How Much Does It Cost Being A Doctor Who Fan?
Gustaff Behr attempts to work out just how damaging Doctor Who is to your wallet.
Have you ever stopped to ponder the following: How much does it cost me to be a Doctor Who fan? How much of my hard earned money goes into Doctor Who? How much money do I borrow from my parents to sustain this habit? How much money does Doctor Who take off me? Well today we’ll be looking into just how much Doctor Who there is in the world and just how much bigger on the inside our wallets need to be to sustain this cruel time and space mistress.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet Fred! Fred is a new Doctor Who fan. He’s recently discovered Doctor Who and after watching the whole of Series 9 with Peter Capaldi, he’s decided to embrace the world of Doctor Who. He wants to go forwards in time with Series 10, backwards with the Classic Series. He wants to go sideways with Big Finish, up with reading comics books and back down again with novels. He wants his own Sonic Screwdriver and he wants some toys (which he’ll just put up on his shelf to gather dust and not do much with). He wants all of these things, but he doesn’t quite have the…what do you call it? Oh yes! Money!
Fear not readers, you see Fred is a kind individual. Last week he helped an undercover billionaire who’d been pretending to be homeless by giving him his last sticky bread. Afterwards, the billionaire wrote him a big fat cheque with lots of zeroes so now Fred can dive into Doctor Who without a care in the world.
Fred starts where all new fans start. He wants to go back and take a look at how Doctor Who came back in 2005 which means, including Series 9 which he will definitely get; Fred needs 9 seasons of complete box sets which costs on average $65.00. That’s $585.00 in total for Chris, David, Matt, John and Peter.
Being a Who fan costs at least $585.00 if you buy all nine New Who seasons of Doctor Who.
And after watching nine seasons of Doctor Who, barely sleeping, bathing or eating, Fred craves more. He needs to see how Doctor Who started all the way back in 1963. He also has to see the celery Doctor, the scarf Doctor, the pullover one and all the other past Doctors he’s heard so much about. He knows there are 156 classic stories of Doctor Who which range between $13.99 and $16.99 so we’ll budget for $15.49 as a rough average. That’s $2416.44 for the whole of the Classic Era of Doctor Who.
Being a Who fan costs at least $3001.44 if you want to have the entire television collection of Doctor Who from William Hartnell all the way up to Peter Capaldi.
After holding a complete Doctor Who series marathon and not eating, sleeping, bathing or going to school, Fred still craves more. He still has so many zeroes left on the cheque that he might as well accessorize his room and his wardrobe a little.
Every Doctor Who fan needs a Sonic Screwdriver and the average cost of one of those is $16.50.
But which Sonic Screwdriver?
Might as well grab all three used in the new series and maybe two different ones from the classic series. That’s $49.50, but Fred’s not done. T-Shirts aren’t too expensive at $15, might as well buy four. And we can’t forget the pièce de résistance: Cosplaying as the Doctor! These outfits are way more expensive at $375.00 so for now one Tenth Doctor coat is enough.
Fred’s walls are bare given the lack of Doctor Who stuff. He needs some cheap posters that usually range from $4.00 all the way up to $46.50. He’ll grab 7 cheap posters and one expensive, officially signed/limited addition one and call it a day. That’s $74.50 plus the coat plus the t-shirts plus the Sonic Screwdrivers which gives us a total of $592.00 in merchandise.
But Fred needs something for his bare shelves. An action figure of the Doctor will suffice. On average, they usually go for $7.50 each. He’ll need a model of all thirteen Doctors (13) at least one companion for each (12), plus about thirty monster action figures (30), a TARDIS (1) and of course he needs all of the Masters for the Doctors to face (7). With $472.50 worth of shelf-stocking action figures, Fred can rest easy knowing that his shelf will no longer be alone gathering dust.
Being a Doctor Who fan costs at least $3001.44 (DVDs) plus $1064.50 (merchandise), equalling $4065.94.
Fred is also something of a reader so if Doctor Who has comic books and novels, he’ll be up for buying as much as he can since his bank account balance still looks quite healthy. And as it happens, Doctor Who does have novels, at least 60 covering the exploits of the Ninth Doctor up to the Twelfth. On average they only cost about $15.49 so he grabs all of them. He’ll also buy the audio versions of the novels which are even cheaper at $9.95. There are like 20 Titan Comics out now featuring the Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth Doctor averaging at $12.74 per issue, so he’ll add them to the cart as well. That’s $1616.20 for the lot.
Being a Doctor Who fan costs at least $3001.44 (DVDs) plus $1064.50 (merchandise), plus $1616.20 (Books, comics, audiobooks) equalling $5682.15.
After not eating, sleeping, bathing, going to school, not doing chores and not leaving his bed in what feels like 900 years, Fred stumbles upon this obscure article by some weirdo preaching that Big Finish is a company which produces full cast audio dramas featuring old Doctors and that they’ve been doing it since 1999. After speaking to his bank manager and receiving several compliments about his account, Fred decides to tackle this mammoth.
But where to start? He notices that the Fourth Doctor, Eighth Doctor and companion chronicle stories which are one hour long each goes for $8.99 if he downloads them off their website directly. There are more than 149 stories to listen to so that’s $1339.51.
But he also wants to listen to the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Doctors so he scrolls over to the main range, discovering that the first fifty titles, plus 50 additional short stories each go for $2.99. The other 207 stories which make up the main range go for $12.99 so that’s $2987.93 for the lot. It’s steep, but Fred can afford it. He’s also a fan of Torchwood so he orders the six new titles at $7.99 each and even puts in an order for all eight of the New Who titles Big Finish announced earlier this year at $20.00 on average each. That makes $207.94.
But apparently the other box sets Big Finish releases are very good and in just a few days, Fred will have nothing to listen to so he might as well grab the 18 box sets including Dark Eyes and Doom Coalition at an average price of $30.00 each. That is $5235.38 for everything. That should be enough to lull him over for the weekend.
Being a Doctor Who fan costs at least $3001.44 (DVDs) plus $1064.50 (merchandise), plus $1615.20 (Books, comics, audiobooks), plus $5235.38 (Big Finish) equalling $10,757.52.
All seems right in the world until…
A few days later when there are a lot of outraged voices and angry knocks at Fred’s door, just as he is about to go back to Big Finish to buy all their other Doctor Who spin-off box sets, having finished the audio range over the weekend. The angry people outside are debt collectors and apparently the undercover billionaire Fred helped the other day wasn’t really a billionaire, or a millionaire, or even held a job for that matter. Oops!
So yeah guys, this article was just to give you an idea of how much we actually spend on Doctor Who, be it in a year or over several. While it is extraordinarily unlikely you’re as big a fan as Fred, it is interesting to note just how much Doctor Who merchandise costs and how much we give to this show we love.
I, myself only stick to audio dramas and DVDs, but there are a lot of combinations out there. Are you someone who prefers DVDs and merchandise, DVDs and books, just comics and books for some reason or do you just watch Doctor Who whilst still accessorizing from time to time? Feel free to use the averages I’ve provided (calculated from official sources) and calculate just how much your collection is worth in Doctor Who terms.
* Note: If you bought all the Big Finish CDs instead of the downloads, being a Doctor Who fan would cost you about $14,737.89!!!
