Who Loves You!

In honor of Valentine's Day, here's a look at the absolute worst relationships in Doctor Who history. What do you want from me? I'm single.

Leela and Andred

In The Invasion of Time, the Doctor brought Leela home with him to Gallifrey, where he perpetrated an insanely over-complicated plan to foil the invasion of the Time Lords' planet by the Vardans. Assisting the Doctor was Andred, Commander of the Chancellory Guard. Leela spends most of the story in the outlands of Gallifrey rounding up help, while Anded spends most of the story with the Doctor, looking confused. They have no on-screen time alone together, and there doesn't seem to be any time for them to sneak in any off-screen action. And yet, at the end of the episode, Leela declares that she's fallen in love with Andred and will be remaining behind on Gallifrey. Actress Louise Jameson has stated numerous times that she was unhappy with how Leela was written out, and indeed, she plays this final scene as if Leela is mildly embarrassed about the whole situation. Big Finish Productions' audio adventures have continued the story of Leela's life in their Gallifrey series, and they wisely sideline the whole relationship right off the bat.

I've now decided that "to leela" is a verb meaning to suddenly write out a regular character on a TV show by creating an out-of-character romantic entanglement for them with a character with whom they have no previous history or significant interaction. Please spread it around.

Peri and King Yrcanos

Peri's travels with the Doctor ended in the season-long serial The Trial of a Time Lord.  She was about to be killed by having the brain of a dying amphibious alien transplanted into her body; before the Doctor could intervene, he was kidnapped by the Time Lords to be put on trial for interfering in the history of other races (the Time Lords have a thing about that). Peri is apparently killed, but at the end of the trial it is revealed that, in fact, she survived and, since the Doctor apparently never bothered to go back for her, she wound up marrying their ally King Yrcanos. Peri's departure seems totally out of character, and there was no suggestion of any romance brewing between the two of them during the story. Peri was totally leela-ed by the writers. Still, Yrcanos was played by Brian Blessed, and while he doesn't look as good in this story as he did as prince of the Hawkmen in Flash Gordon, he's still not too shabby of a catch.

Vicki and Troilus

There's nothing inherently wrong about Vicki's love for Trojan Troilus; her decision to leave her life in the TARDIS behind to be with him forever as Troy falls around them is actually quite romantic. It's the fact that she takes the name Cressida that suggests that their romance may not meet the happiest of endings.

Fitz and Trix

If you're like the majority of modern Doctor Who fans, you're probably asking yourself, "Who the hell are Fitz and Trix?" Fitz Kreiner and Trix MacMillan were companions of Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor in a series of tie-in novels published by BBC Books between the airing of the 1996 TV movie and the start of the new series in 2005. Fitz traveled with the Doctor for a very long time, and the two became the best of friends. Trix was a con artist who they met while she was working for Sabbath, an enemy of the Doctor's. She left Sabbath's employ and asked to travel with the Doctor - he refused, so she stowed away. She was eventually discovered and accepted (as most stowaways on the TARDIS are), and she and Fitz eventually fell in love. In the final book in the series, The Gallifrey Chronicles, Fitz and Trix resolved to marry and stay behind on Earth as soon as the current adversary was dealt with. Nothing wrong there. It's just that Fitz is one of my favorite companions, and I have a weird fictional character crush on him. There, I said it. Ok, it's irrational and perhaps a little creepy, but I stand behind it. Fitz was a fully-realized character and was awesome, and Trix was under-developed and sucked. There are no pictures of Trix for me to share with you, since she only appeared in the books (and she probably looks like a total whore), but Fitz made one appearance in a Big Finish audio, The Company of Friends, in which he was played by Matt di Angelo. It's a small picture, since he only appears in one little sliver of the CD cover, but isn't he handsome? Maybe we should move on...

Martha and Mickey

Although I haven't been ranking this list, it's safe to say that this is my least favorite Doctor Who romance, even though I really love both of these characters (yes, Mickey too). It's the pure randomness of it that gets to me. Martha and Mickey meet in Journey's End, where they have no interaction whatsoever outside of the big group scenes. The next time we see them, in The End of Time, they're married and happily hunting Sontarans together. Granted, when we saw them at the end of Journey's End they were both walking away with Captain Jack, so who knows what kind of unspeakable depravity might have followed. Still, at the time, Martha was engaged to another man - to Tom Milligan, whom she met (sort of - it's complicated) in Last of the Time Lords. Russell T Davies has said that he married Martha and Mickey because his last name is Smith, and hers is Jones, and Martha's first episode was Smith and Jones, so he thought it would be funny. Ugh. Having read a bit about Davies' writing process, I doubt this was the real reason, but still. It felt to me more like he wanted to make sure Mickey got a cameo like all the other past Tennant companions at the end of The End of Time, but didn't want to spend time on a whole scene just for him so shoehorned him into Martha's. I'm not sure which explanation is worse. For whatever reason, Davies managed to leela two companions at once!

There's also a slight ick factor to their relationship, in that Martha loved the Doctor, and Mickey loved Rose, but the Doctor and Rose were in love with each other. Martha's love for Tom seemed to fulfill the promise of the clean break she was looking for at the end of Last of the Time Lords, but her marriage to Mickey smacks of sublimation on the part of them both. I see marriage counseling in their future.

So happy Valentine's Day to you and yours! Please choose your partner more wisely than most of the Doctor's companions have, and here's hoping you don't get leela-ed!

Companions: Steven Taylor

Steven Taylor

(Peter Purves)

In The Chase, when the Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Vicki were captured by the Mechanoids (basically giant geodesic spheres with flamethrowers) (so, basically awesome), they found themselves imprisoned alongside Steven Taylor, a spaceship pilot from the 23rd century (or thereabouts). They believed Steven died during their escape, so Vicki and the Doctor were understandably surprised when, after saying goodbye to Ian and Barbara, they found Steven waiting for them in the TARDIS.

Steven had gone back into the city to rescue his stuffed panda HiFi, who had been his only companion during his two-year imprisonment (like Tom Hanks' volleyball, only more adorable). Steven survived the destruction of the Mechanoids' city and slipped into the TARDIS while nobody was paying attention. Here's Steven with Vicki and HiFi at the start of his next story, The Time Meddler:

Adorable, right? Enjoy the picture, it's the last interesting thing you'll see about Steven Taylor.

Steven was brought in to replace Ian as the leading man, the action hero (Barbara, of course, was irreplaceable). And he fits the bill fine - young, strapping, handsome, and utterly and completely generic.  He's not a bad companion, he's fills a storytelling niche and Peter Purves does a good job with the material he's given. But after his exciting introduction, he doesn't do a whole lot; at least, nothing unexpected if you're familiar with his stock type. He gets very little in the way of character development - he's just kind of there.

Here's the new crew, hiding cheerfully behind a rock. Posing for publicity photos is fun!

Steven's development was not aided by the fact that his first few scripts were originally written for the previous TARDIS crew. In his next story, Galaxy 4, his role in the story and most of his dialogue were originally written for Barbara. As a consequence, he spends most of the story held hostage while the Doctor and Vicki get on with the business of saving the planet.

See? They even gave him one of Barbara's cardigans to wear.

He spent the next story, The Myth Makers, being all action heroey in the Trojan War, and getting near-mortally wounded for his trouble. Vicki departs in this story, and she's replaced by Trojan handmaiden Katarina, who carries the wounded Steven into the TARDIS.

More on Katarina next time, but suffice it to say, she doesn't last long. In the next story, The Daleks' Master Plan, she's quickly replaced with Sara Kingdom, who also doesn't last long. Steven was very, very lucky to have gotten out of that story alive.

All these deaths in the space of one story wear a bit on Steven, so the TARDIS takes him and the Doctor to Paris, where they can chillax in some fine BBC period clothing and get their drank on.

Except it's Paris in 1572, and the story is titled The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve, and ten thousand Huguenots, including all the drinking buddies Steven just made and the cute serving girl named Anne Chaplet he had his eye on, are all about to be brutally slain in a weeks-long purging that will see the streets of Paris run red with innocent blood. Because fuck you, Steven Taylor.

Every companion gets their lesson in the futility of changing history, and this was Steven's. He's furious at the Doctor for making them abandon their new-found friends to their fate, and when the TARDIS materializes in 1966 London, he storms out, determined to leave his travels with the Doctor behind forever. Ah, you say, that sounds like characterization to me! Well, no, because right away he spots some policemen running towards the TARDIS and comes back to warn the Doctor, who promptly takes off. On board the TARDIS with them this time is new companion Dodo Chaplet, and Steven convinces himself that, since they have the same last name, Dodo must be Anne's descendant, so Anne must have survived the massacre, and all is well. The Doctor is so happy Steven has stopped bitching about the constant slaughter that comes with a life in the TARDIS that he doesn't point out how staggeringly unlikely Steven's hypothesis is.

Here's the new team in Dodo's first full story, The Ark. Steven doesn't do much in this one, except almost die from catching Dodo's cold. It's a nice picture, though, isn't it?

Steven gets to have a bit more fun when the crew goes up against The Celestial Toymaker. The Doctor is sidelined for most of the story (the producers were considering letting William Hartnell go, as he was becoming more and more difficult to work with), so Steven and Dodo took the lead, playing the Toymaker's deadly games in order to win back the TARDIS.

Sadly, most of this story is lost, but it sounds like it was pretty good. Steven got lots of action in this one, and doesn't he look nice in color? Score one for you, Steven Taylor.

I take it back. In The Gunfighters, the trio visit Tombstone just in time for the gunfight at the OK Corral. They meet the Earps, the Clantons, Doc Holliday and Johnny Ringo, bullets fly and people die, and Steven dresses like he's going to a Western-themed costume party at Liberace's house. Luckily, the Doctor passes them all off as entertainers, and even more luckily - and inexplicably - Steven can sing and play the piano. There's an awful lot of gunfighting in this story, and Steven doesn't take part in any of it. Ian would have taken out the entire Clanton gang with one bullet...sigh. I miss Ian.

But all mediocre things must come to an end, and Steven's next story, The Savages, was his last. On an unnamed future world, the Doctor negotiates peace between a race of scientific Elders and the primitive Savages they've been exploiting. For some reason the two tribes invite Steven to stay with them and become their leader - I suppose when choosing a leader after years of conflict, "vaguely nonthreatening" seems like a pretty attractive quality. Steven accepts, bidding the Doctor and Dodo farewell.

I've probably been overly harsh on Steven - he was perfectly serviceable, as male companions go. He was just bland, and it's hard to find anything funny or interesting too say about bland people.

Oh, I've got something. In the tie-in novel The Empire of Glass, set in 1609 Venice, Steven teams up with playwright Christopher Marlowe, who makes a pass at him. Steven ignores it, though, because otherwise something interesting might happen.

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...

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.

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.