New to the academy's 'publish or perish' game, doctoral students hold varied expectations of supervisors in relation to their publishing endeavours. These expectations can be unrealistic or contradictory to those of the supervisors and thus make supervision problematic. Set in a faculty of education in New Zealand, this study explores fantasies, fallacies and realities in doctoral students' perceptions and experiences of their supervisors' roles in doctoral publishing. The data analysed include online questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with 12 doctoral students, in which they describe their supervisors' roles variously as feedback providers, advisers, co-authors and managers. The students' perceptions are a mix of fantasies, fallacies and realities that are entangled with the temporality of their study and the open-ended process of being a becoming-student. The findings suggest a need for a dialogic space between students and supervisors to promote mutual understandings and foster a tailored, dynamic supervision, particularly in doctoral publishing.