Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart: UNIT and its unflappable commanding officer were regular figures in Dr. Who for the first half of the Seventies. It's odd to realise that the iconic Brig and his, er, unit were largely absent for a decade and then, after Battlefield, for another fifteen years and the debut of the Tenth Doctor in 2005.
Introduced in the era of the Second Doctor and the de facto employer of the Third, the Brig also encountered the Sixth Doctor on audio and in a novel. Rejuvenated in the New Adventures and widowed in the EDAs, the Brig became the lover of a warrior queen in a medieval parallel Earth. The audio Brig, meanwhile, rescued the Eighth Doctor from a US branch of the Hellfire Club while the tv Brig assisted Sarah Jane Smith. Sadly, the Eleventh Doctor was informed last year of that Brig's death by a phone call. Old soldiers never really die, however.
Cassie Rice: owner of a diner outside 1950s Roswell in the animation Dreamland. Cassie and her friend Jimmy Stalkingwolf helped the Tenth Doctor fight the Viperox. Oddly, he failed to comment on her resemblance to Jenny, his cloned "daughter"...
Catherine "Cat" Broome : cigarette-smoking toughie who made her sole appearance in the novella Companion Piece, travelling with the Seventh Doctor. Cat turned out to be an android although she didn't know it.
Chang Lee: reluctant member of San Francisco street gang responsible for the shooting of the Seventh Doctor in 1999. Manipulated by the Master but switched sides to befriend the newly-regenerated Eighth Doctor.
Charlotte "Charley" Pollard: the first audio companion for the Eighth Doctor, jolly Edwardian adventuress Charley was also the first companion to openly declare her love for the Time Lord. Somewhat spoiled and a little precious, Charley's good humour and adaptability tempered her privileged background. After parting from the Eighth Doctor, she subsequently travelled with the Sixth! So she prefigures Rose Tyler and River Song.
A tangled skein in the Web of Time, Charley was replaced in the memories of the Sixth Doctor by a Dalek prisoner named Mila. It's complicated.
Chris Cwej: An Adjudicator from the 30th Century, blond, buff Chris was the precursor to Jack Harkness. In the course of the Virgin novels he goes from naive trainee Judge Dredd to insecure, weepy neurotic. That's what travelling with the Seventh Doctor will do to you. Cwej is the go-to companion for Most Sexual Encounters.
Lady Christina De Souza: slinky adrenaline junkie and burglar who accompanied the Tenth Doctor on a London bus to another planet.Although it would have been fun to watch two thieving aristocrats roam the universe, it was not to be. Christina's speech about the adaptability of the aristocracy seems to have been one of the most divisive things RTD ever wrote.
Compassion: The Eighth Doctor's living Tardis, replacing the original temporarily in the BBC EDAs. The distant and spiky Compassion was a member of the Remote, a race influenced by signals and transmissions.
The Contessa: a young Time Lady in the Battered Suitcase Theatre Co. play Warsmith (above).
Craig Owens: the Eleventh Doctor's flatmate and "Bestie" (after Amelia Pond.) James Corden, amazingly, made new father and working stiff Craig a charming and likeable companion in the mould of Donna Noble.
C'rizz: fey chameleon-like alien from the Divergence pocket universe. Pronounced like Cerys (i.e. "Kerris"). Despite his monastic lifestyle, he turned out to be a killer, like Baal-Pteor in the Conan story Shadows in Zamboula. The death of C'rizz caused a rift between Charley Pollard and the Eighth Doctor.
Crystal : tremulous club singer from The Ultimate Adventure stageplay and the audio Beyond the Ultimate Adventure. Romantic interest for French aristo Jason.
Destrii: amphibious enemy turned companion of DWM's Eighth Doctor. Wild child Destrii used a gimmick similar to Nightcrawler's image inducer to wear the disguise of a young, black human female. Other members of Destrii's species can be seen in Torchwood and the Sarah Jane Adventures.
Dorothea "Dodo" Chaplet : waif-like Dodo entered the Tardis by mistake but was welcomed by the First Doctor thanks to a (very) vague resemblance to granddaughter Susan. This child-woman with the wandering accent was cast in the Rita Tushingham mould but never won over audiences. Summarily written out in The War Machines, Dodo has had the grimmest of fictional fates: contracting a venereal disease, having a breakdown and being shot dead in conspiracy thriller Who Killed Kennedy.
Donna Noble: Runaway Bride Donna was a shrewish temp who had been a patsy in the Racnoss Queen's plots. She rejoined the Tenth Doctor, her new empathy a check on his more alien impulses. A biological metacrisis saw her transformed into a Time Lord hybrid but tragically, she had to revert to her earlier, vapid persona to survive. The warmest and certainly funniest companion of Nu Who finally got her happy-ever -after ( and a winning lottery ticket) in The End of Time.
From this baker's dozen, I would include Charley and the Brig in the Top Twenty but Donna is definitely in the Top Ten.
Next: E to I
All images are presumed copyright of their respective owners
No comments:
Post a Comment