nwhyte's review
4.0
https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3156012.html
Adric is not at the top of many people's list of favourite companions, but I must say this memoir is a very sympathetic account from Matthew Waterhouse, who played him. It's particularly interesting because Waterhouse was a huge fan of the programme before he joined the cast, and also because he did almost no other screen acting; for a lot of the Old Who actors, it was one more job, often quite a short one, in a career which had other heights which they wish were remembered better, but for Waterhouse it was an intense experience, which he knew was important at the time and whose memories haven't been faded out by later work.
Waterhouse has chosen to tell the story in the third person, which seemed really pretentious when I first heard about the book (cf Julius Caesar), but actually it works really well - it allows him to establish some distance from his not always terribly happy childhood, and from the intense experience of working with the very temperamental Tom Baker on his last few stories. Once Davison arrived and the regular team settled down (though of course Waterhouse was the first to be written out) it seems to have been more fun, though he still took it pretty seriously. I deeply sympathise with his approach, as reported in an exchange with Janet Fielding who played Tegan:
'“The trouble with you, Matthew,” she said more than once, “is that when it comes to Doctor Who you suspend your critical judgement.” This was a well-made point, but then she had no emotional involvement with it and Matthew did. He was intelligent enough to know that if too critical an approach was taken to Doctor Who, every last moment of it would collapse to dust.'
Anyway, it's a good book that made me feel interested in and sympathetic to the author, and gave me insights into Doctor Who that I had not thought of before.
Adric is not at the top of many people's list of favourite companions, but I must say this memoir is a very sympathetic account from Matthew Waterhouse, who played him. It's particularly interesting because Waterhouse was a huge fan of the programme before he joined the cast, and also because he did almost no other screen acting; for a lot of the Old Who actors, it was one more job, often quite a short one, in a career which had other heights which they wish were remembered better, but for Waterhouse it was an intense experience, which he knew was important at the time and whose memories haven't been faded out by later work.
Waterhouse has chosen to tell the story in the third person, which seemed really pretentious when I first heard about the book (cf Julius Caesar), but actually it works really well - it allows him to establish some distance from his not always terribly happy childhood, and from the intense experience of working with the very temperamental Tom Baker on his last few stories. Once Davison arrived and the regular team settled down (though of course Waterhouse was the first to be written out) it seems to have been more fun, though he still took it pretty seriously. I deeply sympathise with his approach, as reported in an exchange with Janet Fielding who played Tegan:
'“The trouble with you, Matthew,” she said more than once, “is that when it comes to Doctor Who you suspend your critical judgement.” This was a well-made point, but then she had no emotional involvement with it and Matthew did. He was intelligent enough to know that if too critical an approach was taken to Doctor Who, every last moment of it would collapse to dust.'
Anyway, it's a good book that made me feel interested in and sympathetic to the author, and gave me insights into Doctor Who that I had not thought of before.
roba's review
4.0
This is a lovely, lovely book. I never knew Waterhouse was a huge fan of Who, and his account of his childhood love of the show is very evocative in all its Weetabix-burying detail.
And it makes you really feel for him when it comes to him getting the job of Adric - 18, only his second ever acting job, on his favourite TV show, among his heroes in what must have seemed like a hallucination induced by sniffing the inside of a Denys Fisher toy Tardis ... and he has to deal with the weird, poisonous atmosphere between Tom Baker and Lalla Ward.
Waterhouse was in Who at just the time I had my most intense, ah, relationship with the show, so this book was huge fun for me. If you don't know who Varsh is, though, probably don't bother.
And it makes you really feel for him when it comes to him getting the job of Adric - 18, only his second ever acting job, on his favourite TV show, among his heroes in what must have seemed like a hallucination induced by sniffing the inside of a Denys Fisher toy Tardis ... and he has to deal with the weird, poisonous atmosphere between Tom Baker and Lalla Ward.
Waterhouse was in Who at just the time I had my most intense, ah, relationship with the show, so this book was huge fun for me. If you don't know who Varsh is, though, probably don't bother.
More...