Companions: Fifty Years of Doctor Who Assistants (24 page)

In
The Darkening Eye
Nyssa is subjected to the Dar Traders’ cataloguing process which is halted so that the Dar Trader can inform her that, as a Trakenite, death is attracted to her but she should be able to master and calcify it. Before the process is stopped she has a vision of Tegan cradling her in a field of leaves. Later in the story Nyssa is stabbed and dies for three minutes before being brought back to life by the same Dar Trader as part of a trade. She wakes to find herself in a field of leaves being held by Tegan, as the vision prophesied.

During the same story, Nyssa claims she has a familiarity with dimensional transcendentalism
that predates her travels with the Doctor. She goes on to add that she probably understands it better than the Doctor. Once again she displays a knowledge that extends beyond her specialist subject of biology. This is explored further in another audio story,
The Deep
, in which she fixes the chameleon circuit. The Doctor claims to have a TARDIS repair manual and is bewildered as to how Nyssa could have even begun to repair the circuit without it.

Doctor: ‘Tegan, has anyone told you how nice it is to have you around?’

Tegan: ‘Not recently, no.’

Doctor: ‘No? Hmmm, I wonder why that is.’

This piece of dialogue from
Divided Loyalties
gives you an idea why Tegan, irascible, outspoken and in her own words ‘downright bolshie’ (
The Children of Seth
– audio), is such a popular companion with both fans and writers of the Expanded Universe. She is referred to as ‘the shrieking hell cat’ by Dawson in
The Emerald Tiger
, first part of a 2012 audio trilogy, and as ‘an Antipodean harpy’ by Major Haggard in the same story. In
The Lions of Trafalgar
, a 2011 audio story, she freely admits to having a big mouth. Being so strong-willed though works to her advantage at times, such as in
Goth Opera
where her temperament supplies her with enough resilience to make her immune to the vampires’ attempts to hypnotise her. Rather than religion, Tegan’s beliefs lie in the writings of Primo Levi, Quantas, Australian musician James Reyne and the Australian republic.

Tegan’s biographical details are covered quite extensively in the Expanded Universe, most notably in
The King of Terror
(a
Past Doctor Adventure
novel),
Divided Loyalties
and
Cradle of the Snake
(a 2010 audio story). Tegan, which is a Cornish name meaning ‘lovely little thing’, grew up in Caloundra, around seventy miles from Brisbane (
The King of Terror
). Her father, William (
Divided Loyalties
), owned a sheep farm and two thousand head of merino. One of Tegan’s most treasured memories is flying with him in his Cessna Skyhawk over the farm (
The Cradle of the Snake
). He understood that Tegan wasn’t really cut out for farm life. Other family mentioned are her mother’s brother, Richard, and sister-in-law, Felicity. She also has two cousins, Colin and Michael, and Serbian grandparents living in Yugoslavia
named Mjovic and Sneshna Jovanka. However, the thirteen-year-old Tegan hated her grandmother, who died of coronary thrombosis, referring to her as a ‘mad cow’. The young Tegan was a John Lennon and Abba fan, listening to their records with her friends Fliss, Dave, Susannah and Richard (
Divided Loyalties
).

Scandal shook the family when Tegan's father had an affair with a twenty-year-old woman who worked in a typing pool. They moved up the coast to try and escape the repercussions of this and Tegan's mother sent her away to a boarding school, where she was expelled after only a few terms. At just fifteen she ran away and headed for Sydney where she ended up squatting in King’s Cross. Eventually her father tracked her down and decided to send her to England, to stay with her Aunt Vanessa (
The King of Terror
).

The teenage Tegan, as she admits herself, didn’t have a boyfriend. Tegan was overweight and extremely sensitive about this. A boy named Gary Lovarik was the only one she had any interest in but her supposed best friend, Felicity Spoonsy, moved in on him first (
The King of Terror
). According to
Divided Loyalties
she had passed through this difficult period by the age of eighteen and she certainly seems more at ease with herself and the opposite sex by the time she embarks on her journeys with Doctor. In
The King of Terror
she has a flirtation with Captain Paynter, who she seems to be both attracted to and infuriated by. They kiss but the relationship doesn't really go anywhere. In the 1996 novel
Cold Fusion
, Chris Cwej
(companion of the Seventh Doctor)
gets amorous and makes advances but she drenches him with champagne. An inebriated Tegan is supported by Police Sergeant Andy Weathers in the novel
Deep Blue
, later going on a date with him. In a crossroads moment she even ruminates on what life with Andy would be like if she were to stay on Earth.

Tegan’s character offers the writers of the Extended Universe a chance to have a little fun and this is no more evident than in her repeated references to western popular culture. In the 2011 audio story,
Kiss of Death
, she asks Turlough if his parents inherited the planet of Enid Blyton – later in
The Emerald Tiger
she comments on a three-piece suit he is wearing, saying that it makes him look more mature. Also in
The Emerald Tiger,
Tegan mentions Tigger from
Winnie the Pooh
and calls Dawon – the one who dubbed her a shrieking she-cat – Pussy Galore, referencing the James Bond novel and film
Goldfinger
. Loki gets the same treatment in Cobwebs, a 2010 audio drama, when she refers to him as R2-D2, the iconic droid from
Star Wars.
Keeping up with popular culture can come in very handy when you are time travelling; in
Cold Fusion
, Tegan is able to deal with the idea of transmats because of what she has gleaned from
Blake’s 7,
the cult ‘80s television show from Dalek creator, Terry Nation. However, it is not only this that makes the character fun, there is also her wonderful sense of mischievousness as evidenced in
The Sands of Time
when Tegan tries to make a minor change to history just to see if the Doctor's insistence that it cannot be changed is correct. Then there is her repeated use of the word 'rabbits' as an expletive, something she does in
The Emerald Tiger
.

Tegan makes her choice to leave the TARDIS in 1984 but
The Gathering
, a 2006 audo story, sees her reunited with the the Doctor twenty years later, on her fourty-sixth birthday (incidentally Tegan has the same birthday, 22nd September, as Billie Piper. This is reference in the story on a radio show heard in the background). She has taken on the job of running Verney Food Supplies, her father’s stock feed company. The name implies that he inherited the company from Tegan’s maternal grandfather, Andrew Verney. It is one of the more poignant outings on audio as she and the Doctor explore their past as travelling companions. Having been diagnosed with a fatal brain tumour while at the same time struggling with a number of relationships, Tegan undergoes a process of reconciling herself with the decisions she has made.

Turlough enters the Doctor's life as an assassin sent to kill him so it is really no surprise that his trustworthiness is a matter of ongoing debate between the Doctor and Tegan, most notably in the audio story
Cobwebs
, when Tegan comments that her Aunt Vanessa always said, ‘Once a wrong ‘un, always a wrong ‘un.’ They argue over Turlough’s loyalty, and his alliance with the Black Guardian is repeatedly brought up by Tegan in an attempt to change the Doctor’s mind. In the audio story,
Freakshow
, Turlough strongly believes that the Doctor mistrusts him due to his involvement with the Black Guardian, and is testing him in order to ascertain where his loyalties lie.

Freakshow
is also notable for the observation made by the Doctor that Turlough and Tegan are like a pair of bickering siblings, a fractious relationship which plays out on both television and in the Expanded Universe. During the story Turlough gets seriously annoyed with the Doctor for failing to knock before entering his room, pointing out that he wouldn’t dare treat Tegan in the same manner.
Freakshow
sees the TARDIS landing in Buzzard Creek, Arizona in the year 1905 and Turlough dons a Stetson, predating the Eleventh Doctor in
The Impossible Astronaut
.

Turlough’s time at Brendon Public School on Earth gets a few mentions in the Expanded Universe. In the 1999 audio drama
Phantasmagoria
, Turlough mentions his enjoyment of studying history at the school (something else noteworthy about this particular outing is the gift to Turlough that the Doctor makes of his 1928 Wisden Almanack) and in the 2011 audio tale
The Heroes of Sontar
we learn that the Brendon Public School scroll of honour is inscribed with the Latin phrase
Dulci et decorum est pro patria mori
(it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country). This is dedicated to all the school’s former students who have died in wars. It is interesting to note that Turlough actually outranks some of the Sontarans on Samur as he is a Junior Ensign Commander. In
The Emerald Tiger
, the Doctor tells Turlough that he really should have a word with Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart in regard to the poor emphasis placed on sport at Brendon Public School in the early 1980s, during Turlough’s education.

As the title suggests,
Turlough and the Earthlink Dilemma
, the first
Companions of Doctor Who
novel (1986), Turlough gets a story of his own – the only time we get a look at his life after parting company with the Doctor. In it he alters history in order to erase the annihilation of Trion (his homeworld), New Trion and Earth and in so doing thwarts the plans of evil dictator Rehctaht (read it backwards!). However this results in him being unable to return home in case he creates a temporal paradox and he ends up in an alternative timeline, replacing a dead version of himself. On encountering his older alternative self with long hair, Turlough is warned against the folly of blindly trusting his Time Lord friends. The story also reveals the extent to which Turlough has developed as a scientist; through close study of the TARDIS’ temporal control mechanisms he has an astounding grasp of time travel (in the 2004 short story
Observations
he is able to operate the TARDIS with enough accuracy to pilot it six months forward in time to collect the Doctor); he is more than efficient in the fields of physics and quantum mechanics and is also in the possession of an almost perfect memory.

Kamelion gets a raw deal on television, but in the Expanded Universe he is treated a little better. In
The Crystal Bucephalus
, a 1994 novel, we learn that he and the TARDIS have probably been chatting for a while. In the same story Kamelion reveals that he finds free will hard to negotiate and is far more comfortable following orders. Being designed for war this is hardly surprising. It is not only the TARDIS that the android can hear though, as in the 2000 novel
Imperial Moon
, Kamelion is able to sense the Time Lord’s thoughts, due to their complexity.

Despite being killed in
Planet of Fire
, he returns in the follow-up novel,
The Ultimate Treasure
, his personality having survived due to his interfacing with the TARDIS. The natives of Gelsandor give him a new body, but he once again has to sacrifice himself for the Doctor and Peri. Later we discover, in
The Reproductive Cycle
, the android has a child with the TARDIS, which is raised by Peri and the Sixth Doctor.

Seventeen-year-old daughter of a dead pharaoh, Erimem – Erimemushinteperem is her full name, meaning ‘Daughter of Light’ – was the first Expanded Universe companion created by Big Finish for the Fifth Doctor in 2001 (and one of several who, as a result, do not reappear to the Doctor during his fifth regeneration in
The Caves of Androzani
), and was introduced in
The Eye of the Scorpion
. Erimem’s father was the late Pharaoh Amenhotep II and her mother one of his sixty concubines, Rubak. Erimem’s three elder half-brothers died during the previous year and there is some suspicion surrounding these deaths. Later it transpires that the one thing Erimem regrets after stepping into the TARDIS is that she never said goodbye to her mother.

Erimem is adamant that she doesn’t believe in Egyptian gods, however, by the 2006 audio outing,
The Kingmaker
, she informs Peri that she now believes in the existence of an afterlife. As an ancient Egyptian she reveres cats and
The Church and the Crown
sees her getting a new pet cat named Antranak. However, in
No Place Like Home
, it turns out that the Fifth Doctor isn’t a cat-lover and the feline addition to the TARDIS becomes the subject of a running joke between the Doctor and Erimem, and remains so until Antranak’s death in
Nekromanteia
.