You all know the one. You're most likely to encounter this type of fan on a Doctor Who message board or in the comments section of a blog. They're generally the ones who are bitter about the show for whatever reason, whether that's because of what it is doing, what it isn't doing, what it's become, what it hasn't become... Actually, you name it and there's probably a bitter fan on the internet somewhere moaning about it. Of course, there is a polite way to express your opinions and, generally speaking, the Doctor Who fandom - particularly the online one - is good at adhering to it. For the bitter ones amongst us, though, any communication skills they may (or may not) possess are thrown out of the window as they devote their time to ranting and raving about how their favourite show has been ruined. Usually they sound like a broken record, too. It's not what it used to be, apparently, and they could make Doctor Who a hell of lot better than its current creative team. Strangely enough, the bitter fans generally accept the fact that Doctor Who relies on change but then they're the first to knock it when it does. It makes absolutely no sense. Luckily for the rest of us, though, you can spot them a mile off. They're usually the users on message boards who have 20,000+ posts (somewhat of a Gallifrey Base celebrity, they'd like to think) and guess what? All of them are negative. A bitter fan hasn't quite reached the point of being a hater, though, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Dan Butler is the Doctor Who Editor at WhatCulture.com. When he isn't writing his own articles or editing other people's, he can be found trawling the internet for gifs of Steven Moffat laughing. Contact him via dan.butler@whatculture.co.uk.
