Who Cares!
From Tardis Wiki, the free Doctor Who reference
Who Cares! — later known by a variety of names including Doctor Who Letters and Pick of the Penguin — was the letter column of Doctor Who Magazine.
The feature first appeared in the seventh issue, with requests for readers to write in to Who Cares! starting in the first instalment of A Letter from the Doctor in the very first issue. Reader correspondence was sometimes given in-universe framing, usually through in-character replies from the Doctor but occasionally by other means.
In-universe instalments[[edit] | [edit source]]
| Title | Printed in | Release date |
|---|---|---|
| Dalek Supreme, Skaro | DWM 7 | 22 November 1979 |
| Mark Ellis, St. Austell |
Out-of-universe worldbuilding[[edit] | [edit source]]
- In DWM 9, M. Bennett of Salop sent in a letter alleging a discrepancy between a The Monsters of Doctor Who article which stated the Doctor was "thrown out of the Academy" and The Deadly Assassin [+]Loading...["The Deadly Assassin (TV story)"] in which Runcible recalled the Doctor's presence at the graduation ceremony. This was explained as the Doctor only passing on his sixth attempt, having failed the first five times. Bennett also described their understanding that the Doctor had held the position of a "Cardinal Instructor" at the time he left Gallifrey with one of his favourite students, thereafter assuming a grandfather-granddaughter relationship with her. However, the publication did not endorse this explanation of Susan's heritage and called it "your [Bennett's] theory".
Notable contributors[[edit] | [edit source]]
- DWM 10 featured a letter from a seventeen year old Matthew Waterhouse, less than a year before his debut as companion Adric in Full Circle [+]Loading...["Full Circle (TV story)"]. Sent before the publication of the first issue and addressed to editor Dez Skinn, Waterhouse explained his reservations with previous attempts to transfer the Doctor from the screen to the comic strip but expressed confidence that, with Skinn at the helm and contributors such as Pat Mills, John Wagner, Dave Gibbons, Steve Moore, Paul Neary and David Lloyd, Doctor Who Weekly would be a success.
