniqueness and devotion, by knowledge and community – and by positioning the general audience as Other – then in fact such a participatory free-for-all might be completely at odds with fans’ own conception of what fandom means.

This article focuses on a specific fandom’s case in order to tackle this question: a case in which changes made to the text in order to increase its appeal to wider audiences hit a particular fannish nerve. In negotiating their response to this change, we find members of a fan community negotiating their own identities both as individuals and as a group. Their discussions of what is appropriate and inappropriate for inclusion in a given text, and which are the appropriate and inappropriate ways to enjoy said text, provide an enlightening glimpse into the ongoing prevalence of the discourse of fandom uniqueness and its implications for performing a fannish identity.

Case review: Doctor Who as cult and culture

That Doctor Who was among the many franchises revived in recent years is a stroke of luck for the study of changes in cult fandom. This British series chronicling the adventures of the mysterious Doctor – a whimsical alien travelling through space and time in his trusty TARDIS, taking along various companions – has undergone a number of transitions from mainstream to cult and back (Hills, 2010a). Launched in 1963, it had begun its way as an educational children’s programme. Over the next two decades its rising popularity made it into a cultural icon in Britain, for all intents a mainstream programme. The show’s ‘promotion’ to cult television status began with ongoing decreases in ratings during the 1980s; it went into an 18-month hiatus in 1985, and in 1989 was put on indefinite hold, effectively cancelled.

However, for its fans, Doctor Who had not died in 1989 but merely journeyed into new venues: books, comic strips and later on audio plays. Many of these were produced and written by fans turned semi-professionals, members of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society and contributors to the official Doctor Who magazine and to other unofficial fanzines. Just as they were by the fans, these productions were also for the fans, rather than for a large audience: post-television Doctor Who was a quintessential cult, cherished by a small and devoted group of those in the know. Between 1989 and 2005, only one attempt to revive the franchise had made it to the screen: the 1996 Fox film, which was a resounding failure. The process of successfully reviving the series would have to wait almost a decade more.

Hills (2010a) remarks that Doctor Who’s positioning as cult, ongoing despite its eventual revival as a major success, should be viewed as a function of both its audience and its text. He argues that the unique juxtaposition of the everyday and the fantastic lands the programme in the cult niche, even when the interest in it is not niche at all. This idea, as we shall see, is echoed interestingly in the discourse of fans.

Mainstreaming ‘nu Who’: the challenge of genre hybridity

On 26 March 2005, fandom’s moment had finally come. A new Doctor Who series produced by industry veteran Russell T. Davies, best known for the drama Queer as Folk and also a longtime Doctor Who fan, hit the screen. This new series, ‘Nu Who’ in fannish discourse, was not another piece of niche marketing. It did not follow from any of the literary and audio play material that had accumulated over the years, nor from the Doctor’s last televised appearance. The Doctor was a new Doctor, the theme and logo revised. There was no sign of any old companions. In any number of ways, the ‘Whoniverse’ was brand new place, eager and welcoming for brand new viewers.

In ‘Triumph of a Time Lord’, his comprehensive book on the new Doctor Who from a textual and production perspective, Matt Hills (2010b) describes the mentality and processes behind the reinvention of the series in this way. Davies, as well as the other fans-turned-professionals involved in the production, all knew that the test of the series would be in its ability to convert cult to mainstream: to turn an infamously clunky, camp and continuity-rich science fiction classic into a leading family show. Hills shows how the production discourse of Nu Who is ripe with anti-cult sentiments, with many production decisions specifically aimed to reconstruct the show and its viewer base. However, in this article I wish to focus on an intra-textual practice mentioned only in passing in Hills’ book: the characterisation of Nu Who as ‘anti-science fiction’ and its reliance on genre hybridity.

Genre is often an issue for cult television. Gwenllian-Jones (2004) shows how many, if not most, cult television series fall into the purview of telefantasy: science fiction, space opera, fantasy, horror and other neighbouring genres. Telefantasy suits cult in its unique ability to create a wider fictional universe, and tell a story across multiple timeframes, going forward, backwards and sideways in the narrative. Similarly, echoing Jancovich and Hunt’s (2004) claim that cult defines itself opposite the mainstream, science fiction always has been an outsider’s genre, its lovers stereotyped as intellectually superior yet socially dysfunctional. When attempting to capitalise on cult both by reviving old franchises and creating new ones in their image, this stereotype is particularly problematic.

One solution is genre hybridity. The first series to capitalise successfully on cult by implementing a blend of genres – mixing science fiction, detective fiction, conspiracy theories and a dose of ‘will they/won’t they’ romance – was The X-Files (Fox, 1993–2002), as early as 1993. Fox had gambled on a small but loyal audience that would keep the series going for years in syndication, and that gamble paid off, launching into the television pantheon a series that was clearly telefantasy while being many other things that captured a much wider audience (Hodges, 2008). Four years later, Buffy the Vampire Slayer achieved similar fantastic success by wedding the opposite ends of dark fantasy and teenage melodrama. Both series serve as a precursor to the more recent Lost (ABC, 2004–10), practically the embodiment of generic ambiguity and subsequent critical and popular success.

For the new Doctor Who, the problem of genre was as acute: Davies and his crew saw science fiction as essential cult, something not only to be avoided but actively rejected. Introducing genre hybridity was a crucial part of the bid to alter the show’s status: Davies’ Nu Who was characterised by a strong focus on emotional, character-driven storytelling and personal relationships. It had introduced families for the companions and presented a less alien and more vulnerable Doctor, complete with a tragic backstory. All these changes have made their impact on fandom, yet it is one particular subject that tends to get the most attention. Our point of entrance, our ‘hybrid-o-meter’, is the subject of romance and sexuality – or more specifically, the issue of the Doctor being portrayed as romantically and sexually active.

‘Hanky-panky in the TARDIS’: romance in Who nu and old

The Doctor’s sexuality and implications thereof are an ages-old fandom issue: stereotype has it that Doctor Who fans consider him asexual and deny his having ever been involved in any romantic relationships. This stereotype is associated in fan narrative with the processes by which Doctor Who fell from popular grace and into cult obscurity: it can be traced back, first, to fandom urban legends about 1980s producer John Nathan-Turner’s prudish attitude; and second, to the fan-oriented and often fan-written post-cancellation novels. Although these same books have portrayed the Doctor in a variety of sexual situations, whether explicit or hinted, often they are remembered rather for determining that his species weave their offspring on ‘genetic looms’ (Platt, 1997). The asexualist Doctor Who fan aligns neatly with other stereotypes of fans as sexually dysfunctional; as a result, the issue and its thorns are impossible for newcomers to the fandom to avoid encountering, one about which any fan can avoid formulating an opinion.

While interpretations vary, it is true that the classic series has never portrayed the Doctor in an explicitly sexual situation or relationship. In this respect, the change in the new series is drastic: in the four seasons covered by this study, the Doctor has kissed each and every one of his travelling companions, both male and female; has had several one-episode romantic entanglements; and was established as having once been married and a father. The production crew have acknowledged and approved of the Doctor’s romances in interviews and behind-the-scene peeks. Perhaps arguing for an asexual Doctor in the new series is not impossible – very little is impossible for fans to interpret away – but certainly difficult.

Genre hybridity has worked splendidly for Doctor Who: today, the show’s viewing figures regularly top 7m viewers per episode. Its fandom has swelled accordingly, with Doctor Who LiveJournal communities proliferating from fewer than five between 2001 and 2005 to more than 200 by early 2013. Yet this leads us back to the discourse of the fans: is this at all considered a good thing? Does mainstream appeal justify such a recalibration of the text? We shall see how the inclusion of romance in the show became the stage on which the struggle to define and redefine communal and personal fannish identity was acted out.

Site and corpus: the doctorwho community on LiveJournal

Doctor Who fandom enjoys a dazzling volume and variety of sites dedicated to it. Among these, LiveJournal was selected as a Web 2.0 application par excellence: a blogging site. In order to participate, users create their own customisable blogs where they may post, and others may comment; then they can join communities: shared access blogs where several or all members of the community may post.

doctorwho (http://community.livejournal.com/doctorwho/) is LiveJournal’s principal community for Doctor Who fandom. Founded in September 2002, by early 2013 it counts more than 32,500 posts made since by more than 14,000 members. An open-membership community that allows posting on every Doctor Who-related topic, its function as a hub for old and new fans, and as a gateway for new arrivals, makes it an excellent site for the study of the changing face of the fandom. Its entirely inclusive nature means that any and all fans are represented and heard.

The corpus includes postings made to the community between 26 March 2005 and 25 December 2008. During this period, four Nu Who seasons produced by Russell T. Davies were broadcast. In the time period selected for the study, 42 posts were made on the subject of romantic relationships in the show, generating an additional 4749 comments. These threads were analysed according to the principles of grounded theory, as formulated by Glasser and Strauss (1967), and later Strauss and Corbin (1990). The threads were read and analysed first for the main themes that cut across the entire corpus, as framed by the fans. This was followed by additional readings that focused on relationships between the various elements, as well the temporal development of the discourse.

Genre and drama: an enduring duality

Doctor Who fandom’s disapproval of the anorak position is easy to explain, considering this position’s connotations in the fandom’s history. It takes closer scrutiny to find out why doctorwho users find it just as important to show their rejection of canonical romance, and it is in this more surprising discovery that we find intense discussion taking place regarding the meaning of genre – specifically, the science fiction genre – and its connection to fan identity. While discussing the Doctor’s romantic exploits in Nu Who, the community’s disapproval appears to fall into three categories: volume, framing and partner selection. Users argue that the show contains too much romance, that the romantic plots are unsubtle and melodramatic, and that the Doctor’s choice of his romantic partner is inappropriate and out of character.

The problem of volume is the most straightforward of the three, and can be summarised in the ‘James Bond in space’ argument: fans repeatedly express the concern that the series would begin featuring single-episode throwaway romances for the Doctor’s ‘girl of the week’. The community associates this storytelling trope with American genre shows and their heroes, imagined as violent, emotional and adolescent, in polar opposition to the intellectual Doctor:

[P]art of the attraction of Doctor Who was that the main character was different. He didn’t shoot the bad guys, he didn’t beat them to a pulp, he didn’t fall in love with the heroine, he didn’t always even get everything right or save everyone. (xipuloxx, 2006)

Complementing this is the second point of contention, which argues that not only are there too many romantic plots in the new series, but that these plots are handled inappropriately: they are portrayed with excess more suited to the undervalued genres of melodrama and soap opera. With Russell T. Davies’ writing in particular sometimes described as soapy, Nu Who’s emotional storytelling and interpersonal plots are immediately suspect to the fans, who routinely mock the Doctor’s frequent angst and treat his and other characters’ display of romantic emotions as crude, unsubtle and adolescent. Complaints abound of the show’s scenes of crying, unnecessary tension and overdramatic musical score:

Oh God, yes. So very tired of being hit over the head with it like a mushy, sappy anvil. Every time they apparently mean for me to be feeling the characters’ pain I’m rolling my eyes, because it’s so overdone. (violethamsters, 2007)

As with the ‘girl of the week’, Nu Who’s romance represents the looming threat of Hollywood: it is all but a given in community discussions that most popular texts rely on shoehorned and melodramatic romance, and it was the avoidance of such romance that elevated the classic series above other products of popular culture. Nu Who is a step backward in this respect, not forward.

Another fear of contamination that the inclusion of romantic plots represents is the fear of too much realism invading the science fiction series. As posters point out, no one is interested in watching the daily grind of a suburbs-dwelling Doctor and his 2.4 kids. Here, melodrama is linked with mundanity: the focus on interpersonal relationships leads to the risk of settling down in, and forsaking adventure for, a normal, domestic life – and that is something that the Doctor by definition cannot and must not do:

[T]he very IDEA of that is repulsive to me. Because then the Doctor DOES become this domesticate creature … and as much as I am a Doctor/Rose fan, I don’t think the Doctor SHOULD EVER ‘settle down’ with anyone. (bitwhizzle, 2008)

This leads us to the third failing of Nu Who romance according to doctorwho: the problem of the Doctor, an alien, in love with a human woman or man. Many posters avoid aligning with the asexualist position by conceding that the Doctor might have had a relationship with one specific companion: Romana, who gains fans’ permission to date their hero by merit of belonging to the Doctor’s own alien species. Fans baulk at the idea of the Doctor – an immortal, superhumanly intelligent time traveller – in a romantic relationship with a human, pointing out the power imbalance and inequality inherent in such a combination. Since no human can be the Doctor’s equal, such a relationship is inevitably seen as reducing him to mundanity:

[T]he doctor can hardly feel anything but paternal to his human companions. he’s 900+ years old, fercryinoutloud. now, that doesn’t mean he can’t have a sexuality (i actually kind of like that idea too, a little)...but if there is a romance, i’d like it to be with someone a little bit more his equal (romana please!) than a 19-year-old girl. (ick) (qthewetsprocket, 2006; emphasis in original)

Adding further insult to injury is that the specific human that the Doctor becomes involved with in Nu Who is as mundane as a human can get. As noted by the production crew and often pointed out by fans, Rose was created as an ordinary ‘everygirl’, an identification figure for the audience. However, it is precisely this ordinariness that make her an unsuitable love interest for the special alien that is the Doctor.

Seriously, she’s a 19 year old shop assistant, he’s centuries old, she’s nice but she’s not the brightest, most interesting, most mature assistant he’s had in all his journeys, it’s rather farcical to suggest that he would really fall for her. I understand they’re saying he was lonely and everything, but her? Really? (starlitwoods, 2007)

The main theme, then, is always this contradiction between mundane and special, between a focus on the tropes of the science fiction genre – alienness and adventure – and a focus on romantic and interpersonal relationships more suited to different genres altogether. The Doctor is special, doubly so among the characters of popular culture; his relationship with Rose is mundane, and his mundane relationship with her results not in an appealing hybrid, but in disastrous contamination.

Uniqueness revisited

As mentioned previously, othering dynamics in doctorwho echo practices between sub-communities of cult fans which have been described by Jancovich (2002) as a means to secure the highly valued position of authenticity. Jancovich’s study shows how one sub-community adopts the media stereotype of the immature, socially incompetent cult fan and applies it to the rival sub-community; doctorwho’s distaste for the anoraks effectively does the same, as members work to clarify that ‘true’ Doctor Who fans do not have any issues with sex and sexuality. The Doctor’s asexuality stands for the fans’ asexuality; attributing the position to an Other that carries all the negative stereotypes of cultdom liberates the image of the ‘true’ fan. It may be said that they are echoing the discourse of the production crew regarding the dangers of cult: an understandable attitude, since that discourse itself originates with producers’ fannish experience.

What is more interesting is how the attitudes displayed toward romance and its supporters go a step beyond such recognised dynamics. It is not a simple desire to be held apart from the mainstream: the fans concede the negative associations of asexuality, and are willing and eager to allow that the Doctor has had, and should continue to have, romantic and sexual relationships. What they want is for him to do it appropriately: off-screen, not front-and-centre, and with his equals, not with ordinary humans. Otherwise, the show runs the unacceptable risk of becoming a run-of-the-mill melodrama featuring a mundane action hero; not simply including dramatic storylines, but crossing the line into becoming a drama rather than a show in the science fiction genre. Sometimes the Doctor’s alienness sets him apart, sometimes his subtlety; but to continue as fandom’s hero, he must be set apart. As one poster neatly summarises:

The Doctor’s sexuality–

Pro: It makes him more ‘human.’

Con: It makes him more ‘human.’ (tinuvielberen, 2006)

What ultimately characterises the discussion of romance in Doctor Who is a return to a discourse of uniqueness. Posters repeatedly assert that they watch Doctor Who because it is not like all the other shows – be these shows mainstream, non-genre programmes, or even inferior science fiction shows, most notably American space opera. To them, all these shows are characterised by a prominence or even an excessive focus on drama – whether personal, familial or romantic – to which Doctor Who provides a plot-centreed, intellectual and ‘fun’ alternative. While a discourse does exist of dramatic elements bringing a more mature and realistic quality to the science fiction narrative, ‘genreless’ television drama is not privileged over the genre of science fiction, which instead is associated with the intellectual, educational and highbrow. While the prevalence of genre hybridity is acknowledged as necessary in a post-X-Files and Buffy world, it does not erase the dichotomy of genre elements versus dramatic elements, and the identity of the community remains firmly grounded in generic preference. The presence of drama-as-melodrama is perceived not as the beneficial creation of a generic hybrid, but as a tacking on of false elements in order to lure what is inherently a bad crowd: inauthentic shipper-fans whose understanding of the values of the show – and of its fan community – is deeply flawed.

A minefield of identities

Thus, the test of the authentic fan becomes the careful management of their identity in order to prove a devotion to show and community values, without falling into the excess of the opposite position: not merely to practice communal othering, but to express their own views in acceptable terms and be able to defend them. With the discussion involving many years of fannish baggage, identifying as a true fan means navigating the proverbial minefield of unwanted identities. Newcomers to the fandom naturally have a harder time of it, and often can be seen practising hedging and conditioning of statements, sometimes dancing a complicated back-and-forth between positions:

I mean i’m only 15, a really new fan but i love old skool who. i enjoyed the adventure ... but all things change i suppose. In the old Skool who they wouldn’t have even mentioned a sex joke or a reference to a doctor/companion romance … But i guess I have two sides to me. One is wishing for more quarry filming action the other is enjoying new who very much, despite it’s [sic] emotional themes. (mzimmy, 2006)

When a member expresses an opinion that may be swinging toward one end of the shipper–anorak spectrum, such as that the Tenth Doctor and Rose were in a romantic relationship, they usually follow it with some sort of repair statement (‘but that story is over’). Similarly, they are equally quick to reassure and stress that they understand that the show must have some romance, lest they slide too far down the scale in the other direction.

It was Bourdieu who first said that ‘tastes classifies and it classifies the classifier’ (1984: 6). His observation was concerned with a rather more fundamental sort of class – one acquired at birth, learned in infancy and acted out every day of one’s life – yet it still marks out the recursive nature of cultural choice and, more importantly, cultural distinction. The distinction that the fans make is itself along very Bourdieu-like lines: between elite and mass, pure and vulgar, special and mundane. Having classified ‘good taste’, the appropriate position in terms of genre and attitude toward genre, they continuously play and display their preference for the appropriate aesthetic and their sometimes extreme distaste for the preferences of rival groups. No one is inherently a true fan: it is not enough to enjoy the series, you must also enjoy it the right way. doctorwho members are not just community members or community definers, but also community performers.

Conclusion

This article set out to study fan constructions of transformations in the concepts of cult fandom and cult texts through the reaction of a fan community to a change in a text which, quite explicitly, challenges the meaning of that community’s identity. The Nu Who production team’s worries about science fiction-as-cult appear to have been well founded: they clearly reflect the fans’ own conception of what authentic Who fandom means. doctorwho members themselves appear to understand this, conceding that some amount of genre hybridity is necessary if their show is to remain on air. However, what they do not concede is the meaning of fandom and fan identity: the need to maintain distinction and a sort of ‘genre loyalty’. As the production generates a discourse that attempts to pull Nu Who away from the cult niche, the fans use a similar discourse to pull in the other direction, wary of the show becoming a melodrama or romance. In effect, they are ‘poaching’ key aspects of the production discourse where Doctor Who is discursively positioned as unique rather than generic. Another study on this corpus (Hadas and Shifman, 2012) has shown a similar appropriation of anti-cult production discourse around ‘fan-like’ writing at Russell T. Davies’ end; that the theme recurs shows the difficulty of truly aligning with fan practices and expectations.

The theme of othering running through their discourse presents a contrast with the supposed all-inclusiveness of participatory culture as a sort of Fandom 2.0 – as described by Jenkins, when he calls fan culture a ‘test site’ (2006: 246) for ideas about participation and the consumption of media. In truth, the party line maintained by doctorwho users is hardly a restrictive one; they are quite adamant in their defence of even the most exotic pairing preferences. However, they erect a sturdy wall around that free space which defines who cannot play, and do not hesitate to cast out those who do not perform appropriately. That the issue of genre and uniqueness is a basis upon which this wall is built serves yet further to show us how that community still views fans and fandom as the special, elite audience.

To science fiction fandom, the birthplace of the term, being a fan was not just about what or how you read, but about who you were: not just about the interpretive part of the definition, but also about the community (Merrick, 2004). The struggles for and over identity within doctorwho may remind us that fandom is neither merely a form of audience engagement, nor, as Jenkins presents, a fringe that is expanding and paving the way for a greater cultural phenomenon. It is a sub-culture, complete with values that members are expected to perform and perform to, beyond simply being an active and involved member of the audience. Contra the technological opportunities of convergence culture, the community pushes back: resistance is re-established against a new target.

Fannish group identity cannot be seen as an intrinsic part of the participatory culture experience. That audiences engage with shows in cult-like ways – Hills’ (2010b) and Ross’ (2008) version of fan culture as a model – does not necessarily turn that audience into a fandom, and a larger, more easily accessed fandom does not erase the difference between cult and mainstream. Instead, it may highlight this difference just as well for cult fans whose unique position is being challenged, and invite a reactionary response unpredicted by eager media producers. Even as texts and spaces of interaction become open and readily available across the landscape of popular culture, the case of Doctor Who shows distinctions of taste and struggles for authenticity remaining firmly in place. We have used the positive, empowering aspects of fandom as a model for participation; here, we also see the model’s potential for divisive conflict highlighted.

In the huge and diverse world of online fandom, any study is a pilot study. Further research on the subject of genre hybridity and fan identity is needed in order to corroborate the findings of this study: for example, in other LiveJournal communities dedicated to Doctor Who or indeed other fandoms. Another major issue that was left out of this is gender: while this topic has been well researched by fandom scholars, it is no less relevant to the subject at hand. This paper mentioned in passing that the anorak/shipper duality contains some assumptions about gender; similarly, it reflects views of cult as a masculine space, as opposed to the feminine space of consumerism (Hollows, 2003), which may provide further insights into the dynamics uncovered. Here, too, is room for further study. Research is, as ever, to be continued.