The UNIT “dating” crisis: using digital humanities tools to investigate shipping claims in the Third Doctor era of Doctor Who

Participants in a conversation commonly use terms of address to index interpersonal status and solidarity among interlocutors. Such terms are crucial in fiction, film, and television scripts in guiding audiences in their construction of the relationships among characters. In this thesis, I examine the use of terms of address in episodes of the BBC television drama Doctor Who from the first half of the 1970s. In particular, I look at the role those terms play in fans’ practice of shipping characters. “Shipping,” or theorizing the existence of subtextual romantic relationships between “pairings” of characters, is a common fan practice. I conclude that the shipping choices\ud fans make do not appear to correlate with the use of terms of address between characters