# So, does Doc Martin have Asperger's Syndrome? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 27, 2009, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-does-doc-martin-have-aspergers-syndrome/507950 "2009-08-27T20:17:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2011, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-does-doc-martin-have-aspergers-syndrome/507950/21 "2011-02-18T15:40:23Z")
Must have missed this thread first time around. We’ve been watching the season that’s airing presently, but I don’t know which season it is. It’s the one that has the guy in bondage. From the start of it, it seems to be the first season. Any help? ---
**Author:** ![jasg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f0a364/32.png) [@jasg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jasg)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2011, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-does-doc-martin-have-aspergers-syndrome/507950/22 "2011-02-18T17:07:22Z")
> [@teela\_brown](#): > > Martin Clunes is a big dog-lover, contary to his TV character. It’s fun to see him in some flubbed-up takes with the dog in the series, where he melts from being disgusted in the scene by the dog’s presence to hugging it joyfully and giving it a kiss. He has also done a documentary series (on NatGeo? in the states) named “Martin Clunes: A Man and his Dogs”. You can also catch him in Shakespeare in Love. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2011, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-does-doc-martin-have-aspergers-syndrome/507950/23 "2011-02-18T23:55:16Z")
> [@mommylo](#): > > —I’ve seen most of the shows, love it, and also have LOTS of personal experience with Asperger’s Syndrome - my son has it. I’m no doctor, but, to me, Doc Martin is TOTALLY Aspie. He’s no arrogant jerk, just a prickly personality type. I know other Aspies who are less prickly, more interpersonal, and don’t come across as arrogant jerks. I’m surprised that you bothered to bump an 18 month old thread just to disagree with a post that I retracted 15 months ago. ---
**Author:** ![atiragram](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f475e1/32.png) [@atiragram](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/atiragram)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2011, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-does-doc-martin-have-aspergers-syndrome/507950/24 "2011-02-19T05:39:09Z")
It appears to me that Doc Martin has asbergers. He’s really a nice fellow who doesn’t have a clue as to how he behaves towards others. Also it could be because his parents shut him totally out and seem to have never showed him any affection. Can hardly ait for season five to begin. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2011, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-does-doc-martin-have-aspergers-syndrome/507950/25 "2011-02-19T05:48:36Z")
> [@jasg](#): > > You can also catch him in Shakespeare in Love. Oh, damn! How did I not recognize him? ---
**Author:** ![Kim\_o\_the\_Concrete\_Jungle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ee7513/32.png) [@Kim\_o\_the\_Concrete\_Jungle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kim_o_the_Concrete_Jungle)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2011, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-does-doc-martin-have-aspergers-syndrome/507950/26 "2011-02-19T11:32:16Z")
> [@Eleanor\_of\_Aquitaine](#): > > During the first season they made his character too inconsistent for an Asperger’s diagnosis. Martin would be horrible for the whole episode, but then at the end he would soften up and demonstrate perfectly normal social skills. I’d agree with that. I liked the pilot episode, where Doc Martin runs away to Cornwall because his wife cheated on him. But I lost interest when I started watching the series. It didn’t seem like the same character, and I couldn’t really see any sort of consistent character at all. It just didn’t seem to come together. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2011, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-does-doc-martin-have-aspergers-syndrome/507950/27 "2011-02-19T16:19:26Z")
Here’s the DSM IV on Asperger’s Syndrome: > [@](#): > > (I) Qualitative impairment in social interaction, as manifested by at least two of the following: > > ``` > (A) marked impairments in the use of multiple nonverbal behaviors such as eye-to-eye gaze, facial expression, body posture, and gestures to regulate social interaction > (B) failure to develop peer relationships appropriate to developmental level > (C) a lack of spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment, interest or achievements with other people, (e.g.. by a lack of showing, bringing, or pointing out objects of interest to other people) > (D) lack of social or emotional reciprocity > > ``` > > (II) Restricted repetitive & stereotyped patterns of behavior, interests and activities, as manifested by at least one of the following: > > ``` > (A) encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that is abnormal either in intensity or focus > (B) apparently inflexible adherence to specific, nonfunctional routines or rituals > (C) stereotyped and repetitive motor mannerisms (e.g. hand or finger flapping or twisting, or complex whole-body movements) > (D) persistent preoccupation with parts of objects > > ``` > > (III) The disturbance causes clinically significant impairments in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning. > > (IV) There is no clinically significant general delay in language (E.G. single words used by age 2 years, communicative phrases used by age 3 years) > > (V) There is no clinically significant delay in cognitive development or in the development of age-appropriate self help skills, adaptive behavior (other than in social interaction) and curiosity about the environment in childhood. He doesn’t have those symptoms. He’s just misanthropic. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2011, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-does-doc-martin-have-aspergers-syndrome/507950/28 "2011-02-19T16:21:41Z")
> [@Kim\_o\_the\_Concrete\_Jungle](#): > > I’d agree with that. I liked the pilot episode, where Doc Martin runs away to Cornwall because his wife cheated on him. But I lost interest when I started watching the series. It didn’t seem like the same character, and I couldn’t really see any sort of consistent character at all. It just didn’t seem to come together. Wait. . .what? I thought he moved because he had a problem with blood? What the hell season am I in, anyway? It opened with Martin moving to this tiny town as a GP, having had problems as a surgeon in London. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2011, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-does-doc-martin-have-aspergers-syndrome/507950/29 "2011-02-19T16:58:14Z")
That’s the first season. But there were some pilot movies before that, and in the first one, he finds out his wife is having an affair, so he divorces her and decides to leave London. ---
**Author:** ![stretch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a6a055/32.png) [@stretch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stretch)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2011, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-does-doc-martin-have-aspergers-syndrome/507950/30 "2011-02-19T17:29:39Z")
Never saw a pilot where he was married and ran from his wife. That would make no sense! The developed fear of blood makes perfect sense for him to give up being a surgeon and moving to be a GP where the only person who cares for him, Auntie Joan, lives. During in the series we discover: His mom and dad are asses and his mom hates and resents Martin for being born and causing his father to lose interest in her. ---
**Author:** ![Kim\_o\_the\_Concrete\_Jungle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ee7513/32.png) [@Kim\_o\_the\_Concrete\_Jungle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kim_o_the_Concrete_Jungle)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2011, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-does-doc-martin-have-aspergers-syndrome/507950/31 "2011-02-19T17:47:12Z")
> [@stretch](#): > > Never saw a pilot where he was married and ran from his wife. That would make no sense! Hence my problem with it. In the pilot movie he actually has a good reason for being grumpy, ranting and raving in some rather entertaining ways. It was all of the how could she have cheated on me and why didn’t I see it coming? kind of stuff. He’s a sympathetic schlub. Come the first series, and the wife is completely out of the picture. But hey, the Doc isn’t acting like a new divorcee who’d just uprooted his entire life. There’s none of the depression, or soul searching, or desperate “what the heck do I do now?” kind of stuff you might expect. He’s still just cranky, and a bit of a douche with it. Not insane “my life is falling apart” kind of cranky, like in the pilot, just low-level background assholishness. It was a complete disconnect. ---
**Author:** ![teela\_brown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d9b06d/32.png) [@teela\_brown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/teela_brown)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2011, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-does-doc-martin-have-aspergers-syndrome/507950/32 "2011-02-19T18:06:52Z")
> [@Kim\_o\_the\_Concrete\_Jungle](#): > > Hence my problem with it. In the pilot movie he actually has a good reason for being grumpy, ranting and raving in some rather entertaining ways. It was all of the how could she have cheated on me and why didn’t I see it coming? kind of stuff. He’s a sympathetic schlub. > > Come the first series, and the wife is completely out of the picture. But hey, the Doc isn’t acting like a new divorcee who’d just uprooted his entire life. There’s none of the depression, or soul searching, or desperate “what the heck do I do now?” kind of stuff you might expect. He’s still just cranky, and a bit of a douche with it. Not insane “my life is falling apart” kind of cranky, like in the pilot, just low-level background assholishness. > > It was a complete disconnect. I never knew about the pilot about the divorce. I think the blood phobia thing is a good substitute; it caused him to give up his raison d’etre and he had to find a new career in a new town. I do think he becomes more Asbergers-y as the series goes on. He’s a bit more human in the early episodes - even cracks a smile now and then. It looks like more Americans are now seeing this series since I first started this thread, which is great. Now there’s someone I can talk to about it! There are four seasons (or series), and I think Clunes has indicated they’re going to film a fifth. Yay! We’re watching season one again, too, as it’s being shown on our local PBS. I really love the Roger Fenn character - he gives as good as he gets when it comes to scenes with Martin. ---
**Author:** ![Kim\_o\_the\_Concrete\_Jungle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ee7513/32.png) [@Kim\_o\_the\_Concrete\_Jungle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kim_o_the_Concrete_Jungle)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2011, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-does-doc-martin-have-aspergers-syndrome/507950/33 "2011-02-22T02:40:04Z")
Maybe the best thing would be to think of it as two separate things. There’s two Doc Martin’s out there in Cornish fishing villages – the one from the pilot and the one from the series. They just happen to look similar. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![W0X0F](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b77776/32.png) [@W0X0F](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/W0X0F)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2017, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-does-doc-martin-have-aspergers-syndrome/507950/35 "2017-07-03T05:34:21Z")
Reported. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2017, 10:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-does-doc-martin-have-aspergers-syndrome/507950/36 "2017-07-03T10:38:03Z")
> [@W0X0F](#): > > Reported. Hmm. Waking a zombie to report it. I question your humanity. (Seriously. Is this a 'bot of some sort? Reporting this getting reported ;)) ---
**Author:** ![JerriTruhill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/848f3c/32.png) [@JerriTruhill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JerriTruhill)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2018, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-does-doc-martin-have-aspergers-syndrome/507950/37 "2018-11-08T10:53:55Z")
I’ve always LOVED Doc Martin’s character, & the whole show (why don’t they do a Christmas Special?! I hate it to end!)- while acknowledging I’d be scared of him in real life - As someone recently diagnosed with Aspergers - after 38 years I finally have an answer to why I struggle to fit (Woefully undiagnosed in females as they are **far** more socially pressured to ‘fit’ & have superior masking skills, learnt at great cost)- I’d say yes, Doc M. does have Aspergers, a refreshing change to the usual glossy glib TV characters, for me. But you also have to factor in cultural difference; Americans are (generally, in TV / Film portrayals) more gushy & loud; their social norm is to be more outwardly ‘enthusiastic’, ‘bubbly’- where I live in north UK, it’s traditional, desirable, to appear calmer, dislike fuss & emotion, down to earth, dry-humoured; maybe Aspergers traits are more accepted / unnoticed in UK as they fit in with a stoic ‘norm’? But I have also wondered if there’s some Aspergers around in ‘Frasier’… (Love that show too 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Yorkshire\_Pudding](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/59ef9b/32.png) [@Yorkshire\_Pudding](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yorkshire_Pudding)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2018, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-does-doc-martin-have-aspergers-syndrome/507950/38 "2018-11-08T11:51:14Z")
This is off topic, granted, but I’m going to mention it anyway… It was about 18 months after Doc Martin first aired that I noticed the pun. “Oh…Doc Martin…like the _boots_!” “Like the boots” now means “Duh! Slow on the uptake much?” in our house. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2018, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-does-doc-martin-have-aspergers-syndrome/507950/39 "2018-11-08T14:26:43Z")
I’d expect it’d be like Sheldon on _The Big Bang Theory_. The writers have made it a point to never put a label on Sheldon, because if they don’t do that, they can’t get it wrong. If someone says “Hey, that’s not right, that’s not how someone with Asperger’s behaves”, then the writers can just say “but it is how Sheldon Cooper behaves”. ---
**Author:** ![teela\_brown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d9b06d/32.png) [@teela\_brown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/teela_brown)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2018, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-does-doc-martin-have-aspergers-syndrome/507950/40 "2018-11-08T18:56:53Z")
> [@JerriTruhill](#): > > . . . (why don’t they do a Christmas Special?! I hate it to end!) . . . They did do a [Christmas Special](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0928233/) in 2006. It was pretty good - it had Chris O’Dowd (from _The IT Crowd_), and Jonathan Aris (from _Sherlock_) in it. Wow, my nine-year-old thread. Where has the time gone? ---
**Author:** ![zbuzz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e19b73/32.png) [@zbuzz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zbuzz)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2018, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-does-doc-martin-have-aspergers-syndrome/507950/41 "2018-11-09T04:37:30Z")
> [@teela\_brown](#): > > They did do a [Christmas Special](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0928233/) in 2006. It was pretty good - it had Chris O’Dowd (from _The IT Crowd_), and Jonathan Aris (from _Sherlock_) in it. > > Wow, my nine-year-old thread. Where has the time gone? Huh, I thought the xmas episode was completely out of sync with the rest of the series. Like, glaringly so. I’ve wondered if they didn’t make any more xmas episodes because of that. Just my opinion, though. If anyone cares, the his-wife-cheated-on-him versions weren’t pilots to the series, they were their own standalone TV movies based on the character from the movie Saving Grace. His character was called Bamford in those 3 movies, but when they decided to make a series, they tweaked his backstory, character, changed his name to Ellingham, etc. I don’t think Martin has Aspergers, mainly because that would throw the balance off between him and the residents of Port Wenn. Martin is a caricature of an arrogant big city doctor and the people of Port Wenn are caricatures of small town yokels. Both sides have to deal with the exaggerated crazies of the other. To add something new to this 9 year old thread, he’s a hearty FU to the folks at Acorn TV for delaying season 8 on PBS for an extra year. Tossers. I just did a quick search and it looks like the show is finally coming back to the US as soon as January, depending on your local PBS station. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-does-doc-martin-have-aspergers-syndrome/507950.md?page=1)