u/Vumatius

I've been watching Classic Who with my parents and we've entered the Fifth Doctor era, and whilst I'm excited to see Peter Davidson's version of The Doctor I've been taken aback by the way they've written Adric in Four to Doomsday. When he was with the Fourth Doctor, and even in the admittedly limited screentime he had in Castrovalva, he was fairly pleasant and helpful, coming across as someone who knew he was intelligent but generally avoided sounding insufferable or arrogant. And most of all he had no real difficulties working with the female companions.

He generally got along fairly well with Romana, outside of some moments in State of Decay and his faux-betrayal (though since this story was right after his brother died I was willing to cut him some slack). He had a fairly enjoyable dynamic with Nyssa in Keeper of Trakken and was reasonably amicable to Tegan in her first two stories outside of a few moments that seemed more like him being stressed given The Doctor's situation than any sneering misogyny. He also came across rather well in Castrovalva with his clear desperation to resist The Master's commands. Overall, whilst not without his moments of arguing or going against the Doctor/Companions, I and my parents found him generally likeable.

Then we got to Four to Doomsday, and it was like he'd been replaced by a completely different person. Within the serial's first episode alone he acted extremely patronising to Tegan, ridiculing her desperation to return home, insulting her intelligence by telling to pick up a maths book and get a better job than air hostess, and finishing by declaring how 'this is the problem with women' and saying how stupid they are. When scientist Nyssa pushes him on this he says it doesn't apply to her because 'you're not a woman, you're a girl'. Beyond that he also just carries himself with an air of arrogance and is all in all the definition of insufferable.

I knew he had a very negative reputation but when I first told my parents about it they were confused as they only particularly remembered him as yet another companion (it has been years since they watched his stories). I was increasingly surprised myself whilst watching his first 6 stories, though I did know he was supposed to be worse with with Five than Four. Suffice to say my parents and I now understand his reputation, but we also agree that this is such an abrupt and bizarre change that it really seems like the consequence of terrible writing decisions rather than any clear arc. Why, oh why, did they do this? They had so many options to give this expanded TARDIS team a defined dynamic, and they chose the worst of all. I feel a lot of sympathy for actor Matthew Waterhouse for having his character become so disliked due to sudden character assassination.