Adric is a fictional character played by Matthew Waterhouse in the long-running British
science fiction television series Doctor Who. He was a young native of the planet
Alzarius, which exists in the parallel universe of E-Space. A companion of the Fourth
and Fifth Doctors, he was a regular in the programme from 1980 to 1982. The name
Adric is an anagram derived from Nobel Prize-winning physicist Paul Dirac. Waterhouse
is the youngest male actor to play a companion.
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 traveling further in the same story, but
they see through the deception when they realize 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.
