The character met a tragic end.
Former Doctor Who star Matthew Waterhouse has reflected on his character’s dramatic exit from the sci-fi drama, revealing his initial reaction to the plot twist was not positive.
The actor played Adric of the planet Alzarius, a teenage mathematician who appeared in 40 episodes of the long-running series between 1980 and 1984.
The character’s journey came to a tragic end when he failed to prevent a Cyberman-controlled freighter from colliding with planet Earth, ultimately perishing aboard the doomed vessel (revealed to be the ‘meteorite’ that wiped out the dinosaurs).
Waterhouse had known in advance that he was to be written out of Doctor Who, but didn’t discover exactly how until close to filming and was initially disappointed by the “shocking” nature of the exit.
“[Peter Davison’s script] was on the table up in the café at the Acton rehearsal rooms,” he told SFX Magazine. “I was sitting there having a cup of tea and I flicked it open.
“My first thought was, ‘Oh god, that’s very final’. I didn’t like it at all. Later, I realised how interesting it was, and how good it was.”
Indeed, the tragic events did leave a lasting impact on the programme, with the following arc showing the Doctor and his companions struggle to come to terms with their loss.
“Adric” even became the final word spoken by Davison’s Fifth Doctor, while he also got a mention in last year’s The Power of the Doctor; the feature-length farewell episode to Jodie Whittaker’s incarnation.
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In the SFX interview, Waterhouse went on to discuss how he struggled to book more screen roles after Doctor Who, with much of his work instead shifting to the stage.
“To other people I was ‘the boy from Doctor Who’,” he added. “It’s just one of the things that happens. You either take it or you don’t. If you get a career out of it, you can’t knock it.”
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