The Companions of Doctor Who

By David Bushman

"Don't be alone, Doctor," Amy Pond tells the Eleventh Doctor in "The Angels Take Manhattan," and of course the irony is that in one sense the Doctor is always alone--a Gallifreyan whose regenerative powers mean he will outlast nearly everyone near and dear to him -- while at the same time he is rarely without one or more trusted companion by his side. This is a book about those companions--those fortunate few who accompany him on his journeys through space and time on--to quote the Ninth Doctor--"the trip of a lifetime." The editors of The Villains of Doctor Who are back with a new anthology of essays--paeans, really--to Donna Noble, Sarah Jane Smith, Rose Tyler, Wilfred Mott, Chang Lee, Clara Oswald, and more. Did your favorite companion make the cut? You're going to have to read to find out!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fayetteville Mafia Press
• Release date: Apr 10, 2024
• ISBN: 9781949024678

Book preview

The Companions of Doctor Who

©2024 David Bushman and Ken Deep

All Rights Reserved.

Reproduction in whole or in part without the authors’ permission is strictly forbidden. All photos and/or copyrighted material appearing in this book remain the work of its owners.

Book cover by Blair D. Shedd

Copy Edited by David Bushman

Content Edited by David Bushman and Ken Deep

Book design by Scott Ryan

Published in the USA by Fayetteville Mafia Press

Columbus, Ohio

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Website: TuckerDSPress.com

Instagram: @fayettevillemafiapress

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ISBN: 9781949024661

eBook ISBN: 9781949024678

Sylvester McCoy: Companions are very important to the Doctor. They are there to ask the Doctor questions that the writer feels the audience would want to know the answer to, but the audience, who are not in the TARDIS, can’t ask. The twentieth century ones liked to SCREAM ! Except for Ace. They know the secret of the Doctor . . . . No, I’m not telling! In my time and before, there was no hanky-panky! (Photo courtesy of Ken Deep)

Doctor Who Books Series

A World of Demons: The Villains of Doctor Who

(2022)

The Companions of Doctor Who

(2024)

The characters who traverse time and space with the Time Lord from Gallifrey have been described in many ways: as friends, acquaintances, associates, colleagues, hangers-on, groupies, sidekicks, and countless other appellations. Instead, the show’s creative team chose the word companion, defined in Merriam-Webster as one that accompanies another: COMRADE, ASSOCIATE. Never mind that dictionaries also list terms like nurse, consort, and mate (insert Donna’s voice here with a snarky retort) as possible synonyms. Focus instead on another synonym: complement, meaning something that fills up, completes, or makes better or perfect.

Exactly right.

Don’t be alone, Doctor, Amy Pond tells Eleven in The Angels Take Manhattan, and of course she’s right. We’ve all seen the Doctor’s dark side; it’s not pretty. Whole universes have paid the price for it. Better he/she/they should have someone at his/her/their side—better yet, a human someone who can tap into the Doctor’s noblest, most humane impulses (not that humans are always so noble or humane).

In other words, a companion.

So here we celebrate those companions: fifteen essays by Doctor Who watchers, fans, critics, experts—call them what you will. We even hear from some of the companions themselves: Chang Lee (Yee Jee Tso), Ace (Sophie Aldred), and Jo Grant (Katy Manning).

No doubt some of you will be irate over why this or that companion didn’t make the cut. We get it. Some of our favorites didn’t either. Get your friends and family to buy the book and we’ll put them in the sequel. There are a lot of companions, and only so many pages in a book. We let the authors themselves choose whom to write about; the only caveat was they couldn’t choose someone already taken.

Still, we feel compelled to emphasize the importance of the original travelers. The first TARDIS crew members weren’t rapturous voyagers craving adventure. They were kidnapped schoolteachers of the Doctor’s granddaughter (plus the young lady herself, Susan). Ian and Barbara are the template for all who followed: audience avatars through whom we experienced the very first adventures this exciting new BBC show delivered. Soon these unwilling hostages evolved into eager participants, as the surly old man and his youthful charge chaperoned them through time and space. Barbara and Ian were smart, resourceful, strong, loyal, determined, sometimes funny. Was there a twinkle of romance between them? Maybe; you decide. These qualities run like through lines across the decades, defining those who have traveled in the TARDIS alongside the Doctor. Often, these qualities are tested; almost without fail, the companions triumph. The travelers are ennobled by their proximity to the Doctor, and he/she/they by his/hers/theirs to them.

Time travel being what it is (yes, timey-wimey) in Doctor Who, we’ve chosen to work our way backward and present these essays in reverse order, which might seem not so apparent at first given that we lead off with Shaun Lyon’s paean to Catherine Tate’s Donna Noble (The Songs of Donna Noble), tracking Ten’s third and final companion from her first appearance, as an abrasive (though hilarious) one-and-done guest to a nuanced, beautifully realized (though still hilarious) character, not to mention one of the most popular companions of all time. Let us explain: As we go to press, we eagerly await Donna’s return in the sixtieth-anniversary special; hence, Donna sets the table.

Hence too we follow with ‘I don’t think this is goodbye, Wilf’: Personal and eccentric notes on the subject of Wilfred Mott, Joseph Doughterty’s typically eloquent (if somewhat quirky) appreciation of Donna’s guileless gramps, portrayed by the late, great Bernard Cribbins, who’ll be making his final appearance in one of the anniversary specials.

Yasmin Khan (Mandip Gill) is, to date, the only modern-era companion to ride with the same Doctor for the entirety of that iteration’s run (excluding Rose Tyler, who sort of only barely counts in this context because Nine bailed after a single season). Interesting, yes, but possibly the least interesting thing about Yaz, according to essayist Mackenzie Flohr (What Did the Doctor Do?). As Flohr points out, Yaz’s journey through time and space is an inner journey as well, from self-doubting teen to self-assured young woman—confident enough at last to share her romantic feelings for the Doctor (much to the delight of Thasmin shippers).

Alas, Bill Potts (Pearl Mackie), we hardly knew ye. As the Doctor’s first-ever openly queer Black companion, Bill was an inspiration to Whovians worldwide, but as Amanda Rae-Prescott points out in Time, Chips, and Trauma: Revisiting Bill Potts’s TARDIS Trip, it wasn’t all gravy: some of her storylines had unfortunate historical evocations.

Scott Ryan (The Impossible Dream Girl: Clara Oswald) had a nearly impossible time figuring out Clara’s first episode as the Eleventh Doctor’s companion, let alone the proper name of the actress who portrayed her (Jenna Coleman? Jenna Louise Coleman?), but once Ryan sets his mind to something, who knows what will happen next? Probably another of his outré theories, the premise of which we’re sworn not to reveal here (if you ever run into him, ask him about Twin Peaks and the part in Agent Cooper’s hair).

In Always in Love with Amy, David Bushman argues that say what you want about this companion or that, but nobody’s tenure on the show matches Amelia Pond’s (Karen Gillan) in terms of emotional devastation given the anomalous number of farewells (both temporary and permanent) included in the show during Eleven’s first two-plus seasons. Somehow, he finds this a good thing.

Speaking of emotional devastation, Martha Jones’s (Freema Agyeman) unrequited infatuation with the Tenth Doctor from kiss one troubles Gina R. Rosch (Martha Jones and Attachment Theory), who deconstructs their relationship through the lens of psychology’s Attachment Theory: strong early-life emotional bonding is essential for healthy relationships later in life. Rosch cites three basic attachment styles: secure, insecure, and disorganized, one of which doesn’t fit the Doctor. Rosch is a social worker; like they say, write about what you know.

When Doctor Who returned to television in 2005, Russell T Davies’s selection of pop star Billie Piper as the Time Lord’s traveling companion was ridiculed by some as a publicity stunt, but as Joshua Lou Friedman points out in Out of the Wilderness: Honey to the Bee (That’s what Rose mean to me), Piper’s brilliant portrayal of Rose Tyler opened a much needed portal into the new world of the series, and she is every bit as responsible for the success of the reboot as any of the Doctors.

Who better to riff on Chang Lee, the San Francisco gangster/hybrid companion (sometimes to the Master, sometimes to the Doctor) from Doctor Who: The Movie, than Yee Jee Tso, the actor who portrayed him? In Chang Lee: The Unlikely Ambassador, Tso writes from the heart, using his personal journey to suggest a deeper understanding of the character and his significance to the Doctor Who universe.

Joshua Lou Friedman pulls a double shift with his ode to Ace, companion to the Seventh Doctor and the final companion in the classic run of the series. Stay with us here: in endeavoring to deconstruct the character’s huge fan appeal, Friedman assigns a Face of Ace to each of the classic stories in which she appeared, which is really just another way of saying he delineates the many characteristics that made her so lovable. Just to keep himself honest, Friedman asked Sophie Aldred, who portrayed the feisty teenager, to proofread his essay, and we include her comments here.

There’s nothing only about being Sarah Jane Smith, or so Paul J. Salamoff writes in "‘My Companion’ & Female Role Model." True, Salamoff may not be the most objective observer, given his pubescent crush on Smith (Elisabeth Sladen), companion to the Third and Fourth Doctors. Here, channeling Elizabeth Barrett Browning, he recounts the many ways in which he loves her.

Poor Harry Sullivan. First, the Doctor impugns his intelligence (imbecile!), then he winds up the third wheel to perhaps the most popular Doctor-companion pairing of all time. No wonder Harry sometimes seems like a forgotten companion. In the three-part Wild About Harry, Charlie Ross, Lucy Chase Williams, and Amy Krell remember both Harry and Ian Marter, the actor who portrayed him, as they lobby for—in Ross’s words—confirmation of his status as a great companion during a pivotal era in the show’s history.

In Josephine ‘Jo’ Grant: Most Definitely Not the Tea Lady! Edwin Thrower traces Jo’s evolution from her inauspicious introduction (klutzy lab assistant) to gut-wrenching farewell (bride of Professor Clifford Jones), then throws in a chat with Grant herself (Katy Manning), who shares provocative thoughts about feminism and the seventies, among other things.

Jamie McCrimmon (Frazer Hines) and the Second Doctor weren’t exactly Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but they had their own brand of chemistry and charisma, writes Ken Deep in The Road to the Sitooterie. Deep finds their bromance inspiring and refreshing—a pitch-perfect blend of humor and kindness limned by two expert actors. Maybe both had secure attachment styles?

Two males walked into a TARDIS—sadly, we haven’t got a punchline, but we do have Barnaby Edwards’s Two Males in the TARDIS, a salute to the Doctor’s Y-chromosome companions. Edwards sorts them into three archetypes: safety nets, hangers-on, and strays, addressing everyone from Harry Sullivan to Nardole. Finally, we end at the beginning: Carole Ann Ford, who portrayed the Doctor’s first companion (Susan Foreman), tells Ken Deep the backstory she and William Hartnell concocted in their minds to help them interpret their characters on-screen. We think you’ll be surprised.

And there you have it. Fifteen essays you won’t want to miss, starting now . . .

There are worlds out there, safe in the sky because of her. . . . There are people living in the light, and singing songs of Donna Noble, a thousand million light years away. They will never forget her, while she can never remember.

No one saw this coming.

Catherine Tate was a household name on British television when she first appeared, clad in white wedding couture, on Doctor Who. The popular stand-up comedian and actress had hit the big time with her self-titled The Catherine Tate Show around the same time Doctor Who returned to the airwaves in 2005, with new executive producer Russell T Davies at the helm. Stunt casting being a common theme in television—and Doctor Who has been no exception over the years; look to the myriad guest stars who have populated the series and even to some of its regular cast members (Billie Piper and the vastly underutilized Bonnie Langford, to name two). Who could blame Davies’s penchant for attracting top-name comic talent to the BBC’s new crown jewel? It was almost inevitable that someone of Tate’s caliber would be included.

But when she first appeared, as a tease for the show’s upcoming Christmas special, who could have expected that it would lead to one of the finest matches in Who history? That it would lead to Donna Noble, one of the series’s most popular companions, alongside her perfect foil in David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor, bound by adventures during what many consider the peak season of the series’s revival era.

Doctor Who would never be the same.

*****

Everything pointed to a one-and-done visit. Tate was loud and boisterous in her opening scene, a sharp contrast with the emotional resonance on display during the departing scenes of Billie Piper’s Rose Tyler just moments before. In retrospect, her first appearance may have been slightly too abrasive, and the scene was eventually refilmed for The Runaway Bride, ostensibly to match a change in the way the set was lit in that episode and future stories but also, perhaps, because of all the buzz on social media about the incongruity between Doctor Who and the comedy star.

Indeed, Donna Noble’s visit was intended to be a one-time voyage in the TARDIS, a guest appearance to attract attention. The Runaway Bride demonstrated Tate’s ability to handle not only the comedy inherent in the story but also, surprisingly, the pathos: a Donna Noble unfulfilled, her day-to-day life subject to the whims of a temp agency, populated by her parents, Geoff and Sylvia, her circle of cacophonous friends (including a minor frenemy in the hapless Nerys), and a man she knows she isn’t in love with but is about to marry. She is a Donna Noble desperately hoping for meaningful connection. (Witness how she gets over said love interest, the ill-fated Lance, puppet of the alien Racnoss empress, almost immediately after his inevitable demise.) Indeed, while Donna is set up in The Runaway Bride as a guest-star-of-the-week foil for Tennant, the woman who turns him down after he invites her to join him on adventures in time and space, the chemistry between Tate and Tennant is immediately apparent.

Which is why her return, over a year later in the fourth-season debut story, Partners in Crime, is so brilliant. As told by Davies and the production team, the story is that Catherine Tate agreed to return to the role when plans for a different companion fell through (a journalist named Penny Carter, who was turned into a minor guest role in the story). Her return wasn’t exactly welcomed at the time by all Doctor Who fans, many of whom remembered the louder and more shrill parts of her performance. Many wondered: Could Davies be steering the show entirely toward comedy?

The Donna Noble who emerges, after an entire season that barely acknowledges her, retains her fits of pique but also demonstrates a new approach: she’s still searching for meaning and connection, but she’s more introspective. Her relationship with her overbearing mother, Sylvia, played by Jacqueline King, is there. However, in light of the death of actor Howard Attfield (who had portrayed her father, Geoff, and who had filmed several scenes prior to his passing, all of which had to be excised), the character was instead anchored to her hopeful dreamer of a grandfather, Wilfred Mott, joyously played by Bernard Cribbins, who had originated the role in a prior episode as a nondescript newspaper salesman (a delightful retcon, as the characters of Donna and Wilf were created separately, prior to their relationship taking place on-screen). Hats off to whoever decided to keep him around, because Cribbins is magnificent, and the evening scene on