Companions: Fifty Years of Doctor Who Assistants Read online

  COMPANIONS

  FIFTY YEARS OF DOCTOR WHO ASSISTANTS

  An unofficial non-fiction reference book

  based on the BBC television programme Doctor Who

  Andy Frankham-Allen

  CANDY JAR BOOKS CARDIFF

  A Chaloner & Russell Company

  2013

  Copyright Andy Frankham-Allen 2013

  Published by Candy Jar Books

  Doctor Who is copyright British Broadcasting Corporation, 1963, 2013.

  This book is available in print at most online retailers.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

  retrieval system, or transmitted at any time or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright holder.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

  A catalogue record of this book is available

  from the British Library

  www.candyjarbooks.co.uk

  Dedicated to the memory of...

  Jacqueline Hill

  Adrienne Hill

  Michael Craze

  Caroline John

  Elisabeth Sladen

  Mary Tamm

  and Nicholas Courtney

  Companions forever gone,

  but always remembered.

  ‘I only take the best.’

  The Doctor (The Long Game)

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Foreword

  Fifty Years In...

  The First Doctor: William Hartnell

  Expanded Universe

  The Second Doctor: Patrick Troughton

  Expanded Universe

  The Third Doctor: Jon Pertwee

  Expanded Universe

  The Fourth Doctor: Tom Baker

  Expanded Universe

  The Fifth Doctor: Peter Davison

  Expanded Universe

  The Sixth Doctor: Colin Baker

  Expanded Universe

  The Seventh Doctor: Sylvester McCoy

  The Expanded Universe

  The Eighth Doctor: Paul McGann

  The Ninth Doctor: Christopher Eccleston

  The Tenth Doctor: David Tennant

  The Eleventh Doctor: Matt Smith

  Expanded Universe

  The Brigadier: Nicholas Courtney

  Afterword

  With Thanks

  References

  Coming Soon from Candy Jar

  Foreword

  When I was very young I fell in love with Doctor Who – it was a series that ‘spoke’ to me unlike anything else I had ever seen. And of course, my main way of entering its weird, scary, thrilling, subversive worlds was through the eyes of the Doctor’s friends, his assistants, his companions.

  So what is the companion there for? Somewhat accurately, but cynically, pointing out a flaw in the show’s format back in 1971, the writers described the companion as someone who was there to pass the Doctor his test tubes and tell him he was brilliant. However this is a rather unfair generalisation and had the people responsible for that swipe subsequently shaken up what they perceived as the status quo and done something to change that conception, one might be more forgiving of their little piece of whimsey.

  Because the companion is far far more important than that. Yes, of course they are a sounding board, someone to pat him on the back, or get into trouble and need rescuing, or point out the bleedin’ obvious when he gets all spacey and alien and misses the little details. But above all else, the companion is there to be his best friend. And, as a result, the viewer, especially the under tens, become the Doctor’s best friend by default. Because they identify with the companion. More than anything else, if I was in any way the ‘typical’ viewer back in the 1960s and 1970s, I wanted to be the companion. We aspire to be the companion, we want to find our own magical police box and be whisked off into space and time, fighting Daleks, stopping Cybermen, facing down the Weeping Angels. Because that’s exactly what we’d do to help the Doctor.

  That’s why this show so captured the imaginations of generations, yes generations, of children. The need, and the love the viewer has for the companion, is as valid and true in 2013 as it was on that foggy night in November 1963.

  My first ‘best friends’ were Ben and Polly. My first tears shed when a companion said goodbye was for Jo Grant. My first ‘blimey she’s sexy’ was Leela. My first ‘I don’t like this companion’ was K9 (sorry, but I cannot abide cute robots and much as I respect the little mutt now, back in 1977 I wanted to punt him into outer space). Yes, the middle-aged Doctor Who fan I am now can look back and say ‘that one worked well’ and ‘that one wasn’t really that well developed as a character’ and ‘what were they thinking?’ – but the pre-teen inside me who fell in love with this madcap, insane and brilliant show, still looks at each and every companion, from Susan to Clara, via Jamie, Sarah Jane, Tegan and Mel and all the others, with affection, admiration and of course a huge amount of jealousy. Because they got to do what I never did. They found their madman with a box.

  Which brings us neatly to this book, and Andy Frankham-Allen’s guide to each and every one of those companions (and a few other friends that don’t quite count as companions but were of equal importance to the Doctor at any given moment). Of course there have been books about companions before – but few of them going into this amount of detail, display this amount of in-depth knowledge and above all, this amount of love. As a celebration of everything that makes the Doctor’s (and therefore our) best friends unique and special, this book is essential.

  Whether you were there through the days of Ian & Barbara, Victoria and Zoe, Liz and the men of UNIT, the two Romanas, Adric and Nyssa, Peri, Ace and Grace – or whether you only discovered your Doctor through the eyes of Rose, Martha, Donna or Amy & Rory, this is the book for you.

  So step aboard your own Police Box and take a trip through the Doctor’s outer-space Rolodex and get reacquainted with old chums, or discover some fantastic new ones. It’s good to know who these guys are – because if you do find that Police Box of your own, you might just need to know what they did to ensure you don’t get exterminated in the first five minutes!

  Gary Russell

  Cardiff, 2013

  Fifty Years In...

  Doctor Who began, unsurprisingly, with mystery. A Police Box sitting in a junkyard, letting out a mysterious hum. It took over half an episode before we discovered the truth behind the Police Box, because before that we had to learn a few important things. Our guides on that journey of discovery were two school teachers: Mr Ian Chesterton, who taught science, and Miss Barbara Wright, who taught history. These two characters were destined to be the voice of the audience for the next year and a half, the (initially) unwilling co-travellers on a fantastic journey through space and time with a mysterious old man called the Doctor…

  …And so began the greatest show in the galaxy. Alas, due to the lack of timey-wimeyness in my life I wasn’t there at the very beginning. I’m far too young! Plus, the odd truth of the matter is I only really happened upon Doctor Who just as it was about to embark on a lengthy hiatus. The party seemed to be wrapping up when I accidentally turned the television to BBC One in 1987 and found myself watching episode two of Time and the Rani. Certainly as a child I remember watching Doctor Who; I have very precise memories of watching Logopolis at my Nana Allen’s in 1981, and even vague memories of seeing Leela and K9 in the late ‘70s. Doctor Who was never really far from me – via the occasional novelisation or magazine – but it wasn’t until the 1980s
drew to a close that I really found myself caught up in the universe of Doctor Who – just as it was (unofficially) cancelled.

  I’m a voracious collector, and when I get into something I don’t hold back. Before the final episode of Survival was transmitted in 1989 I had every novelisation available, and even all the videos (yep, no DVDs back then), not that there were many at that point. I was discovering the past through print, learning about Ian Chesterton via An Exciting Adventure with the Daleks, discovering all about the Brigadier and Liz during The Auton Invasion, and falling in love with Sarah and Harry as they dealt with The Loch Ness Monster (these titles will not be familiar to those of you young ‘uns who’ve discovered the ‘classic’ series through DVDs, but don’t worry, keep reading and it’ll all make sense). Back then I really had no idea of the journey I had embarked on.

  When asked by my publisher to write a book celebrating fifty years of Doctor Who, my first thought was to do a guide to the companions. It made perfect sense to me; other than the Doctor and the TARDIS, the only thing that’s consistently been a part of the ongoing saga of Doctor Who are the people who travel with him. There have been other books about the Doctor’s companions over the decades, but since the show returned in 2005 there has not really been one book that has taken a proper look at every single companion to travel by the Doctor’s side – and there have been many!

  And that’s the point. It’s about time we had the information in one place, to see how all these characters influence the Doctor’s adventures, to show that despite the sixteen-year gap (not including the one-off Television Movie in 1996) Doctor Who has been one long narrative, from the opening of the gates at Totter’s Lane in An Unearthly Child right through to the dramatic revelations at Trenzalore in The Name of the Doctor. It’s all one story, one adventure seen through the eyes of many individuals. The story of the Last of the Time Lords as witnessed by humans, aliens and – once or twice – by robots. Make no mistake, these people have changed the Doctor; they’ve taught him much more than he’s ever taught them. He may have shown them the wonders of the universe, but they have shown him what it is to care for those he meets, to understand the importance of every life he touches.

  You’ll be forgiven for thinking that, if you’ve seen every episode of the television series (and believe me, that’s quite a feat in itself), you’ve seen every companion. You would, of course, be quite mistaken. During the sixteen-year gap (the Wilderness Years, as it’s commonly known) Doctor Who continued primarily in prose, and as with the parent show, companions came and went. It started with Ace, continuing from the final television story, but soon all-new companions were introduced. Their place in the annals of Doctor Who history is not to be overlooked. They are as important, in some ways more so, as any companion seen on television. The continued growth and development began with Ace in Remembrance of the Daleks, and prepared the way for the companions that were soon to join the Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Doctors. And they are all included in this tome (although it’s possible that one or two may be missing – if so, I raise my hand and totally blame the Last Great Time War for erasing them), prose companions like Professor Bernice Summerfield all the way through to Trix MacMillan, to the companions introduced in the Big Finish audios like Evelyn Smythe through to Molly O’Sullivan, plus a few more obscure companions who appeared in the various incarnations of the Doctor Who comic strips.

  In writing this book decisions needed to be made. It’s an age-old argument among Doctor Who fans – what makes a companion? Who counts? Is Astrid a companion? What about Grace? Sara Kingdom…? For the purpose of this book we’ve decided to follow the intent of the production team. For instance; Grace Holloway from the Television Movie is not regarded as a companion because the intent was that she’d become the Doctor’s companion had a series been picked up on the success of the Television Movie. No such series materialised, however, and so Grace becomes another in a long list of people the Doctor has met who were almost companions – much like Astrid Peth in Voyage of the Damned, or Adam Mitchell – the literal almost companion. But someone like Katarina, although having much less screen time than Sara Kingdom, is regarded as a companion because she was created to be so – yes, even Kamelion, who only appeared in two adventures (introduced in one, and written out in the other), since he was intended to be a companion.

  It’s inevitable, however, that some will disagree with our selection process, and that’s OK. Every fan has their own standard upon which they choose their canon companions, and you’re more than welcome to disagree. Much like the TARDIS, Doctor Who fandom is infinite in its view and no one view is better than the other.

  We follow the series Doctor by Doctor, each with two chapters. The first is the ongoing narrative of the television series, thus all information can be considered official, while the second chapter will look at the Expanded Universe (a term lifted, with some resistance, from Star Wars fans) of the novels, comics and audios, exploring the companions never seen on television, while looking into some of the more interesting information revealed about the television companions in adventures never screened. Often the material contained in the Expanded Universe is contradictory, even more so than on television, but it is not the job of this book to fit everything together into one whole (Lance Parkin’s excellent Ahistory does that), but rather to collect together the more interesting points.

  So, read on, and meet the Doctor’s granddaughter, Susan, and begin your fifty year journey of Doctor Who as seen through the eyes of the companions, your guides on a fantastic adventure through space and time…

  The First Doctor

  William Hartnell

  ‘It all started out as a mild curiosity in the junkyard and now it’s turned out to be quite a spirit of adventure.’

  The Doctor – The Sensorites

  Susan – Carole Ann Ford (An Unearthly Child to The Dalek Invasion of Earth and The Five Doctors)

  If there is one main character in Doctor Who we know less about than the Doctor, it is Susan. For a start we don’t even know her real name. Susan Foreman is almost certainly a fiction; the surname we know she took from the name painted on the doors of the junkyard in which we first see the TARDIS – IM Foreman. Even in the second episode Ian & Barbara question this. In all likelihood her forename is incorrect too, given what we later learn about her home-world. For not only is she an alien, but she heralds from the same world as the Doctor; indeed, she is his granddaughter. At least, that is what they both claim, and there has been no proof to the contrary. We only see her on screen for a year, and in that time we learn so little about her that when she remains on Earth in the twenty-second century, we feel as if we barely know her.

  In the very first story we learn only a little: she is from ‘another time, another world’, a place where the children would be insulted if they were compared to human adults like Ian & Barbara. Her home is far in advance of twentieth century Earth, and this is confirmed by her technical and scientific knowledge: she is very dismissive of Ian’s experiment with the litmus paper, and is baffled by the notion that there are only three dimensions.

  But for all her knowledge, for all her supposed alienness, she is still very much a child. Indeed, in some ways, she is more child-like than her ‘peers’ at Coal Hill School. This ought not be much of a surprise, really, when one considers that Gallifreyans are a long-lived people, and fifteen must be extremely young (the Doctor explains in The Sound of Drums that, ‘Children on Gallifrey are taken from their families at the age of eight to enter the Academy’ [perhaps Susan somehow escaped that fate?] and much later states in The Stolen Earth that ninety is young). Her reactions tend to be of someone much younger than fifteen years of age, seemingly living in a heightened emotional state (perhaps there is a reason the children of Gallifrey are rarely seen). Yet, that isn’t to say she is not brave.

  Witness her mission to find a cure for the radiation sickness that has struck her and her travelling companions in the second story. She is clearly ho
rrified to discover that she is the only one able to go, but more than anything else, it is the sight of her grandfather deteriorating that urges her to swallow her fear and press on. This fear of the unknown; of being on her own, is her constant companion during her mission through the radiation-soaked jungle of Skaro, yet still she goes. And later, when she is travelling in Marco Polo’s caravan across China, she displays an impressive level of bravery. After all the dangers faced on that journey, the travellers manage to gain entry to the TARDIS once again, and thus can finally escape. Susan, however, insists on saying goodbye to her friend, Ping-Cho. This puts first herself in danger, and then her friends, as she is used against them. It shows the foolish level of bravery Susan excels at; brash and impulsive, often without any thought as to how it may affect others.

  Another minor thing we learn about Susan in The Sensorites is that she is telepathic, although this doesn’t appear to be a well-developed ability. The Doctor is surprised to learn that Susan has this gift, which begs the question: why? It is later established that all Time Lords are telepathic to some extent (to the point where the Doctor states in Logopolis that in some ways they all ‘have the same mind’). The Doctor suggests she will be better trained when they return home; could this be because she is developing early, a consequence of her travels in the TARDIS?

  It is also interesting to note that in the very first story Susan states she ‘made up the name TARDIS from the initials Time And Relative Dimension In Space’. In the context of the series as a whole, this implies a lot about Susan, since we later learn that all Gallifreyan timeships are called TARDISes. Although when you consider that in the early days of the show the Doctor most often referred to the TARDIS as ‘the ship’, is it possible that the name Susan coined caught on after they left Gallifrey? As with most things related to Susan, we are only given a tantalising hint, but few firm facts.