Doctor Who Assistants
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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 The right of Andy Frankham-Allen to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Copyright © Andy Frankham-Allen 2013 Additional material: Richard Kelly Editor: Shaun Russell Assistant Editors: Hayley Cox & Justin Chaloner Doctor Who is © British Broadcasting Corporation, 1963, 2013. Published by Candy Jar Books 113-116 Bute Street, Cardiff Bay, CF10 5EQ www.candyjarbooks.co.uk A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library 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 book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise be circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published. 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) Foreword hen I was very young I fell in love with Doctor Who – it Wwas 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. COMPANIONS 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 FOREWORD 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… ? octor Who began, unsurprisingly, with mystery. A Police Box Dsitting 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 1 FIFTY YEARS 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 – from the First Doctor, William Hartnell, to the Twelfth, Peter Capaldi. 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.