Companions: Vicki

Vicki

(Maureen O'Brien)

Vicki was the first new regular character to join the show since it began. After dumping wet blanket granddaughter Susan, the Doctor immediately replaced her with surrogate granddaughter Vicki, an orphan from the 25th century.  He traded up.

Vicki was highly intelligent, which was the norm in her time thanks to futuristic teaching techniques; something she never hesitated to tease 20th century teachers Ian and Barbara about. She was smart, but not necessarily perceptive. When the Doctor found her, in The Rescue, she was one of only two survivors of a spaceship crash, along with a man named Bennett. While they await a rescue ship, Vicki is randomly menaced by a creature named Koquillion.

Spoilers! In a twist anticipating Scooby-Doo by several years, Koquillion is Bennett in a mask. This never occurs to Vicki, despite the fact that she never sees the two of them together, and that Bennett always withdraws to his room just before Koquillion appears. To give Vicki the benefit of the doubt, though, this is classic Doctor Who, and she can be forgiven for not being able to tell the difference between an actual alien head and a cheap rubber mask.

Mystery sleuthing skills aside, Vicki was adventurous and brave. When the foursome relaxed in an ancient Roman villa for a month, Vicki complained about nothing exciting happening (until they met Nero and he burned Rome down, which she totally dug). 

When the crew landed in Palestine during the Crusades, the Doctor convinced her to disguise herself as a boy, for her own safety. Here she is, disguised as "Victor", along with Ian, the Doctor, and King Richard.

King Richard suspected nothing, because in ancient times the idea of a girl wearing trousers or a tunic was so inconceivable it was a fool-proof disguise, even though she clearly has boobs.

Here she is in the TARDIS, reading over Ian's shoulder. Don't you hate that? Leave him alone, Vicki, he just wants to read about monsters from outer space in peace.

Here she is in Ian and Barbara's final story, The Chase. And in another example of her fine observational skills, this giant walking fungoid monster is SNEAKING UP ON HER! Pay attention, Vicki! I know it looks like the set of H.R. Pufnstuf, but you're in real danger here!

Ian and Barbara were replaced by space pilot Steven Taylor. Here's the new TARDIS crew in the story Galaxy 4, being menaced by giant upside-down shower drain stoppers.

Fab dress, don't you think? Vicki matured a great deal during her travels with the Doctor, and I'm not just talking about her boobs. She took her leave in the next story, The Myth Makers, in which the TARDIS trio landed outside Troy, during the war. (Because really, if you're a time traveler, when else are you going to go to Troy?)

Here she is meeting King Priam. Provincial Priam thought the name Vicki was weird, so he renamed her Cressida. (Do you see where this is going?) Vicki promptly falls in love with Priam's son Troilus, and leaves the TARDIS to be with him and fulfill her destiny. For some reason the Doctor did not point out to her that this would probably not turn out well.

Still, if you ignore the whole definition-of-a-faithless-woman thing, going from future space orphan to famous literary figure isn't too bad a deal. Unless Chaucer was right, and she later got leprosy. Uh...maybe we should just leave off at the end of The Myth Makers, when Vicki's happy with Troilus, and try not to think about what might have come later...

The Lockhorns Redubbed (1)

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Merry Christmas, Hideous Creature... Merry Christmas!

On Christmas Day, 1965, the first Doctor, along with his companions Steven and Sara, took a break from battling the Daleks to celebrate the season. After toasting his two friends, he turned to the camera and said:

"And incidentally, a happy Christmas to all of you at home."

3-G Redubbed (3)

More from the girls in Apartment 3-G! This week, meet Gabriella, Margo's mom. She's psychic and talks like El Dorado from the Superfriends.

5/06/07

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Rip Hunter, Ass Master

DC Comics Presents, in addition to its main stories featuring Superman and an exciting guest star, periodically included a back-up feature entitled, "Whatever Happened to...?" This back-up story would be about some random obscure DC character who hadn't seen the light of day for a while. Rip Hunter, Time Master was a DC comics character created in 1959, who got his own series in the early sixties. He had invented a time machine with his best friend and college roommate, Jeff Smith, and the two of them experienced exciting time travelling adventures, accompanied by Rip's girlfriend, Bonnie Baxter, and Bonnie's little brother, Corky. (Yeah, Corky. It was the sixties.)

So while I was reading "Whatever Happened to Rip Hunter, Time Master?" just now, I came upon this panel.





Rip and the team have travelled back to their college days, pursuing a rival who wants to stop them from ever building their time machine in the first place. (A paradox, a paradox, a most ingenious paradox...) This is from DC Comics Presents issue 37, by the way, cover dated September, 1981. So...did a lot of college roommates share a bed in 1981? I mean, this isn't Abraham Lincoln time, this is post-Stonewall and everything. I shared a bed with one of my college roommates, sure. But we were having sex.

It's nice that Rip is so secure in his sexuality that he's comfortable pointing this out to his girlfriend. Well, not so much "nice" as "passive-aggressive".

Companions: Ian Chesterton

Ian Chesterton

(William Russell)

Rounding out the original trio of companions is science teacher Ian Chesterton. The creators of Doctor Who conceived of Ian as the traditional hero of the show, with the burden of carrying most of the action of the stories falling on his shoulders. The Doctor was much more of a menacing, untrustworthy figure in the early days - for instance...

...here's Ian in the first story, An Unearthly Child, after stopping the Doctor from bashing an unaware caveman's head in with a rock. So yeah, originally, the hero of Doctor Who was meant to be Ian, not the Doctor.  And considering he was a fairly stuffy, buttoned-down, secondary school science teacher, Ian took to the action hero role surprisingly well.

Here he is in The Daleks, being shot. Ok, bad example. He does later scoop the nasty-ass Dalek mutant creature out onto the floor and then crawl inside its shell to use it as a disguise. That's pretty hard core.

Here he is...I don't know, singing?...in Marco Polo. Let's move on.

Ok, here we go. Here he is in The Aztecs, fighting with Ixta, their mightiest warrior. He kills Ixta in this fight, hurling him to his death from the top of a pyramid. Fuck yeah!

Here he is as a galley slave in The Romans. Later, these two become gladiators, but when Ian's matched up against his old pal Delos here, the two instead turn on their captors and manage to fight their way out of the arena to freedom.

Here he is in The Crusades being knighted by Richard the motherfucking Lionhearted for sheer awesomeness.

Later in the same story, while on a mission to rescue Barbara from Saladin, he gets tied up by a bandit who springs the old honey-and-anthill trap on him. Ian still manages to overpower the guy and then talks him into helping him find Barbara. Ian will kick your ass and then force you to be his friend!

But there was more to Ian than teaching science and killing historical figures. Ian was very protective of Barbara, Susan, and (after they threw Susan overboard) Vicki. He had a fatherly relationship with the younger girls, and a...less fatherly relationship with Barbara. Although early on Barbara enjoyed the occasional fling with the odd Thal or French counter-revolutionary, Ian remained steadfast in his devotion to her, and from The Romans on it was clear that they were totally doing it.

Look at her face. She has no complaints.

Barbara and Ian finally found their way home thanks to a stolen Dalek time-ship. He didn't appear on the show again, but Sarah Jane Smith recently suggested that he and Barbara are now married and haven't aged since the '60s. He is presumably still kicking ass whenever anybody looks at his wife cross-eyed. Ian Chesterton - most unlikely action hero ever.

3-G Redubbed (2)

More from the girls in Apartment 3-G.

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Lamarck is dead.

My self-imposed mandate on this blog is clear - I post to mock. But I was reading DC Comics Presents issue 35, from July 1981, and I came across this.

DC Comics Presents was a series from the 80's which would team Superman up with assorted other DC super-heroes, a different one each issue. In a recent fit of nostalgia I downlo...uhhhhh...bought the entire run. This particular issue starred Superman and Man-Bat. Man-Bat was a Batman supporting character, a scientist named Kirk Langstrom who developed a serum to give humans bat-like sonar, because who wouldn't want bat-like sonar? He tested his experimental serum on himself, as all good comic-book scientists do, and turned into a monstrous man-bat hybrid (hence the name). He eventually gained control over his transformations and became a semi-active superhero; his wife Francine also took the serum and became She-Bat (which is a terrible name, but is slightly better than Woman-Bat and not as good as Girl-Bat). Kurt and Francine had a daughter, Rebecca, and this issue is about Kirk and Francine's attempts to cure the heightened hearing she inherited from them, which is keeping her from sleeping and will apparently soon kill her for some reason.

I love, love, love comic books, but there's not much use in denying that they are filled with the most horrible science, particularly silver-age DC comics. I recently read a collection of old Batgirl stories, and rediscovered a story in which Batman and Robin are tricked by a villain into an anti-gravity chamber, "the same sort of chamber the astronauts use to practice orbital flights in!" I read this story as a kid, and was utterly convinced that NASA had anti-gravity chambers, in which you could float around exactly as if you were in space. 

So what Superman said stuck out as unusual to me, because it's, you know, true. Acquired characteristics can't be inherited. This doesn't stop it from happening in comics all the time, though. The Flash has twins who have inherited his super-speed, even though he got his super-speed from being bathed in chemicals and lightning. The Icicle, a 1940's super-villain, had no powers at all but used a special gun to generate cold; his son somehow inherited ice-generating powers. (Neat trick - my dad worked the presses for The Boston Globe, but I have not inherited the power to shoot newspapers out of my mouth.)

Of course Kirk, in the next panel, acknowledges this, and then goes on to say something about how his serum fucked up his DNA - which is possible, I suppose, although I would think his daughter would more likely just have some horrible birth-defect because of his screwy genes, and not inherit something specifically, conveniently bat-related. Still, I thought Superman's comment was a nice nod to real world science, and it doesn't slow the story down or get in the way of all the necessary disbelief-suspending.

So good for you, Superman. Now please explain to me how the Earth's yellow sun and lighter gravity make your clothes invulnerable...

The Krypton Horror

Hey, Superman, do you think there's a god?

I appreciate your commitment to finding the truth, but I don't think you need to go quite that far. Thanks, though. Put down that vial of unbaptized baby blood!

(From DC Comics Presents 18, February 1980.)

3-G Redubbed (1)

The comic strip Apartment 3-G. Sort of.

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Companions: Barbara Wright

Barbara Wright

(Jacqueline Hill)

Barbara, like Susan, was one of the first companions of the Doctor. Barbara was Susan's history teacher at the Coal Hill School in London. She grew suspicious of Susan's intelligence - low expectations, I guess - and recruited her fellow teacher Ian Chesterton to join her in following Susan home.

Here's Barbara and Ian studying Susan, who is not acting suspiciously in the slightest.

Finding Susan's home to be a Police Public Call Box in the middle of a junkyard, Barbara's suspicions were not alleviated. She pushed her way into the TARDIS, and the Doctor, very old and crotchety then (as opposed to young and hot, like today), was pissed that he and Susan's cover had been blown.  He set the TARDIS in flight, absconding with Barbara and Ian. At this period in the show's history, the Doctor had no control over the TARDIS whatsoever, so the chances of the two schoolteachers returning to their own time were slim to none.

Here they all are in the original TARDIS set, in the first story, An Unearthly Child.  Doesn't Barbara look amazing? She's all ready to wallop a Dalek with her gigantic handbag.

Speaking of which, Barbara was the first ever Doctor Who character to encounter a Dalek.

And here's that historic moment, from the second serial, The Daleks.  Although understandably alarmed here, most of the screamy bits were left to Susan. Barbara was tough, brave, witty, and smart. She stood up to the Doctor when he was being a jerk, which happened quite often in the early days.

Here she is with Susan in the fourth serial, Marco Polo.  I can go on and on about how awesome Barbara was, but without pictures you can never truly appreciate the magnificence of her hair. It was the fourth companion, really.

When the TARDIS landed in fifteenth century Mexico, the Aztecs mistook Barbara for a goddess. Here she is, resplendent in feathers. Barbara was all, "The Aztecs were awesome, except for the human sacrifice thing, so I'm going to change that." And the Doctor was all, "You can't rewrite history, not one line." And she was all, "Screw you, I'm doing it anyway." It didn't end well. When you're considering changing history, bet on the Time Lord over the history teacher.

Barbara and Ian stayed on with the Doctor after he ditched Susan. In the next story, The Rescue, they met up with Vicki, an orphan from the future.  Barbara got on fairly well with Vicki, despite killing her pet sand beast with a ray gun when they first met, mistaking it for a threat.

Again, please note the hair. There must be a great salon in the TARDIS.

After an occasionally thrilling chase through time and space by the Daleks, Barbara and Ian used their abandoned time machine to finally get back home. Barbara's fate after leaving the TARDIS would go unrevealed until a recent episode of spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures, which suggests she and Ian became professors at Cambridge and haven't aged since the '60s.

If you couldn't tell, Barbara is one my favorite companions. Although the '60s Doctor Who girls weren't all quite as useless as is frequently said, it would be a long time before the show saw a female companion quite as capable as her. And it would never again see a companion with hair as awesome.