Hit or Miss? Fan Responses to the Regenderation of the Master

As Doctor Who series eight drew to an end, its mysterious recurring character finally introduced herself as the Doctor’s arch-enemy, the Master (Michelle Gomez). Big changes, such as the Missy reveal, become opportunities for studying fans and forums at times of discursive crisis and how, through fan talk, fans negotiate change within a community context. This chapter considers fan responses across public forums, as well as from the the Doctor Who by Design class I teach. Fan forums mediate and shape content. Online fan forums are technologies of convergence affording communal, rather than individual, modes of reception, acting as ‘interpretative communities’ where posts are shared and reviewed by peers as part of a public process of meaning-production. However, fan talk also affords the opportunity for disagreement about interpretation of fan texts and what constitutes fan behaviour, as well as challenges to the community hierarchies. Doctor Who fans particularly, frequently find themselves in a new paradigm for making sense of the programme, given its propensity to reinvention, regeneration, and re-gendering.