Today the 31st May 2013 is in WHO fandom the birthday of a character that for some splits us as a collective down the middle. Yes of course I’m talking of Professor River Song. Love her or hate her you cannot deny that the Moff man has well and truly made a mark by introducing a, for some, brilliant and new loved character to thicken the plot or at least back in 2008 it did. And for others introduce a character who really does your Swede in with all her smarmy flirty nonsense. But I digress. River is an example of several companions (if you class her as a companion) who has a love or hate relationship with the fans. In this blog entry I have chosen 3 fans that personally I love and another 3 that personally I hate. Before I begin well and true I apologize now if I offend anyone with my choices. But as some might say “thems the breaks.” Firstly I think I’ll get my least favorites out the way.
Dorothea Dodo Chaplet - Dodo for me is an incredibly horrid creation of a character created for the first Doctors time. Her original use was as an every day girl to be whisked off to fantastical adventures in time and space. Introduced at the end of The Massacre when she mistook the TARDIS for an actual police box she ran in looking to call the police because she’d witnessed something iffy going on. In this first scene and the first episode or so of The Ark she used a regional accent. But funny enough the prim and proper BBC of the day didn’t like this and made her speak with the normal for those days RP accent. I was willing to let the accent issue go for a while but theres only so many times that you can stand hearing her wine “but Doctor?” “how Doctor?” and of course “Steven looooook”. If I’m gonna be honest I was thrilled when she was booted out of the show without even a proper goodbye scene in The War Machines. I’m sure if the writing staff had considered even a smidgen of character development I may have liked her some what more but nope nothing about her past or anything important to make us as fans like her. But anyways that's Dodo, lets jaunt on to my next least liked companion.
Adric - ah poor Adric of course joined the TARDIS during State of Decay and left in quite frankly the brilliant Earthshock. He was really a bit of a wet blanket wasn’t he? All he seemed to do was moan, trip and hurt his ankle, moan a bit more and then storm off for a jolly good sulk. However he did have one redeeming feature. That of his death. In TV history he was only the 3rd companion to die after Katarina The Daleks Masterplan and Sara Kingdom also Masterplan. His way of death causing the destruction of the Cybermen on the space freighter and then crashing into the Earth is a pretty epic way to go if you ask me. When he joined he was meant to be a bit of a maths wiz kid but he couldn’t stand up on his own when on the TARDIS you had the Doctor himself an all round genius, Nyssa, again a bit of a clever clogs who also was a bit of a looker :) and Tegan, not really that clever yes but by heck she could definitely give the most frightening of space monsters a good yelling and telling off.
Amy Pond - yes I know she’s really only just left but I really cannot stand her. All she seemed to do was yell a bit and try and get off with the Doctor. If I were Rory I’d have shown her the door years ago. Yes she was head strong and had some brains I guess, when it came down to it was a bit of a tart who really didn’t care much for her own husband and kept trying to get some action from her 1100 year old son in law. What the Moff man was thinking when she was created I’ll never know.
Right after those 3 lets get on to the companions that I did like. Starting with:
Romana - introduced in The Ribos Operation played by the late great Mary Tamm and then after her frankly bonkers regeneration by the wonderful Lalla Ward. Romana was what a companion should be. Not just a screaming shouty girl with no brains and a big buzzom. No, no Romana was brains, looks and a general brilliant assistant for the Doctor. She played off his eccentricity and wasn’t afraid to correct him when he was wrong about something. I’m glad with Romana that when Big Finish started their audio plays, she was and is featured in some of them. Also its nice to see how the Doctor copes with a fellow Time Lord on board.
Romana - introduced in The Ribos Operation played by the late great Mary Tamm and then after her frankly bonkers regeneration by the wonderful Lalla Ward. Romana was what a companion should be. Not just a screaming shouty girl with no brains and a big buzzom. No, no Romana was brains, looks and a general brilliant assistant for the Doctor. She played off his eccentricity and wasn’t afraid to correct him when he was wrong about something. I’m glad with Romana that when Big Finish started their audio plays, she was and is featured in some of them. Also its nice to see how the Doctor copes with a fellow Time Lord on board.
Wilfred Mott - you're probably thinking “waaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh?” but yes I think Wilf was a brilliant character and I always thought that yes even though he is an old man he had a boyish air about him when the 10th Doctor was about. They played off each other so well and it was truly brilliant to see how pained the Doctor was when he realized that it was Wilf’s fault he would have to regenerate. I always think that a meeting of Wilf and the 11th Doctor would be fun to see.
Jamie McCrimmon - Jamie joined in the 2nd Doctor’s 2nd story The Highlanders and stayed with him right up until the end of The War Games. I always thought Jamie was great, his and the 2nd Doctors chemistry was and is such a great thing to watch. A fine example of this is at the start of Tomb of the Cybermen. Jamie taken from the 18th century came round to things quickly and always had something to say. I think that a primary male companion needs to be re-introduced, because when it was done in the 60s it worked, and I think it could work again today.
So there you have it, 6 companions half of which I don’t care for and 3 of which I do. Its been a nice little thing to write and has been a nice way to break my blogging mad head :). Its been nice to write for you all and I hope you enjoy this blog entry. I’ve been Legeon and I hope to write more blog entries in the future and also host some sessions for the Bar. But for now take care all.
