Companions: Fifty Years of Doctor Who Assistants (18 page)

However, when we next see them the Doctor wants to leave E-space. Romana questions the wisdom of taking Adric with them, especially back to Gallifrey. The Doctor suggests to Adric that he flips a coin. He does so and the decision is made. The TARDIS then materialises near the Gateway – a stone structure that intersects E-space and N-space.

Here Adric’s selfishness comes into play once again. At one point in
Warriors’ Gate
he is happy to leave the Tharils as slaves as long as he, the Doctor and Romana can return to N-space. Both Romana and the Doctor verbally slap him down for this and he learns a valuable lesson about the right of freedom. Once Romana leaves Adric becomes a faithful student, even slightly mocking the Doctor for not making a lot of sense. Like most young boys he finds it difficult to be around strong women – note that he develops a very easy friendship with Nyssa, who he considers just a ‘girl’, but clashes a lot with Tegan, who is very sure of herself and is quite a powerhouse of a woman.

Despite experiencing the awesome power of the Keeper of Traken, Adric is still surprised by the science of Traken, clearly taken in by the tranquillity of this idyllic little planet. Adric responds well to Nyssa, working with the young scientist while on Traken to discover the truth behind the Melkur (revealed to be the Master’s TARDIS), and find a way to interrupt the source manipulator, the secret of the Keeper’s power. When Nyssa is later brought to Logopolis by the Watcher, Adric is delighted to see her again.

In
Logopolis
Adric learns the basics of block transfer computations – a method of mathematical calculation that shapes reality. He helps the Doctor map the exterior dimensions of a real Police Box in preparation for repairing the chameleon circuit. Adric is less bothered about the sudden arrival of Tegan than the Doctor, although he does clearly take a dislike to her, preferring the company of Nyssa. However, all three work together to distract the guards at the Pharos Project, in order to give the Doctor and the Master time to stabilise the CVE (a Charged Vacuum Emboitment – which is akin to a door between different pockets of space). They all watch the Doctor’s tragic fall from the radio telescope and rush to the side of his crushed body. It is interesting to note that Adric’s voice pulls the Doctor out of his shocked state (during which his entire fourth incarnation flashes before him). Similarly the Fifth Doctor sees Adric during his regeneration, calling out his name (
The Caves of Androzani
). Having already met the Master’s newly regenerated form Adric is not terribly surprised to watch the Doctor regenerate before his eyes...

Nyssa of Traken was never intended to be a companion. She was merely one of several characters in
The Keeper of Traken
, the daughter of Consul Tremas. However, she returned in the following story as part of the official companion line-up to oversee the change of Doctors.

Nyssa – Sarah Sutton
(
The Keeper of Traken
, and
Logopolis
to
Terminus
)

Ultimately Nyssa is something of a tragic figure. When we first meet her she has already lost her mother, and within two stories she loses both her father and her entire planet to the machinations of the Master; one more orphan for the Doctor to take under his wing.

She is the loyal daughter of Tremas, a consul of Traken, one of the much revered ruling body who guide the Traken Union via the wishes of the Keeper. Everybody seems to know and love Nyssa, including her step-mother, Kassia, although their relationship deteriorates rapidly when the Melkur exerts his influence upon her. She is incensed when Kassia usurps Tremas’ position, as Keeper-elect, but is still upset when Kassia dies as a result of the Melkur taking over the Keepership.

On the surface Nyssa appears to be a very gentle soul, always polite and friendly, a great mediator, trying to understand all points of view, but inside she is a strong young woman. When she needs to get into the Grove, she is not above bribing Proctor Neman, and she single-handedly breaks her father and the Doctor out of prison. She is also very intelligent and gifted, an expert in bioelectronics with a good understanding of general scientific principles.

After her father appears to go missing, she contacts the Doctor for help, and the Watcher (an echo of the Doctor’s fifth incarnation) brings her from Traken to Logopolis. There she is reunited with Adric and finally finds her father – who appears to be younger and a lot paler. In truth, as she later learns, it is no longer her father but the Master who possesses Tremas’ body with the stolen power of the Keeper – effectively killing him. She is easily taken in by the Master’s lie, and doesn’t question his obvious physical change, accepting his excuse that it is because Logopolis is a cold place. She bonds quite quickly with Tegan, but remains with Adric when the Watcher pilots the TARDIS outside of space and time. It is there that she, with Adric beside her, watches as Traken is consumed by the entropy caused by the destabilised CVE – a direct result of the Master’s meddling. It is Nyssa who works out that the Watcher was the Doctor all the time, as he merges with the Fourth Doctor’s damaged body to regenerate into his fifth incarnation.

The third in the trio of companions brought in to smooth the transition between the Fourth and Fifth Doctor was Tegan – and she was certainly different from any who had come before. She would turn out to be one of the longest serving companions, continuing for almost the entire run of the Fifth Doctor’s adventures (bar the final two, although she still makes a cameo in the very last moments of
The Caves of Androzani
), she was also the first Earth-based companion not be British, and the first companion to have various family members appear in the show – in this case an aunt, a cousin and her grandfather (something that would become very commonplace in
Doctor Who
from 2005).

Tegan Jovanka – Janet Fielding
(
Logopolis
to
Resurrection of the Daleks
)

We meet Tegan on the first day of her new job as an air hostess (
Logopolis
). At this point, February 1981, Tegan is living with her Aunt Vanessa in London. Both of them come from Australia, although, after meeting her maternal grandfather in
The Awakening
, we later discover that Tegan’s mother’s family is English. This suggests that Vanessa is the sister of Tegan’s Australian father.

Aunt Vanessa is driving Tegan to Heathrow when her car breaks down on the Barnet Bypass. Leaving her aunt to wait by the car, Tegan goes to a Police Box standing beside the road to phone for help, only to find the door open. Seeking help, and amazed by the interior of the TARDIS (apparently deserted – the Doctor and Adric now trapped inside a series of recursive TARDISes), she explores beyond the console room, eventually becoming lost in the labyrinthine corridors, discovering another Police Box deeper inside (in reality the Master’s TARDIS). By the time she finds her way back to the console room, she is almost hysterical and confronts the Doctor directly who is somewhat stunned by her sudden appearance. He has no idea what to do with her, but it is too late since the TARDIS is en route to Logopolis.

While she is on Logopolis, Tegan learns that her aunt has been killed by the Master and receives very little comfort from the Doctor; he has bigger problems than the grief of one human. When the Master insists on her help, she refuses until he threatens to kill both Nyssa and Adric. Thrown in the deep end Tegan has little option but to deal with her current situation. She remains very close to the Doctor, who is her ticket back home. Even when the Doctor forces them all back in the TARDIS to be taken away to safety by the Watcher, she sneaks back out and follows the Doctor. She travels back to Earth with the Doctor and the Master and finds herself having to rescue Nyssa and Adric from the Pharos Project guards. Alongside her new found friends she watches the Doctor drop from the radio telescope gantry, kneeling by his side when he regenerates into his new, younger body...

The Fourth Doctor

Expanded Universe

If Sarah’s appearance in the Third Doctor’s Expanded Universe was contentious, then her time with the Fourth Doctor, and life beyond the Doctor, ends up becoming pretty much irrelevant due to the continuation of Sarah’s story on television since her return in the 2006 episode
School Reunion
. Nonetheless, the following information, although largely at odds with Sarah’s TV adventures, still proves to be an interesting insight into what might have been, had Sarah
turned left
and followed a different path.

As on television, her name shifts between ‘Sarah’ and ‘Sarah Jane’ depending on the author of any given story (and sometimes the name even alternates
within
some of the stories – for instance in the prose stories found in the
K9 Annual
of 1983). However in the pages of
TV Comic
she is consistently referred to as ‘Sarah-Jane’. It seems her given name will always remain a mystery.

Despite the amount of Expanded Universe material covering her time with the Fourth Doctor, there is very little that is new to be gleaned, except for a few instances that serve to explain some of her post-Doctor appearances. She is kidnapped from her adventure in Takhail, 2086 (in the 1996
Doctor Who Magazine
comic strip
Ground Zero
, issues
#238-242
) by the Threshold and trapped in a collective consciousness with future companions Peri and Ace. During this adventure she meets the Seventh Doctor, who wipes her memory of this adventure, returning her to Takhail where she continues with the Fourth Doctor and Harry to Loch Ness (
Black Destiny
,
Doctor Who Magazine #235-237
). Later she encounters further incarnations of the Doctor. In this instance the First, Second, Third, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh (again) and Eighth in the 2004 short story
Categorical Imperative
. She also observes, briefly, fellow companions Susan, Jamie, Jo, Tegan, Turlough, Peri, Ace and Charley Pollard. (This knowledge of other companions is expanded on in the 2003 short story,
Balloon Debate
, when she is seen, sometime after leaving the Doctor, to write a short story featuring every television companion in an attempt to defeat writer’s block.) One of the strangest things to happen to Sarah during her Expanded Universe journeys with the Doctor is on the planet Tymus in the
Doctor Who Annual 1978
story
The Sands of Tymus
, when the entire planet is repopulated by copies of her. Another curious incident happens in
The Return of the Daleks
in the pages of
TV Comic
issue #1217
), in which (contrary to later events in the television series), Sarah is seen to visit the planet of the Time Lords – called Jewel for the first and only time in any medium.

Regardless of what we learn in
School Reunion
, Sarah encounters the Doctor several times after finishing travelling with him. Naturally such accounts conflict in various ways, but chronologically she first re-meets the Doctor (still in his fourth incarnation, and now travelling with Romana and K9) in 1979, in the short story,
Suitors, Inc.
Here she and Harry are investigating a company called Whildthyme Unlimited which is in the process of making DoctorBots, robotic copies of the Doctor. Not only does Sarah meet K9 three years before
K9 & Company: A Girl’s Best Friend
, but at the end of this story she, Harry and the Doctor disappear into the time vortex, closely followed by Romana and K9 – one presumes to have further adventures (still untold). At some point after
The Five Doctors
the Fourth Doctor pays Sarah a visit, to give her a proper goodbye in
Farewells
, a short story published in the
Doctor Who Yearbook 1993
. Sarah says that the Doctor is ‘the you you’, quoting herself from
The Five Doctors
and the Doctor agrees that yes, he’s all ‘teeth and curls’. In a very conflicting account, the Seventh Doctor visits Sarah in 1990, again to apologise for not saying goodbye properly in
The Hand of Fear
, in the
Doctor Who Magazine
comic strip
Train-Flight
, published in
issues #159-161
. Here Sarah is still very hurt by his abrupt departure, but eventually forgives him with a hug of reconciliation. She meets the Eighth Doctor in 1996 in the two-part novel
Interference
, where she reveals she doesn’t know if she was ever on Dust with the Third Doctor at all, and can’t quite remember his third regeneration properly (all part of the Faction Paradox’s war on the Doctor). At the end of the book Samantha Jones, the Eighth Doctor’s companion, elects to remain with Sarah. By the year 2000 Sarah is married to Paul Morely (actually sometime between 1996 and 1998 since they are married in the novel,
Christmas on a Rational Planet
which is set in 1998) and sometime further in the future we have a glimpse of Sarah and Sam still being best friends. The biggest shift in Sarah’s expanded timeline occurs in 1997 in the novel
Bullet Time
, wherein she becomes involved in a complex plan set up by the Seventh Doctor, and shoots herself to avoid being taken hostage. Although it is unclear as to whether Sarah survives or not, it is revealed in the 2004 novel,
Sometime Never…
, that Sarah’s maybe-death was one of many (others included future companions Harry, Mel, Ace and Sam) orchestrated by the Council of Eight, an organisation created to replace the now-destroyed Time Lords.