Companions: Fifty Years of Doctor Who Assistants (2 page)

Fifty Y
e
ars 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 F
i
rs
t Do
ctor

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 horrified 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.