Each new companion in Doctor Who is a reaction to the previous inhabitant of the TARDIS guest bedroom. Amy and Rory Pond/Williams offered the Doctor a chance to experience the growth and support of family life after the Tenth Doctor’s traumatic spell of going it alone, and when they were taken from him by the […]
EDIT: This was originally published before the broadcast of “The Name of the Doctor” and before we found out how Clara Oswin Oswald managed to be in three places at once, and die in two of them. This profile will have to remain unfinished, as the key feature of Clara’s existence as a companion is […]
Hats off to whichever Doctor Who script-writer who came up with the idea of exiling the Doctor to Earth and having him work for UNIT at the beginning of his third incarnation. Especially the Third Doctor. The First would simply not have put up with the indignity, the Second would probably rather have wandered off […]
It always makes me laugh when Whovians debate whether someone counts as a true companion or not, as if there’s a badge of service you get, after more than three trips in the TARDIS. Clearly the Doctor is a very friendly fellow, and so you can’t really say that everyone he meets counts, even though […]
The current Doctor Who series has gone back to the show’s earliest habits in picking people from nowadays as companions, in order to ask the audience the question “what would you do if a man turned up in your life claiming he has a magic box which is bigger on the inside?” But for a […]
Note to all aspiring actors and actresses: If you’re going for a part in a hugely successful science fiction series, one which looks like it might stand a chance of running for quite a while, try not to get saddled with a character who is named after an extinct bird. There’s a chance you may […]
Looking back over nearly 50 years of Doctor Who, and all of the various ways in which companions enter and leave the Doctor’s life, it seems odd, given that successive Doctors have been broadly trending younger in physical age, that it took as long as it did before he sought the company of a (physically) […]
Let’s imagine you’re an inventor on a planet far from Earth, a planet called Xeriphas (which is almost Sapphire X backwards, a fact that wiseacre visitors never tire of telling you). And you’ve come up with a rather brilliant robot. He (for it is definitely a he) can change his shape at will, becoming a […]
Being a man possessed of great charm, the Doctor operates as a classless being. So long as you’re not mean-spirited or judgmental, he’ll happily get along with anyone. And in looking back on his choice of companions, he’s attracted friends from all walks of life, from noble savages Leela and Jamie, up through working class […]
The saying “two’s company, but three’s a crowd” could have been coined with Harry Sullivan in mind. A naval medical officer, charged with keeping an eye on the newly-regenerated Fourth Doctor, he found himself not only failing to fulfil his responsibilities, due to being outwitted, but off on a ride to new worlds and new […]
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