Lament for the Terrible Fictional Character, Percy What

Back in 2007, I created a character called Percy What, or as I called him “Doctor What.” He was made to be a parody of Doctor Who – the joke was that, of course, in Doctor Who people ask the question “Doctor who?” and in these stories, people would ask “Doctor…?” and he would say “What?” making them believe he was hard of hearing, since he was a very old man, but actually he was answering the question and could hear fine. That was just his surname. Also, his first name was Percy just because I thought it was a boring and generic name (which amuses me.)

When I first introduced the character, I had him as a huge, muscular, person of colour who was extremely capable – he gets killed in an intense battle against the Daleks, only to then regenerate into a feeble old white man. The idea of somebody coming out much worse after a regeneration was amusing to me. I also had a little bit where he was the successor to the real Doctor after he is finally defeated, because I always like to tie things together. He carried a Sonic Machine Gun, which he found much more useful than a Sonic Screwdriver.

I only wrote a small number of stories about him, including one about an evil alien brain called the Chavimus which made all the people around it behave in an unpleasant and aggressive ways (and it just happened to be hiding out in a certain part of Corsham.)

By all means, these stories were not well written. I was young at the time and I hadn’t really learned how to write well yet. I also hadn’t matured enough to come up with any real, substantial story ideas. There was no chance that this would ever have been published and I probably would never have revisited the original drafts to enhance them.

But the thing is, the other day, I realised that the files for these stories were missing from my writing archives. Though they were terrible, it’s sad that they’re gone. At the end of the day, they were still my creations and I think losing any piece of writing is always going to make me a little sad. So while Percy What was a terrible fictional character, he will be missed…

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