Adric

"Now I'll never know if I was right." Matthew Waterhouse, Earthshock

Adric
Place of origin:	Alzarius (E-Space)
Appearances:	Full List of Appearances
Main actor:	[[actor::Matthew Waterhouse and Andrew Sachs (as the Scorpion King)|Matthew Waterhouse and Andrew Sachs]]

Adric was a companion to the Doctor in his fourth and fifth incarnations.

Biography

Adric and his brother Varsh were members of a gang of teenage thieves on Alzarius, a planet in E-Space. He had the ability to calculate vast sums in his head, who which he won a gold badge for mathematical excellence (DW: Full Circle). Adric stowed himself aboard the TARDIS, as the Doctor and Romana would discover later. Cunningly, he pretended to share the agenda of the Three Who Rule, a trio of vampires who lorded over a small community. (DW: State of Decay)

After Romana left (DW: Warriors' Gate) he acted briefly as apprentice to the sage-like Doctor. (DW: The Keeper of Traken, Logopolis) this would change, though Tegan and Nyssa joined the Doctor and Adric and when the Doctor regenerated. (DW: Logopolis, Castrovalva)

Often frustrated by his clumsiness, and fiercely competitive, Adric struggled to find a useful role with the others.

Adric got to the decision of deciding to try to return to E-Space, when, caught up by events, he gave up his life by remaining on board Captain Briggs' freighter, which, travelling through time, crashed into prehistoric Earth and caused the death of the dinosaurs. (DW: Earthshock)

As the Scorpion King

Following interference by the Doctor during an attempt to recover his TARDIS, his sub-consciousness assisted Adric in breaking the final logic code on the alien computer. Allowing Adric to crash land (though survivable) on Earth. Adric survived for 500 years, creating a City of Excellence and ruling over a sentient race of Scorpions that evolved rather than the dinosaurs. The world they and Adric inhabited was created by Adric from Block Transfer Computations. Adric (after 500 years) re-met up with the fifth incarnation of the Doctor and Nyssa, and accompanied them back to the Victorian era. Adric finally died after assisting the Doctor to recover his TARDIS from Thomas Brewster. (BFA: The Boy That Time Forgot)

Character history

Adric first appears in the Fourth Doctor serial, Full Circle. Attempting to escape from the mysterious Mistfall threatening his community, he stumbles across and finds refuge in the TARDIS, which has been drawn into E-Space via a wormhole-like phenomenon known as a Charged Vacuum Emboitment. He stowed away when the Doctor and Romana and K-9 Mark II left Alzarius and becomes a companion in the following serial, State of Decay, accompanying them on the rest of their adventures in E-Space. He remains with the Doctor when Romana and K-9 Mark II leave and the TARDIS finds its way back into its own universe.

With a brilliant mathematical mind and sporting a star-shaped badge (blue enamel with gold backing) for mathematical excellence, Adric is also very well aware of his own intelligence. This, coupled with his relative immaturity, leads to a personality that is abrasive and occasionally crosses over into arrogance. As a result, Adric is one of the least popular companions among fans of the programme. However, it is obvious that Adric also desperately seeks validation from the Doctor as well as those around him, and is often hurt and resentful if he feels he is being sidelined or unable to contribute. As an Alzarian, Adric is a member of a species of extremely adaptable creatures, theoretically capable of genetically evolving to suit any environment, though it is unknown if his particular substrain is capable of this. It is known that he possesses an inhumanly rapid rate of healing, though not to the extent he can regenerate amputated body parts.

Adric is present when, during the events of Logopolis, the Fourth Doctor falls from the Pharos Project radio telescope and regenerates into his fifth incarnation. He continues to travel in the TARDIS along with new companions Nyssa and Tegan, but his travels come to an end in Earthshock when he tries to stop a Cyberman-controlled freighter from crashing into prehistoric Earth. The navigational controls had been locked by logic codes, and Adric is entering the solution to the last code when the computer is destroyed by a dying Cyberman. He dies in the crash, while his fellow crewmates watch in horror on the TARDIS viewscreen. His last words before the explosion kills him are "Now I'll never know if I was right." Adric also dies not knowing that the freighter he was trying to stop was actually destined to be the "meteor" that would wipe out the dinosaurs (see Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event and Alvarez hypothesis).

Adric's death affects his companions deeply. In Time-Flight, Tegan tries to persuade the Doctor to go back in time and save him, but the Doctor refuses to break the Laws of Time, even though it obviously pains him. The Xeraphin try to use an illusion of Adric pleading that if they traveled any further they would kill him, an effort by Xeraphin to stop Nyssa and Tegan from travelling further in the same story, but they see through the deception when they realise Adric is still wearing his badge (which the Doctor had destroyed in order to kill a Cyberman) and travel forth giving Adric another illusory death scene. Adric also appears as a hallucination at the end of The Caves of Androzani, and his name is the last word the Fifth Doctor says as he "dies", regenerating into the Sixth Doctor.

Appearances in other media

An image of Adric appears as a manifestation of the Doctor's guilt in the Virgin New Adventures novel Timewyrm: Revelation by Paul Cornell. A ghost of Adric also features in the plot of the Past Doctor Adventures novel Empire of Death by David Bishop.

Adric appears in the Big Finish Productions audio drama The Boy That Time Forgot, and is portrayed by Andrew Sachs.

List of appearances

televison

Season 18 Full Circle State of Decay Warriors' Gate The Keeper of Traken Logopolis Season 19 Castrovalva Four to Doomsday Kinda The Visitation Black Orchid Earthshock Time-Flight (illusion) Season 21 The Caves of Androzani (quoted/Doctor's regeneration)

Novels

Virgin Missing Adventures Cold Fusion by Lance Parkin Past Doctor Adventures Divided Loyalties by Gary Russell

Short stories

"A Boy's Tale" by Gary Russell (Short Trips: Companions) "Hearts of Stone" by Steve Lyons (Short Trips: Companions) "The Immortals" by Simon Guerrier (Short Trips: Past Tense) "Mauritz" by Jonathan Morris (Short Trips: A Universe of Terrors) "O, Darkness" by John Binns (Short Trips: Steel Skies) "In the TARDIS: Christmas Day" by Val Douglas (Short Trips: A Christmas Treasury)

audios

The Boy That Time Forgot (played by Andrew Sachs) The Darkening Eye (adventure related by the character Nyssa)

Comics

"Plague World" by Mel Powell (Doctor Who Annual 1982) "On The Planet Isopterus" by Glenn Rix (Doctor Who Annual 1983) "Planet of the Dead" by Lee Sullivan and John Freeman (Doctor Who Magazine 141-142) - although technically that is not Adric, but someone pretending to be him.