Текст книги "Doctor Who: Who-ology (Dr Who)"

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THE MANY WIVES OF DOCTOR WHO

‘Look, sorry. I’ve got a bit of a complex life. Things don’t always happen to me in quite the right order. Gets a bit confusing at times. Especially at weddings. I’m rubbish at weddings. Especially my own.’

The Doctor, Blink

THE DOCTOR’S FIRST MARRIAGE

The Doctor very rarely mentions his family but, over the years, he has let slip a few details. In The Tomb of the Cybermen, the Second Doctor tells Victoria that the memory of his family sleeps in his mind, while years later, in The Curse of Fenric, the Seventh Doctor admits he doesn’t know if he has any family any more. In The Empty Child, Doctor Constantine confides that he has been a father and a grandfather but the Second World War has left him as neither. The Doctor comments that he knows the feeling.

When he left Gallifrey, the First Doctor was travelling with his granddaughter, Susan Foreman (An Unearthly Child), and the Tenth Doctor tells Rose Tyler that he ‘was a dad once’ (Fear Her). It’s fair to assume that he had a partner, maybe even a wife, and that she was probably Gallifreyan, as Susan was brought up on the Doctor’s home planet.

Later, when faced with his new daughter, Jenny (see Other Notable Relations) the Doctor says that he can see his family in her, the hole they left and the pain that filled it. He claims that when they died, part of him died with them.

MARRIAGE TO QUEEN ELIZABETH I

In The End of Time, the Doctor boasts that he married ‘Good Queen Bess’. He later suggests, in The Wedding of River Song, that ‘Liz the First’ waited in a glade to elope with him.

Others are aware of this royal wedding, too. On Starship UK (The Beast Below), Queen Liz 10 needles the Time Lord about his relationship with the Virgin Queen (he’s ‘a bad, bad boy’ apparently) while the Dream Lord points out the Doctor’s love of redheads, specifically mentioning poor old Lizzy (Amy’s Choice).

For whatever reason, the liaison, it seems, did not go well. Elizabeth herself doesn’t seem too happy to see her former hubby at the Globe theatre in 1599. In fact, as soon as she claps eyes on the Tenth Doctor she orders his decapitation! That must have been some break-up (The Shakespeare Code).

If all this wasn’t complicated enough, at one point Amy Pond (the Doctor’s mother-in-law from his fourth marriage) accidentally married Henry VIII (the Doctor’s father-in-law from his second marriage) while she was still married to Rory. To add insult to injury, the muddled matrimony happened on the Ponds’ wedding anniversary.

The First Doctor uses a Time-Space Visualiser to spy on a conversation between Queen Elizabeth I and William Shakespeare in The Chase. Little does the old rogue know he’s looking at his future trouble and strife.

MARRIAGE TO MARILYN MONROE

24 December 1952. The Doctor attends a party in Hollywood, California with the young Kazran Sardick and his sweetheart, Abigail. Just as he is about to sing a duet with Frank Sinatra, the Doctor somehow manages to ‘accidentally’ get engaged to Marilyn Monroe. The Time Lord tries to skedaddle, but there is no escape – Marilyn has already booked a cab to the chapel. The Doctor reluctantly slopes off to marry the model-turned-actress.

Do they go through with the wedding? Well, when Marilyn later manages to phone the TARDIS, the Doctor questions the chapel’s legitimacy… (A Christmas Carol)

‘Yes, I made some cocoa and got engaged.’

The Doctor, The Aztecs

This isn’t the first time the Doctor has accidentally got engaged. The First Doctor cosies up to an elderly Aztec woman called Cameca, making her a nice cup of cocoa. Little does he know that such an act is a proposal of marriage. The man just can’t help himself. Although the Doctor reveals a lovable sentimental streak as he leaves Mexico with the brooch his fiancée gave him – harrumphing all the way, of course. (The Aztecs)

MARRIAGE TO RIVER SONG

How many times have we heard this story? Boy meets girl, girl kills boy, girl tries to stop herself killing boy and so creates a slowly disintegrating bubble universe where all time is happening at once, boy tries to persuade girl to really kill him after all in order to save the universe, boy marries girl to seal the deal (revealing the extent of his cunning plan in the middle of the ceremony). Boy kisses girl. Girl kills boy. Boy survives by encasing himself in a robot double of his own body. They live happily ever after. (The Wedding of River Song)

But if the Doctor married River in an aborted time line, in front of alternative versions of her parents, did the wedding actually take place? Then there’s the fact that he didn’t actually tell her his name – possibly invalidating the ceremony in the first place. Nothing’s straightforward when it comes to the Doctor and weddings.

THE DOCTOR’S TWIN – THE OTHER DOCTOR

While on the run from Harold Saxon, Martha thought the Doctor was about to admit that the Master was his evil brother. However, a year later, the Doctor was about to be blessed with a brother – of sorts. And it all started with a swordfight on an alien ship…

LONDON, 25 DECEMBER 2006

The newly regenerated Tenth Doctor gets his hand chopped off by the Sycorax Leader on a spaceship hovering above London. The severed appendage tumbles down into the capital. (The Christmas Invasion)

LONDON

The hand is recovered, possibly by Torchwood, and finds itself in the care of Captain Jack Harkness, who is looking for a way to escape from Earth. He pops it in a jar and keeps it close to him – his very own ‘Doctor Detector’.

CARDIFF, FEBRUARY 2008

The TARDIS materialises in Cardiff to refuel. In Torchwood’s base beneath Cardiff Bay, the nutrients around the Doctor’s hand start bubbling, indicating that the Time Lord is nearby. Hearing the TARDIS, Jack stashes the hand’s jar in his backpack and finds the time machine just as it dematerialises. Jack clings on to the side of the Police Box and hitches a lift. (Utopia)

MALCASSAIRO, 100 TRILLION

The Doctor is reunited with his former hand, which stays on board the TARDIS after the Time Lord, Jack and Martha defeat the Master back on 21st-century Earth. (Last of the Time Lords)

LONDON, 2009

During the Dalek occupation of Earth, the Doctor is shot by a Dalek and is dragged into the TARDIS by his companions, where he starts to regenerate. As soon as the regenerative energy has repaired the damage to his body, the Doctor siphons the additional energy into his handy spare hand – a perfect bio-match. (Journey’s End)

THE CRUCIBLE THE MEDUSA CASCADE, 2009

The Daleks drop the TARDIS containing Donna and the Doctor’s spare hand into a core of Z-neutrino energy to destroy it. Instead, the hand comes into contact with Donna and, packed with all that regenerative juice, triggers an instantaneous biological metacrisis. In layman’s terms, the hand grows into a partial copy of the Doctor, part Time Lord, part human – his twin. While the new Doctor shares the original Doctor’s memories and feelings, he also inherits some of Donna’s personality, only has one heart, cannot regenerate and will age like a normal human. Isn’t that wizard?

BAD WOLF BAY ALTERNATIVE EARTH, 2009

After the new Doctor commits genocide by wiping out the Daleks, the Doctor entrusts him to the care of his former companion Rose Tyler. As the TARDIS leaves the alternative universe, the new Doctor and Rose kiss. (Journey’s End)

THE DOCTOR’S COMPANION – THE TARDIS

‘Look at you pair. It’s always you and her, isn’t it, long after the rest of us have gone. A boy and his box, off to see the universe.’

Amy, The Doctor’s Wife

There is one constant in the Doctor’s life – his TARDIS. When the TARDIS’s living soul was dropped into the body of the young woman Idris, we learnt a few things about his relationship with his Type 40 TT-capsule:

The TARDIS is an eleven-dimensional matrix and was already a museum piece when the Doctor was young.

The first time he touched the TARDIS console, he said she was the most beautiful thing he had ever known.

When they’re alone, the Doctor calls the TARDIS ‘sexy’.

In the past, when they’ve materialised where the Doctor didn’t want to be, it was because the TARDIS was taking him where he needed to go.

The TARDIS thinks of the Doctor’s other companions as ‘strays’. She thinks of the Doctor as ‘her thief’.

THE DOCTOR’S DAUGHTER – JENNY

The Tenth Doctor unexpectedly became a father again on the planet Messaline in the year 6012 (The Doctor’s Daughter). Captured by human soldiers, the Doctor was forced to give a tissue sample against his will. The soldier’s progenation machine extrapolated the Doctor’s DNA, creating a female soldier whose first words – after being handed a rifle – were ‘Hello, Dad’.

When the Doctor described his new daughter as a ‘generated anomaly’, his companion Donna christened her Jenny, a name which the Doctor thought was as good as anything. However, as they tried to unravel the mystery of the Messaline war, the Doctor began to build a connection with Jenny, only to have her cruelly snatched away when she took a bullet meant for him. He left the planet, believing her dead, but Jenny revived after his departure. Taking a shuttle, she blasted off into the universe, ready to follow in Dad’s footsteps – saving planets, rescuing civilisations, defeating creatures and running an awful lot.

HOW TO GROW SOLDIERS USING A MESSALINE PROGENATION MACHINE

Take a sample of diploid cells.

Split the diploid cells into haploids.

Recombine haploids into new diploids in a different arrangement.

Accelerate growth into full adult.

Download strategic, tactical and military protocols straight into cerebral cortex.

Give soldier gun.

EXTENDED FAMILY

Away from the television screens, the Doctor’s family gets even bigger!

John and Gillian: the Doctor’s other grandchildren

Travelled with the First and Second Doctors in the pages of TV Comic. They made their first appearance in The Klepton Parasites (issue 674, 14 November 1964) and left the TARDIS in Invasion of the Quarks (issue 876, 28 September 1968) when the Doctor enrolled them at Zebadee University.

Miranda Dawkins: the Doctor’s adopted daughter

Introduced in the novel Father Time, Miranda was the daughter of an assassinated Time Lord, the Emperor. The Eighth Doctor adopted her as his daughter. She would go on to become supreme ruler of the entire universe before being killed in the novel Sometime Never…

Zezanne: the Doctor’s adopted granddaughter

The daughter of Miranda Dawkins.

Alexander David Campbell: the Doctor’s Great-Grandson

In An Earthly Child (Big Finish audio adventure, 2009) the Doctor discovers that Susan married David Campbell and had a half-human son, Alex. He died defending the Earth from the Daleks.

Irving Braxiatel: the Doctor’s Brother

First introduced in the novel Theatre of War, the Doctor’s older brother would go on to found the Braxiatel Collection, the foremost art gallery in the known universe (and according to Romana, better than the Louvre).

Scarlette: the Doctor’s Wife

In The Adventuress of Henrietta Street (novel, 2001) the Doctor married an 18th-century woman called Scarlette to symbolically bind himself to Earth. She died soon after the wedding.

HALF-HUMAN?

The Doctor once claimed he was half-human on his mother’s side, something apparently confirmed by the Master after the renegade Time Lord invaded the Doctor’s TARDIS when it landed in San Francisco in 1999. But the truth remains unclear. (Doctor Who)

THE DOCTOR’S PHYSIOLOGY

Binary Vascular System (two hearts to you and me).

Normal pulse rate: 170 beats per minute.

Body temperature: 60 degrees.

Left and right sides of the brain work in unison via a specialised neural super-ganglia. The reflex link, which allowed him to ‘tune himself’ into the thousand super-brains of the Time Lord intelligentsia was cut off when the Doctor was exiled by his people.

Short-sighted in his right eye (in his fifth body at least).

Vulnerable to certain gases in the Praxis range of the spectrum.

Can travel through time thanks to the Rassilon Imprimatur, a form of symbiotic print.

Aspirin intolerant. Thanks to his metabolism the common drug would probably kill him.

Has size 10 feet in his eleventh body. They are also quite wide.

CAPACIOUS POCKETS

The Doctor’s pockets are bigger on the inside. They’d have to be. Look at some of the stuff he’s pulled out of them:

A pen light (An Unearthly Child, The Edge of Destruction, The Monster of Peladon)

Contracts (The Highlanders)

Conkers (The Highlanders)

Magnifying glass (The Highlanders, Genesis of the Daleks)

Lemon sherbets (The Wheel in Space)

Pins (The Space Pirates)

Marbles (The Space Pirates)

A tuning fork (The Space Pirates)

Sample jars (Colony in Space)

Freedom of the city of Skaro (Robot)

Pilot’s licence for the Mars-Venus Rocket Run (Robot)

Honorary membership card for the Alpha Centauri Table Tennis Club (Robot)

Cricket ball (The Ark in Space)

Yo-yo (The Ark in Space, Genesis of the Daleks)

Handcuffs (Genesis of the Daleks)

Rocks (Genesis of the Daleks)

Etheric beam locator (Genesis of the Daleks)

French picklock given to him by Marie Antoinette (Pyramids of Mars)

Expanding cane (The Hand of Fear)

Clockwork egg timer (The Face of Evil)

Telescopic breathing tube (The Robots of Death)

Stuffed mouse (The Talons of Weng-Chiang)

Toy Batmobile (The Talons of Weng-Chiang)

Hammer (The Power of Kroll)

Golden star stickers (The Horns of Nimon)

Safety pin (The Visitation)

Firework (Galactic Glitter) (The Five Doctors)

Alien coins (Planet of Fire, Battlefield)

Conjuror’s flowers (The Trial of a Time Lord: Terror of the Vervoids)

Electronic picklock (The Trial of a Time Lord: Terror of the Vervoids)

Catapult (Battlefield, The Hungry Earth)

Robot Santa remote control (The Runaway Bride)

Christmas decorations (The Runaway Bride)

Toothbrush – containing Venusian toothpaste (The Shakespeare Code)

Ultraviolet lamp (The Vampires of Venice)

Not pockets, but the Doctor has sometimes kept the TARDIS key in one of his shoes (Spearhead from Space, Robot) and the Seventh Doctor kept the UNIT passes belonging to his third incarnation and Liz Shaw in his hat. (Battlefield)

THE FINEST SWORDSMAN IN ALL OF GALLIFREY

The Doctor claimed to have learned the art of sword fighting from a captain of Cleopatra’s guard. In which stories has he swashed his buckle?

REASONS FOR REGENERATION

‘We can live for ever, barring accidents.’

The Doctor, The War Games

What doesn’t kill you…

First regeneration – Old age (The Tenth Planet)

Second regeneration – Forcibly regenerated by the Time Lords prior to his exile on Earth (The War Games)

Third regeneration – Exposure to Metebelis III crystal radiation in the cave of the Great One (Planet of the Spiders)

Fourth regeneration – Fall from a great height, specifically the Pharos Project radio telescope (Logopolis)

Fifth regeneration – Fatal contraction of Spectrox Toxaemia after handling raw spectrox (The Caves of Androzani)

SYMPTOMS OF SPECTROX TOXAEMIA

Rash

Cramp

Spasms

Slow paralysis of the thoracic spinal nerve

Thermal death

ONLY KNOWN CURES OF SPECTROX TOXAEMIA

The milk of a queen bat

Regeneration

Sixth regeneration – TARDIS shot down by the Rani, who then tried to confuse and control the Doctor in his befuddled post-regenerative state (Time and the Rani)

Seventh regeneration – Shot by local gang and operated upon by Grace Holloway, who accidentally administered a lethal anaesthetic (Doctor Who)

Eighth regeneration – Unknown. So far…

Ninth regeneration – Absorbing the Time Vortex to save Rose Tyler, and nobody’s meant to do that (The Parting of the Ways)

Tenth regeneration – Radiation poisoning (The End of Time, Part Two)

EQUIPMENT TO AID REGENERATIVE CRISIS

TARDIS Zero Room

Metamorphic Symbiosis Regenerator

Flask of tea

THREE

THE DOCTOR’S BEST FRIENDS

COMPANIONS AND OTHER ALLIES

COMPANIONS BY NUMBERS

Companions come and go, but which have made the most appearances? Overleaf is a rundown on the Doctor’s travelling companions based on the number of regular stories they appeared in. Where there’s a tie, we use the number of episodes as a tiebreaker – the Doctor Who equivalent of goal difference.

If we were ordering companions by episode number alone the top ten would be:

Jamie Macrimmon

Sarah Jane Smith

Ian Chesterton

Barbara Wright

Jo Grant

Tegan Jovanka

K-9 Mark II

Susan Foreman

Zoe Heriot

Nyssa

BOYS AND GIRLS COME OUT TO PLAY

The percentage of girls, boys and mechanical companions over the years.

COMPANION ROLL CALL: THE 1960s

IAN CHESTERTON

played by WILLIAM RUSSELL

First regular Doctor Who appearance: An Unearthly Child Episode 1 (1963)

Final regular Doctor Who appearance: The Chase Episode 6 (1965)

Thanks to his starring role in Sir Lancelot, William Russell Enoch was a familiar face on British television by the time he was cast as Ian Chesterton. With a career spanning six decades, Russell has worked extensively in the theatre and on TV, appearing as Ted Sullivan in Coronation Street in the 1990s.

History teacher Ian was a dependable, heroic and loyal member of the TARDIS crew – even if the Doctor did abduct him! Always willing to tackle any new monstrous threat, Ian enjoyed his travels, but when the opportunity came to return to Earth, he took it without hesitation.

And another thing: Russell almost returned in 1983’s Mawdryn Undead, although scheduling conflicts meant that the role was rewritten for the Brigadier.

BARBARA WRIGHT

played by JACQUELINE HILL

First regular Doctor Who appearance: An Unearthly Child Episode 1 (1963)

Final regular Doctor Who appearance: The Chase Episode 6 (1965)

Jacqueline Hill worked on stage and screen before and after Doctor Who, collaborating with her future husband, director Alvin Rakoff on a 1957 TV play for which she recommended Sean Connery for a role. She guest starred in 1980 Doctor Who story Meglos, and her final screen role was as Mrs Mallard-Greene in Paradise Postponed, again directed by her husband. She passed away in 1993.

Barbara’s adventures with the Doctor brought the history she loved as a teacher to life before her eyes – even passionately clashing with the Doctor on wanting to change the destiny of the Aztecs. Like Ian, she always wanted to return home, and happily took the chance to return to Earth in a Dalek time machine.

And another thing: Barbara was the first character in the series to actually see a Dalek.

SUSAN FOREMAN

played by CAROLE ANN FORD

First regular Doctor Who appearance: An Unearthly Child Episode 1 (1963)

Final regular Doctor Who appearance: The Dalek Invasion of Earth Episode 6 (1964)

Final guest Doctor Who appearance: The Five Doctors (1983) (She also appeared in the Children in Need special, Dimensions in Time in 1993.)

Carole Ann Ford had already clocked up appearances in Emergency – Ward 10, Z-Cars, Dixon of Dock Green and the film The Day of the Triffids before her casting as Susan in Doctor Who. She appeared in The Great St Trinian’s Train Robbery in 1966, and returned to the role of Susan for Big Finish in 2003, going on to play the Doctor’s granddaughter opposite the Eighth Doctor, Paul McGann.

Susan was the Doctor’s granddaughter and original companion, fleeing their home world in the TARDIS with him to become wanderers in the fourth dimension. The Doctor knew Susan would never leave him voluntarily. When she fell in love with David Campbell, it was the Doctor who locked her out of the TARDIS, urging her to live her life.

And another thing: Carole Ann Ford’s official BBC publicity photo omitted the ‘e’ from her first name – so she added it herself while signing autographs.

VICKI

played by MAUREEN O’BRIEN

First regular Doctor Who appearance: The Rescue Episode 1 (1965)

Final regular Doctor Who appearance: The Myth Makers Episode 4 (1965)

Merseyside-born actress Maureen O’Brien had never seen Doctor Who when she was cast as the Doctor’s surrogate granddaughter Vicki, her first television role. Never particularly pleased with her character, Maureen was quite relieved when Vicki was written out of the series and she returned to her first love, theatre. O’Brien starred as Elizabeth Straker in BBC One’s Casualty from 1986 to 1987. She published her first crime novel in 1989.

After her mother died in 2493, Vicki set out on spacecraft 201 with her father to start a new life on the planet Astra. But the ship crashed, and the crew were all killed except for Vicki and a man called Bennett. When it was revealed that Bennett had murdered the other survivors to cover up previous crimes, Vicki decided to travel with the Doctor, Ian and Barbara.

And another thing: The producers of Doctor Who originally asked O’Brien to die her hair black to mimic Carole Ann Ford. She refused.

STEVEN TAYLOR

played by PETER PURVES

First regular Doctor Who appearance: The Chase Episode 6 (1965)

Final regular Doctor Who appearance: The Savages Episode 4 (1966)

Before being cast in Doctor Who, first as hillbilly tourist Morton Dill and then as Steven Taylor, Peter Purves appeared in many popular TV series including Z-Cars, The Saint, Dixon of Dock Green and World of Wooster. In 1967, Purves joined Blue Peter as a presenter, appearing in over 850 editions of the legendary children’s magazine programme until he left just over ten years later in 1978.

After crashing in the jungles of the planet Mechanus, Pilot Flight Red Fifty Steven Taylor was captured by the robot Mechonoids and spent two years in solitary confinement. Brave and headstrong, Steven was helped to escape by the Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Vicki and stumbled into the TARDIS before it dematerialised.

And another thing: The only other ‘survivor’ of Steven’s crash was his mascot, a cuddly panda he called Hi-Fi.

KATARINA

played by ADRIENNE HILL

First regular Doctor Who appearance: The Myth Makers Episode 4 (1965)

Final regular Doctor Who appearance: The Daleks’ Master Plan Episode 4 (1965)

Born in Plymouth, Adrienne Hill impressed production assistant Viktors Ritelis while acting as understudy for Maggie Smith in a performance of Mary Mary and was invited to read for the role of Joanna in The Crusade. While Jean Marsh eventually won the role, Hill was cast as Katarina later the same year. Following Doctor Who, Hill took a major role in BBC Radio’s long-running Waggoner’s Walk. She died in 1997.

Handmaiden to Cassandra, High Priestess of Troy, Katarina met the Doctor when the TARDIS landed in 1184 bc. Befriending Vicki, the servant helped carry the seriously injured Steven back to the TARDIS and was carried away from Earth when the ship dematerialised.

And another thing: In 1983, Adrienne Hill made a rare appearance on Children in Need with her fellow Doctor Who companions.

DOROTHEA ‘DODO’ CHAPLET

played by JACKIE LANE

First regular Doctor Who appearance: The Massacre Episode 4 (1966)

Final regular Doctor Who appearance: The War Machines Episode 2 (1966)

In 1963, Jackie Lane auditioned for the role of Susan Foreman. Three years later she was approached by producer John Wiles to play Dodo, although her character disappeared off-screen just five stories later. After an appearance in American spy comedy Get Smart, Hill gave up acting, moving to Paris to work as a secretary at the Australian Embassy. On returning to England, she became a theatrical agent, representing Tom Baker and Janet Fielding among others.

In 1966, Dodo witnessed a little boy getting hurt in an accident on Wimbledon Common and ran to what she thought was the nearest police box to summon the authorities, only to be whisked off on board the TARDIS. Not that she cared – the independent young woman soon admitted that she lived with a great aunt who wouldn’t care if she never saw her again!

And another thing: Later in life, former Doctor Who producer Innes Lloyd asked Jackie Lane to find him work. Remembering how she had been dropped from the series, she declined.

BEN JACKSON

played by MICHAEL CRAZE

First regular Doctor Who appearance: The War Machines Episode 1 (1966)

Final regular Doctor Who appearance: The Faceless Ones Episode 6 (1967)

Discovered through an appearance in a Boy Scout Gang Show, 12-year old Craze went on to win understudy roles at Drury Lane theatre. TV and film work followed including a leading role in the 1960 ABC science fiction series Target Luna. After leaving Doctor Who, Craze would appear in episodes of Z-Cars, Dixon of Dock Green, Armchair Theatre and Crossroads. In 1974, Craze moved into the catering and hotel industry. He occasionally returned to acting, his last television role before his death in 1998 being a one-off play entitled The Healer.

Able Seaman Ben Jackson’s life changed in 1966 when he met a pretty secretary by the name of Polly in a nightclub called the Inferno. After helping the Doctor foil the rogue computer system, WOTAN, the courageous cockney sailor inadvertently hitched a lift on board the TARDIS back to 17th-century Cornwall.

And another thing: Michael Craze met his wife Edwina while filming The Tenth Planet. Before joining the Doctor Who cast Craze underwent surgery to repair a badly broken nose. He was worried that the polystyrene snow from a fake snow machine might hurt his nose and asked for it to be angled away from him. Edwina, the Production Assistant operating the machine blew it right at him. He forgave her and they were married three years later.

POLLY WRIGHT

played by Anneke Wills

First regular Doctor Who appearance: The War Machines Episode 1 (1966)

Final regular Doctor Who appearance: The Faceless Ones Episode 6 (1967)

One of the actresses considered for the Doctor’s granddaughter Susan, Anneke Wills had made her acting debut at the age of eleven. Later, after dropping out of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, the former child actor took roles in Armchair Theatre, The Saint and The Avengers. Following Doctor Who, Wills starred as Evelyn McLean in Strange Report, before giving up acting. Following times living in India, America and Canada, Wills settled in Devon in 1996.

Polly met the Doctor while she was working as Secretary to Professor Brett, creator of the WOTAN computer. Like Ben, Polly accidentally joined the Doctor on his travels while trying to return his TARDIS key. Practical and level-headed, blonde bombshell Polly was a Sixties girl through and through.

And another thing: Anneke Wills’ first husband, Michael Gough, played the Celestial Toymaker against William Hartnell’s First Doctor.

JAMIE MACRIMMON

played by FRAZER HINES

First regular Doctor Who appearance: The Highlanders Episode 1 (1966)

Final regular Doctor Who appearance: The War Games Episode 10 (1969)

Final guest Doctor Who appearance: The Two Doctors Episode 3 (1985)

A familiar face on British television before joining Doctor Who, Frazer Hines appeared in such programmes as The Silver Sword, Smuggler’s Bay, Emergency Ward 10 and Coronation Street. In 1972, three years after leaving the TARDIS, Hines joined Yorkshire TV’s Emmerdale Farm as Joe Sugden, a role he would play until 1994. He now breeds racehorses at his stud farm in Nottingham.

Born in the early 18th century, James Robert Macrimmon (or McCrimmon, as some sources have it) was constantly bamboozled by technology but enthusiastically threw himself into adventure and became one of the Doctor’s most loyal friends. Practical and resourceful, Jamie often put himself in great peril to keep the Time Lord safe and sound.

And another thing: The Doctor only let Jamie come on board the TARDIS if the highlander agreed to teach him how to play the bagpipes.

VICTORIA WATERFIELD

played by DEBORAH WATLING

First regular Doctor Who appearance: The Evil of the Daleks Episode 2 (1967)

Final regular Doctor Who appearance: Fury from the Deep Episode 6 (1968)

Final guest Doctor Who appearance: Dimensions in Time Part 2 (1993)

Born into an acting family, Deborah originally wanted to be a dentist before failing her O Levels. Walking out of drama school after just three weeks, she secured an agent and soon scored roles in ITC’s William Tell and The Invisible Man. A 1965 Radio Times cover photograph of Watling as Alice drew her to the attention of Doctor Who producer Innes Lloyd. Considered too inexperienced for the role of Polly, she was recalled to audition for Victoria. Watling went on to appear in numerous TV shows including Danger UXB, Rising Damp and Doctor in Charge as well as countless theatre roles.

When her father Edward Waterfield accidentally created a link between 1866 London and the planet Skaro, Victoria was taken prisoner by the Daleks. When Waterfield was killed, the Doctor promised to take care of her. Never a natural adventurer, Victoria didn’t react well to the dangers life with the Doctor brought.

And another thing: Deborah’s father, Jack Watling, appeared as Professor Edward Travers in The Abominable Snowman and The Web of Fear.

ZOE HERIOT

played by WENDY PADBURY

First regular Doctor Who appearance: The Wheel in Space Episode 2 (1968)

Final regular Doctor Who appearance: The War Games Episode 10 (1969)

Final guest Doctor Who appearance: The Five Doctors (1983)

After a flurry of early TV appearances, Wendy Padbury won a regular role on the ATV soap Crossroads. On leaving Doctor Who, Padbury appeared in Z-Cars, Freewheelers, Emmerdale and the 1971 horror film The Blood on Satan’s Claw. Before retiring and moving to France, she worked as a theatrical agent, representing Nicholas Courtney, Colin Baker, Mark Strickson and, more recently, Matt Smith.

An astrophysicist, astrometricist (first class) and librarian on board the space station known as the Wheel, Zoe Heriot stowed away on board the TARDIS following the Doctor’s victory over the Cybermen. Highly intelligent, and gift ed with almost total recall, Zoe often seemed to out-think the Doctor himself – although her inexperience and a distinct stubborn streak often got her into trouble.

And another thing: While on Doctor Who, Troughton, Hines and Padbury were known by the nicknames Fluff, Cough and Fart respectively.

WELCOME ONBOARD

Companions join the Doctor for all kind of reasons, but which is the most popular?

HELLO, GOODBYE