Much ink has been spilled over The Daleks Chase Walter the Worm. How are we to reconcile these vastly opposing viewpoints on Adam Hargreaves' seminal webcast? To some Walter appears as a fabled stand-in for the masses; how they, the majority, are constantly pursued by the small minority who demand that they succumb to their demands. To others, Walter is that minority, who must be exterminated for his failure to conform to the established societal norms which surround him. Little, however, has been said of the metatextual elements of the work. I posit here a dialectic through which this duality outlined above demonstrates the synthesised truth of Walter and his pursuing exterminators.

Almost since its inception Doctor Who has been a franchise work which belongs as much to its audience as it does to its creators. The series is most often attributed to a small handful of producers and writers (most notably Verity Lambert, Sydney Newman, C. E. Webber, and Donald Wilson among others), however its true constitution results from the vast array of changes and inclusions which succeeding staff have made to the program. It is therefore often the case that works are published in the whoniverse which take a chance to reflect upon this developmental history but aesthetically and culturally. Consider the manner in which the Season 6 serial The Mind Robber interrogates what form of fiction the show takes, or how the Monthly Range Audio Drama Scherzo investigates what the franchise can possibly be beyond the boundaries of that original form.¹ The Daleks Chase Walter the Worm is one of these metafictional works; laser focused on the ouroboric nature of the franchise's relationship with fandom, and of that fandom's relationship with the franchise.

The presence of the Daleks, therefore, is no mere coincidence. Terry Nation's murderous cyborgs, afterall, represent possibly the first of many great intrusions with which a succeeding creative has fundamentally altered the fabric of the Doctor Who franchise from its previously established norm. They were the bug-eyed monsters which Sydney Newman wished to avoid at all costs, and which Donald Wilson attempted to dissuade Verity Lambert from broadcasting. Through the Daleks' abrasive shouts of "Exterminate", Terry Nation boldly proclaimed that the show's direction was gravely misguided. In doing so he cemented himself as one of the first great critics of the show who would simultaneously bring about the very changes which he sought. So too do the Daleks in the story shout at Walter, telling him to cease being what he is, to change. And upon first inspection Walter does not seem to heed these pleas; running away from them instead. Now certainly he does not voice a response, but I posit that his movement is his response. Walter is not running away from the Daleks, but running towards some new place. And the Daleks in turn respond to this forward movement. Much as the Daleks chase Walter the Worm so too does Walter the Worm lead the Daleks.

This is the cycle of change and regeneration which The Daleks Chase Walter the Worm asks viewers to reflect upon. And it is at this point that it becomes apparent why this webcast takes the form that it does. Through presenting audiences with an endlessly looped sequence of chase and escort they may be allowed to take their time and think upon both what they would want from the franchise, and what the franchise would desire to show them. You can see, therefore, that to some extent it does not specifically matter what part of the Doctor Who community Walter and the Daleks respectively stand in for. They each encompass the whole of that community, and most pertinently the interaction between its disparate components. This looping dialogue is centered by Adam Hargreaves because it is, perhaps, the very core essence of the Doctor Who franchise itself. Doctor Who shall always remain a series which is as much owned by, as it is created by, its fandom. In a never-ending semiotic loop of poiesis and esthesis.

¹ For more a more detailed account of this subject, please consult the author's unpublished manuscript Metafiction on the Edge of the Whoniverse, available as a series of hurriedly scrawled index cards pinned to his wall.