Companions: Ben Jackson

Ben Jackson

(Michael Craze)

Ben Jackson was introduced to Doctor Who as a successor of sorts to departed companion Steven - Ben took on the "action hero" role that Steven, and Ian before him, played opposite the elderly Doctor. Ben was a Cockney sailor from modern-day Earth. Together, he and Polly would ground the show in the present and represent the point of view of the audience perhaps a bit better than spaceman Steven or the soon-to-depart dull-as-dishwater Dodo.

Oh, and also, he was freaking adorable. Look at him! You can't not love him!

Right, sorry. I'll try and keep that reined in. Ben was an Able Seaman (YEAH HE WAS!) in the Royal Navy. His heart belonged to the sea, and when we first see him he's feeling blue because he's stuck on a six month shore posting while his ship patrols in the West Indies.

Here he is in his first story, The War Machines, meeting his soon-to-be-best-friend Polly and soon-to-be-Doctor-Who-history-footnote Dodo. Polly and Dodo fail to cheer him up, but when Polly gets harassed by a drunken goon, Ben rushes to her defense. Soon he's swept up in the fight against the evil computer WOTAN, and with Dodo and Polly both hypnotized into working for the enemy Ben quickly becomes the Doctor's go-to assistant. He traps one of the titular machines for the Doctor, and rescues Polly from the final firefight.

Dodo stays on Earth, and when Ben and Polly slip aboard the TARDIS to return the Doctor's dropped key, they're both rather surprised to find it's bigger on the inside. (It's only the third season, that hasn't gotten old yet.)

The Doctor had put the TARDIS in flight before he realized the duo were aboard, and he was irritated by their presence, but amused by their refusal to believe that they were travelling in space and time.

The trio arrive in 17th Century Cornwall. Ben grudgingly accepts that they're not in London anymore, but refuses to believe that they've traveled in time - or that the Doctor can't control the ship and return them home. Worried about being arrested for desertion, he stalks off, determined to walk back to civilization. The Doctor and a slightly more credulous Polly follow along. Soon the TARDIS trio are caught up in the machinations of The Smugglers, a ruthless gang of pirates searching for Captain Avery's missing treasure.

Huh. I meant to insert a picture of the pirates, but instead put in a picture of Ben with no shirt on by mistake. Whoops. It's also much larger than the other pictures for some reason. Oh, look, Polly and the Doctor are in the picture, too! I didn't notice them before. Anyway, they beat the pirates and escape in the TARDIS and it all works out.

Here they are at the end of the story - they look much happier than they did at the beginning, don't they? Ben's accepted that the Doctor has been telling the truth, and although he never stops hoping that the TARDIS will take them home, he does begin to enjoy his adventures - although his focus is always on protecting Polly, for whom he seems to be developing some strong feelings. He calls her "Duchess" due to her comparatively posh manner, because there's no surer route to a girl's heart than to mock her upbringing.

In The Tenth Planet, the TARDIS takes them to a military base in Antarctica in the year 1986, where the travelers help fight off the very first invasion of the Cybermen. With actor William Hartnell unwell, the Doctor doesn't appear in a good chunk of the story, leaving much of the action to Ben.

Here he is in a radiation suit or something, as he sabotages a rocket that would destroy the Cybermen's home of Mondas but would take the Earth with it. When the Doctor and Polly are captured, Ben rescues them, and the young couple help the ailing Doctor back across the ice to the TARDIS, where he collapses and undergoes a peculiar metamorphosis, for the very first time...

I did it again! That's not a picture of the Doctor regenerating, it's just another picture of Ben looking adorable. Honestly, you'd think I didn't know what I was doing! It's from the right story, though - The Power of the Daleks saw Ben and Polly dealing with the Doctor's first ever regeneration. Ben flat-out refused to believe that this strange younger man was the same crotchety racist old Doctor he had been travelling with. (Did I say racist? Sorry, sometimes I get the behind-the-scenes gossip mixed up with the on-screen stories.)

The TARDIS lands on the planet Vulcan, where they emphatically do not encounter any pointy-eared logicians. Instead the Doctor is surprised (because he didn't watch the opening credits and doesn't know the title of the story) to encounter his old enemies the Daleks. The Doctor overcomes the baddies despite his somewhat erratic behavior, and Ben slowly comes to accept that he really is the same man with a new face and stronger line-memorization skills.

When the TARDIS takes them to the aftermath of the Battle of Culloden in 1746 Scotland, the Doctor is, unusually, the one who wants to get right back in the ship and take off again, but Ben wanders off to take a look around.

How much phallic imagery can YOU spot in this picture? After the usual historical shenanigans the crew takes off, with Highland lad Jamie McCrimmon in tow, making our TARDIS traveling trio a less alliterative quartet. The time-space machine takes them to Atlantis for the marvelously bonkers story The Underwater Menace, where Ben spends most of the story in a wetsuit.

Also there are Fish People. Seriously, watch this story. Ben's original role of the go-to action guy has become redundant twice over by now, with Patrick Troughton playing a much more physically capable Doctor than William Hartnell's, and now strapping young buck Jamie added into the mix. This combination of characters is unusual for a TARDIS crew throughout the show's history - discounting the UNIT team, this is the only time we'll see two male companions at once. Perhaps the writers were worried about finding enough for the actors to do when more than one filled a similar stock-type, but there's nothing to worry about if you're writing for actors as good as these, and Patrick Troughton, Frazer Hines, Anneke Wills and Michael Craze are quite good indeed. These four rank as one of the strongest TARDIS teams in the show's history, so of course not a single complete story featuring all four exists, only scattered episodes.

I know, guys, it's a bummer. But cheer up - next stop is the moon!

Ben, you look worried. Adorably worried. And you should be! In The Moonbase, the Doctor's kooky quartet encountered the malevolent Cybermen for the very second time. Jamie's flat on his back for a lot of the story, so Ben gets quite a bit of action. And if this blog were all slash fiction, that sentence would be a good jumping-off point, but all I mean is that Jamie's sick with the same malady the Cybermen are infecting the crew with, so Ben gets the action-hero spot to himself until he's better. Maybe I need to start a second blog?

Ben gets an even bigger share of the spotlight in The Macra Terror, when the TARDIS takes its crew to an evil holiday camp...in spaaaaaace! The apparently happy human colony is actually being controlled by the evil Macra, a race of giant crab things who the production team wisely keeps mostly in the dark until they're able to CGI themselves up for the Tenth Doctor and Martha in Gridlock decades later. I already showed a picture of the Macra in my entry on Polly, so instead here's Ben getting a massage.

I'm booking my vacation now! The Macra try to take over the minds of the foursome, but they're all able to resist - except Ben. Michael Craze gives a great performance here, as Ben is brainwashed, believing that all is right in the colony and becoming frustrated with his friends' attempts to subvert the status quo - he struggles with his desire to do what he sees as the right thing and turn them in to the authorities. He finally comes round and saves the day when their lives are in danger, but Ben spends a good portion of this story as an antagonist for the other three.

The Macra Terror is the last full outing for Ben, as he's sidelined fairly early on in his next and last story, The Faceless Ones.

Cheese! That's the manly travelers pausing for a photo while making plans to rescue the once-again kidnapped Polly. Ben would be captured as well by the end of the second episode of this six-part story, with the pair only returning to say goodbye to the Doctor and Jamie at the end. The TARDIS has landed them back on the exact same day they left - July 20, 1966 - and they decide to stay behind.

Ben doesn't appear again on the show, but some of the spin-offs have suggested what might have happened to him. Several licensed short stories have given brief looks into Ben and Polly's lives after leaving the TARDIS - according to those, they drifted apart and married other people, but were reunited by the Doctor in 1999. Polly had divorced and Ben's wife had died, and the two finally admitted their feelings for one another. On The Sarah Jane Adventures it was suggested that in the present day the two are running an orphanage in India together.

Ben is one of the most under appreciated companions of the classic series, even more so than Polly, I think - certainly because of the sheer number of his episodes that are missing, but also perhaps because of Michael Craze's untimely passing in 1998. If you haven't seen any of his stories, take a look - there are audio and video reconstructions of the missing episodes, so it's possible to fill in the missing pieces if you're motivated. Just look at how adorable he is!

Companions: Polly

Polly

(Anneke Wills)

Dodo may have been the first attempt from the Doctor Who writers at bringing a modern example of swinging sixties London on board the TARDIS, but Polly was where they got it right. She's the first female companion that audiences of that time - particularly teenage girls - might both recognize from their real lives and aspire to be. Susan was an alien, Barbara a grown-up schoolteacher, Vicki, Katarina and Sara all from other times, and Dodo, although from the present, appeared from and went back to nowhere. We meet Polly in present day (1966) London, working as a secretary, wearing mod fashions and going to the trendiest nightclubs.

Polly (no last name is ever given on-screen, although it was possibly intended to be "Wright") first appeared in The War Machines, working as a secretary to Professor Brett, inventor of the super-computer WOTAN. When the Doctor and Dodo arrive to investigate the machine, Polly (unlike the viewers) takes a liking to Dodo and brings her along to a happening nightspot, where they meet depressed, adorable sailor Ben Jackson.

That's Dodo, looking drab, and Polly, looking fabulous, with Kitty, the owner of the nightclub (because of course Polly is friends with the owner), and Ben, looking like the back of his head. Better pictures of him later. After Dodo makes her ignominious exit halfway through the story, Ben and Polly get caught up in the adventure. Polly is briefly hypnotized by WOTAN but shakes it off after being rescued by Ben. (This is a theme that will recur.) After the dust settles, Polly and Ben track the Doctor down, to let him know that Dodo has decided to ditch him.

My god, she is frigging adorable! Sorry, I really like Polly. Ok, so the Doctor thanks them and enters the TARDIS, and Ben - remembering that he had pocketed a spare key the Doctor dropped earlier - opens the door to return it to him. Ben and Polly climb aboard and are whisked away.

The next story, The Smugglers, sees the trio arrive in seventeenth century Cornwall. Ben is skeptical that they've truly traveled in time and is eager to get back to London, but Polly is excited at the prospect of adventure. Now, Polly could scream with the best of them - she's still a classic series Doctor Who girl after all, it's a job requirement.

Here she is screaming at...I don't know, a skeleton or a pirate or something. But Polly was clever - when she and Ben are wrongfully imprisoned for murder, it's Polly who - having accepted they really are centuries in the past - preys on their jailer's superstitions to get them released.

(A side note about The Smugglers - it concerns a search for the hidden treasure of the pirate Captain Avery, believed dead at the start of this story but whose true fate would eventually be revealed in the new series episode The Curse of the Black Spot. Given that not a single episode of this story survives to the present day, this has to be the most obscure callback the new series has made so far. I guess Moffat wanted to outdo Davies' use of the Macra.)

In the next story, The Tenth Planet, Polly shares with Ben two majorly significant firsts in Doctor Who history.  Arriving at the South Pole in the fantastic future world of 1980, Ben, Polly and the Doctor encounter the Cybermen for the very first time.

Here she is talking to him about feelings and crap (just like a woman, am I right, fellas?). Polly doesn't do a whole lot in this story, but she does get to witness that other significant first - the whole reason this show is still on the air, decades later. The Doctor, weakened by the Cybermen's attack on Earth, rushes back to the TARDIS, collapses, and regenerates!

Here they are at the top of the next story, The Power of the Daleks (guess who they're about to meet), staring in amazement at this new man calling himself the Doctor.

I think they convey the sense of "What the FUCK?!?" quite well, don't you? Ben has a hard time believing this strange little man isn't an impostor, but Polly, as ever, is quicker to accept the evidence of her own eyes. Polly gets to meet the Daleks in this story, but spends much of her time getting captured, so let's move on to the next story, The Highlanders, where she really shines.

Here's the new TARDIS team arriving in Scotland in 1746, shortly after the Battle of Culloden, where they'll get caught up in conflicts between Jacobites and Redcoats. When the Doctor, Ben and the local Laird are captured by the British, Polly works with the Laird's daughter, Highland lass Kirsty, to work out a plan to rescue them.

Although all three of the main characters get plenty of action, to my mind The Highlanders is Polly's story. Since all of the episodes are lost it's hard to judge it fairly, but listening to the audio, any scene without Polly in it suffers. The story really gets going when Polly and Kirsty meet the stuffy but good-hearted Redcoat Lieutenant Algernon Ffinch - or "Algy", as Polly insists on calling him. The two girls (mostly Polly) trick Algy into a trap, threaten him, and steal his money and his identity disc, which they use throughout the serial to repeatedly blackmail him into helping them. Despite their being on opposite sides, Anneke Wills does a wonderful job of showing a growing genuine affection for Ffinch through her semi-threatening teasing. It's a good performance of an increasingly complex character.

But character development came and went from story to story as the writers changed on classic Doctor Who, and in the next story, The Underwater Menace, Polly has little to do except once again get captured and almost turned into one of these things.

Which, as much as I love Polly, would have been kind of awesome. They're called Fish People, and they are one of the many utterly insane facets of this wonderfully bizarre story.  The TARDIS quartet - oh, I forgot to mention, they picked up Scottish piper Jamie McCrimmon in the last story - here's the new team of companions...

Anyway, the four travellers have arrived at some indeterminate time in the future in the underwater city of Atlantis. The survivors of the sinking of the city use the aforementioned Fish People to farm plankton to survive underwater. Now the mad Professor Zaroff has convinced the Atlanteans that he can raise the city, when in truth he's actually planning to blow up the planet for some reason. So yeah, bizarre, but awesome. Anyway, Polly is about to undergo surgery to become a Fish Person...

...when she's rescued by the Doctor. There's a slave revolt, Zaroff goes even crazier, blah blah blah, Polly puts on an awesome costume and hides out with a disguised Doctor...

...and everything's fine. So yeah, good story, check it out. (What's left of it - most of it, you guessed it, no longer exists.)

Polly's back to kicking ass in the next story, The Moonbase. Arriving on the moon in the year 2070, Jamie takes sick with the same illness that's been affecting much of the base's crew.

While playing nursemaid (because, you know, sixties, woman...), she discovers that their old enemies the Cybermen are behind the mysterious illnesses. While everybody's freaking out about what to do, Polly - inspired by, no kidding, her nail polish remover- mixes up a batch of chemicals which they use to dissolve the Cybermen's plastic chest units, killing them. Polly's chemical cocktail keeps them all alive long enough for the Doctor to ultimately see the invaders off. Fuck yeah!

Next up -The Macra Terror. This story is also completely lost, but here's a shot of Polly in the grips of the malevolent Macra.

Say what you will about sixties Doctor Who, they knew when a monster was good enough to show and when it was best kept in the dark. (Seventies and eighties Doctor Who would frequently forget this lesson. See The Talons of Weng-Chiang, The Androids of Tara, Warriors of the Deep...I could go on.) As I mentioned above, the Macra would reappear to terrorize the Tenth Doctor and Martha in Gridlock, in the second most obscure callback in the new series' history. If you add in a dialogue call-out from the Eleventh Doctor and Amy story Victory of the Daleks to The Power of the Daleks, that's three from the Polly and Ben era. Considering how few of their episodes actually exist - only their introductory story exists in its entirety - they must have had a monumental impact on Messieurs Davies and Moffat. I put it down to Polly. (Is it clear yet that I'm rather fond of her?)

The next story, The Faceless Ones, sees the TARDIS returning to Earth on the very same day Ben and Polly left - July 20, 1966. Like Dodo, Ben and Polly get a bit of a short shrift in their farewell story. Polly gets hypnotized and disappears for a good chunk of it, returning only to say goodbye to the Doctor and Jamie at the end. Since the Doctor can't control where or when the TARDIS lands, the duo are taking the opportunity to return to their previous life. They wouldn't appear again in Doctor Who, but a 2010 episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures suggested that Ben and Polly are presently running an orphanage in India together.

Polly was a great companion, and Anneke Wills did a great job of portraying her. It's a real shame that her and Ben's stories were hit hardest by the BBC's purging of old videos in the sixties and seventies - most of their episodes exist now only in soundtracks and snapshots. Although later female companions (most often Ace or Sarah Jane) are often cited as the forerunners of Rose, Martha, Donna and Amy, it's really Polly who set the precedent of the brave, smart, witty, modern-woman "Doctor Who girl" with a life of her own outside the TARDIS.

Companions: Dodo Chaplet

Dodo Chaplet

(Jackie Lane)

Dorothea "Dodo" Chaplet came aboard the TARDIS during a particularly bleak time, after Steven and the Doctor fled from the massacre of the Huguenots in sixteenth-century France.  She saw a little boy get hit by a car, and wandered into the ship looking for a policeman (this was back when people actually knew what a police box was).  Steven came running back into the TARDIS warning the Doctor that policemen were approaching; fearing they would try and break in, the Doctor took off with Dodo still aboard.

Dodo was perfectly happy to be told that she was now on a possibly never-ending journey through time and space - she lived with her aunt, whom she said wouldn't miss her. Watching Dodo you get the feeling she also would have been perfectly happy to turn right around and go home and watch TV. Or get dumped on an alien planet and left there. Or have a burlap sack put over her head and asked to sit quietly on the floor. She wasn't very bright, is what I'm saying. But she was cheery and guileless and brought a much-needed touch of innocence to the TARDIS after the darkness of The Daleks' Master Plan and The Massacre.

And she maintained that cheery innocence even as she almost caused the extinction of the entire human race in her first full story, The Ark.

Here she is in a publicity shot from that story, in a non-existent scene in which she's happily carried away by a Monoid, one of the baddies of the piece.  The TARDIS landed millions of years in the future on a great spaceship carrying the last of humanity to their new home as they fled from the destruction of Earth.  This far in the future the common cold had died out, and humanity had lost all resistance to it.  Sadly, Dodo had a killer case of the sniffles, and humanity's last hope started dropping like flies (along with future-boy Steven, who also had no resistance).  The Doctor came up with a cure, but not soon enough - humanity was weakened, and when the TARDIS reappeared on the Ark seven hundred years later, humanity's former servants, the aforementioned Monoids, have enslaved the human race. Oh, that Dodo! You start to get mad at her for causing death on a massive scale and being responsible for the enslavement of humanity, but then you see that smile and you have to forgive her!

After putting this situation to rights the TARDIS trio moved on, and next encountered The Celestial Toymaker.  This story was fun and frilly with very little substance - perfect for Dodo.  Sadly, only the final episode remains, the others having been long-since destroyed by the short-sighted BBC. But here's the cast in that story - don't they look like they're having fun?

At the end of the story the trio are in fine spirits after having defeated the Toymaker, and Dodo offers the Doctor a piece of candy - which promptly cracks his tooth open. Oh, Dodo, is there anything you can't ruin? The TARDIS delivers its crew to Arizona in the old west in the next serial, The Gunfighters, so the Doctor can get some dental care from Doc Holliday. Steven and Dodo, meanwhile, dress up like Donny and Marie putting on an old-timey saloon sketch.

The Gunfighters is, quite frankly, a terrible story, but Dodo makes the most of it - the Doctor even acknowledges that she quickly lives up to "every cliché-ridden convention in the American west".  She sings and dances in the saloon, she gets taken hostage...

...and she even gets to pack a six-shooter herself.

Granted, she looks like she has absolutely no idea what to do with the thing, but that's ok, this is Dodo.  She's deadly without even trying.

Dodo says goodbye to Steven in her next serial, The Savages, and she and the Doctor travel on alone.  They land on present-day (well, 1960s) Earth in The War Machines, and things are looking rosy.  The Doctor is fond of Dodo - she reminds him of his granddaughter Susan, he once said - and she seems inordinately fond of him in return.

Unfortunately, fate - and the Doctor Who writers - aren't kind to poor Dodo. She's quickly mind-controlled by WOTAN, an evil super-computer, and brainwashed into trying to kill the Doctor.

Here she is being all evil or something.  Halfway through the story WOTAN's hold on her is broken and she's whisked off to the country to recover, never to be seen again.  At the end of the story we're told she's given her TARDIS key to her soon-to-be-replacement Polly, along with a message to the Doctor that she's decided to stay behind.  And that's the last we hear of Dodo Chaplet.

Dodo gets a lot of grief from Doctor Who fans - she's a fairly generic, unmemorable companion as they go, with neither a proper introductory story nor even an on-screen departure.  Nevertheless, I have a bit of a soft spot for her - yes, she's fairly lacking in characterization, and I still think either Katarina or Sara Kingdom would have made more interesting companions. But it's sort of charming how Dodo is relentlessly, almost aggressively cheery; she tends to wander blithely into the most dangerous of situations without a hint of concern or awareness.  She sort of like the big dumb dog of the TARDIS crew - she makes a lot of messes but she's too lovable to stay mad at.

Unless, of course, you are a writer of officially licensed Doctor Who tie-in media, in which case you probably hate Dodo Chaplet with the intensity of a supernova.  Yes, like all companions, Dodo makes a few appearances beyond what we see on the TV.  Considering how innocuous her on-screen travels were, Dodo's spin-off adventures are comparatively...brutal.

In the novel The Man in the Velvet Mask Dodo falls in love with a Frenchman from an alternate timeline, sleeps with him, and contracts a disease in the doing - actually, microscopic engineered cyborg maggots. Yay. A cure is found, but she decides to keep the maggots as a souvenir of her first time. Yes, that's right, this was her first time. (Here's a quote from the TARDIS Data Bank, a sort of Wikipedia for Doctor Who - "She was also one of the few companions known to have lost her virginity whilst an active TARDIS traveller." Fun fact, kids!)

In Who Killed Kennedy?, we learn that WOTAN's mind-control triggered a psychotic break, and Dodo spent years in and out of psychiatric hospitals, convinced that her travels in the TARDIS were hallucinations. She wound up homeless, but found hope when she fell in love with a reporter. She became pregnant just in time to be murdered as part of a plot by the Master.

Oh, also, she once killed a guy who tried to rape her.

And the moral is, if you ever travel with the Doctor, do not grant licensing rights to novelists.  They will take your innocence and piss all over it.

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.