Companions: Fifty Years of Doctor Who Assistants (13 page)

The Third Doctor

Expanded Universe

It seems that the writers of the Expanded Universe generally regard the Third Doctor’s era with a lot of affection – they just don’t seem to want to tamper with it. Most stories hold true to the television series, but unfortunately when they do add to them they often find themselves contradicted by later television episodes – in large due to
The Sarah Jane Adventures
, which often reveals new information about UNIT-related stories.

On TV Liz never travels in the TARDIS. She always seems a little disdainful of the notion that it could do even half the things the Doctor claims. However one of the most common things in the Expanded Universe is to see Liz travel in space and time. Most notably in,
The Wages of Sin
, she joins the Doctor and Jo Grant on an adventure in the past, solving the mystery of Rasputin, and later in the
Companion Chronicle
,
The Sentinels of the New Dawn
, she travels to the year 2014. It is suggested that she even travels alone with the Fourth Doctor for an unknown length of time:
Down to Earth
(printed in
Doctor Who Magazine issue
#210
) sees the Fourth Doctor visit to apologise for having never said goodbye to her – in an attempt to make amends, he offers to take her off in the TARDIS, an offer she accepts.

Liz’s departure is also the topic of many stories, with several conflicting reasons behind it. In a short story published in the 1994
Doctor Who
Yearbook
,
Reconnaissance
, Liz is visited by the Master who then hypnotises her to discover all she knows about the Doctor. Once he leaves, she is left with no memory of his visit and decides it is time to resign from UNIT. But in the previous
Yearbook
(1993) we witness her departure in
Country of the Blind
when she is offered a position at CERN, a research centre. In that story, unable to get to the Doctor to say goodbye, she quietly slips away. Several years later, in the 1996 novel
The Scales of Injustice,
it is after another disastrous encounter with the Silurians that Liz decides she has had enough and quits UNIT. These accounts, on the surface, seem to be somewhat contradictory, although in the 1997 novel
The Devil Goblins from Neptune
, Liz mentions that she is ‘always leaving’, which suggests that her involvement with UNIT is not as straightforward as it seems.

Liz’s Expanded Universe life scores a first. With the advent of the short-lived
PROBE
series of videos produced in the mid-‘90s, Liz becomes the first companion to star in her own live action spin-off series, long before
Torchwood
,
The Sarah Jane Adventures
and
K9
. In this series Liz heads an organisation called the Preternatural Research Bureau (or PROBE), created at her behest to investigate paranormal activity. Dealing with issues like psychiatric trauma and possession it is not a show for the faint of heart (and definitely not children). This series shows us a harder edge to Liz than ever seen in
Doctor Who
, as well introducing her new habit of smoking pipes (something she is also seen to do in the novel,
Who Killed Kennedy?
).

In
Shadow of the Past
an older Liz is aware of other versions of the Doctor, knowledge she probably gets from the short story
Girls’ Night In
, published in the
Doctor Who Magazine Holiday Special
in 1992. In this story she responds to an advert placed in
Time Out
by Jo and Sarah. She enjoys a night of wine and shared memories alongside future companions Tegan and Ace.

Liz’s ultimate end is something of a mystery in the Expanded Universe; in the novel
Eternity Weeps
Liz dies on the moon in 2003 from Agent Yellow, a biological weapon, and yet in the audio story
Faithful Friends: Part 3
, Liz attends a special Christmas meal arranged for the Brigadier at some point after his wife, Doris, dies in 2012. The time of her actual death is unknown (despite the events of
Eternity Weeps
), but we do know she is survived by at least one child, her daughter, Elizabeth Holub, who assists the Seventh Doctor in Prague, 2050.

A few background details are also revealed in the Expanded Universe. She was born in 1943, in Stoke-on-Trent, to Reuben and Dame Emily Shaw, and had one sister, Lucy, who by the time of Liz’s association with the Doctor, had two daughters.

Although Jo appeared in many stories in the Expanded Universe the majority of them take place during her travels with the Doctor. Surprisingly little new information is given surrounding her; their relationship is much the same as it was on TV and it is never developed in any meaningful way. However, a few bits of information are given regarding her past and future.

In
The Sarah Jane Adventures
story
Death of the Doctor
the Doctor reveals that he last saw Jo (
The Green Death
) when she was twenty-one or twenty-two. The Expanded Universe instantly contradicts this.
The Doll of Death
states that she was eighteen when she started working for UNIT, and in
Carpenter/Butterfly/Baronet
we are told that she was born in 1951, suggesting that
Terror of the Autons
is set in 1969. Not only is her birth covered in the Expanded Universe, but so is her death; she dies in a house fire in 2028, at the age of seventy-seven. It is interesting to note that at this point she is still a Jones, even though in the novel
Genocide
she is going under the name of Grant again. It may not be stated as such, but it is heavily implied that by this point in the 1990s she is no longer married to Cliff, although they did have one child, a son, Matthew.

Naturally, as we come to expect, the Expanded Universe often offers up contradictory evidence. In
The Doll of Death
she is seen to be still happily married in the 2000s.

In terms of her time with the Doctor, several writers attempt to explain a few story threads that were not really followed up on TV. For instance, the never-quite-romance with UNIT Captain Mike Yates. In
The Curse of Peladon
we learn that Jo is all set to go on a date with Yates, but it never comes about and is never mentioned again. However, in the novel
The Speed of Flight
it is revealed that Sergeant Benton and Corporal Bell set up a blind date for Jo and Mike. The Doctor gets wind of this and offers to take them both to the planet Karfel (which also solves the mystery brought about in the TV story
Timelash
where we are told that the Third Doctor once visited there with Jo and a mysterious second person – even though he never travelled with Jo and a second person during the television series). And in the short story
The Switching,
Yates asks Jo out on a date after receiving what he believes to be the Doctor’s blessing – he doesn’t know that it is, in fact, the Master who has switched bodies with the Doctor.

The social conscience that leads her to leave the Doctor is explored in the short story
Come Friendly Bombs...
as Jo requests to participate in the original CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) march of the 1960s, so she can learn why it is so important that such weapons be banned.

One more, somewhat unusual, bit of continuity is apparently cleared up in the short story
The Touch of Nurzah
in which Jo watches the Doctor undergo an almost-regeneration and sees a glimpse of his fourth incarnation. She later explains to the Doctor that he would become all ‘teeth and curls’, a phrase the Third Doctor says in
The Five Doctors
when he later meets Sarah who mentions his future incarnation.

On television Sarah spends only a season with the Third Doctor, so it is of little surprise that her time with him is the subject of very little in the Expanded Universe.

The biggest curiosity of Sarah’s Expanded Universe is that she gets to meet the Brigadier for the first time in a story that flatly contradicts their first meeting on television. The radio play
The Paradise of Death
was written by the producer of the Third Doctor’s television run, Barry Letts, but it just adds to the confusion. While she interviews the Doctor for
The Metropolitan
she is sceptical of his stories about travelling in the TARDIS, despite having experienced such travel herself – a fact the Doctor himself draws her attention to.

It becomes established in stories set after Sarah leaves the Doctor that she ends up writing books. The first instance of this is seen in the radio play
The Ghosts of N-Space
when an exasperated Sarah decides that a career as a best-selling author is better than that of a hardworking journalist – although her attempts at writing do not work out too well for her. She is joined in both these stories, by Jeremy Fitzoliver, an inexperienced office boy from her paper. In many ways the relationship between these characters is almost a template for what will later develop between Sarah and Harry Sullivan, although there is barely the same affection and respect shown to Jeremy.

In the short story
Separation Day
, the Doctor reminisces to Sarah about Jo, completely oblivious to how it makes Sarah feel. In a nice echo, we see shades of these feelings many years later when Sarah and Jo finally meet in
Death of the Doctor
– Sarah even comments that she has heard so much about Jo.

In
Playtime
, a short story from the
Doctor Who Magazine
Holiday Special
in 1992, it is revealed that a very young Sarah snuck into a junkyard in Totter’s Lane in 1963, where she not only saw the TARDIS but Susan as well (who, of course, she did not recognise at the time). Interesting as it may be, it is hard to reconcile this little moment with all that is later established in
The Sarah Jane Adventures
– she would have been twelve in 1963. Another thing mentioned in a novel that is later contradicted is her father’s locality. In
Island of Death
he is from Liverpool yet when he later appears in
The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith
he is quite clearly a Londoner.

One thing from the television show that is not contradicted, but merely followed up on is the Doctor’s attempt to get Sarah to Florana in
Death to the Daleks
. In the short story
Neptune
the Doctor is shown to still be attempting to fulfil this promise and they finally make it there in the year 5968 in the short story
The Hungry Bomb
.

A major alteration does occur during Sarah’s time with the Third Doctor in the Expanded Universe, although in this instance it is intentional. In the two-part novel
Interference
Sarah witnesses the Doctor getting shot and, upon dragging him into the TARDIS, she can do nothing but watch him regenerate. Many years later, Sarah’s memory of the events on Dust is confused – she remembers the Doctor both regenerating and dying. In the event, it is a deliberate alteration of the timeline by the Faction Paradox, which is ultimately restored in the novel
The Ancestor Cell
.

The Third Doctor’s companions are not greatly added to in the Expanded Universe, although he does have a number of one-off companions in the pages of the
Doctor Who Annuals
and
TV Comic
and even, at one point in the 1990s, in a stage show (these companions, Jason and Crystal, are covered under later, when they became bona-fide Expanded Universe companions via the Big Finish adaptation of
The Ultimate Adventure
and the sequel story,
Beyond the Ultimate Adventure
).

The first non-TV companion to remain with the Third Doctor for more than one story is a young boy called Arnold. Introduced in the pages of
TV Comic
, he remains with the Doctor for fifteen issues (
#1133-1148
) covering two and a bit stories. On a world run by children the Doctor is sentenced to imprisonment, and one of his jailers, Arnold, is convinced to free him and help him overthrow the regime of Oswald (
Children of the Evil Eye
). He joins the Doctor, having a further adventure against the evil Spidrons in
Nova
before he is returned home at the start of
The Amateur
.

In 1993 we were introduced to Jeremy Fitzoliver in the radio play
The Paradise of Death
. Although he was never intended as an Expanded Universe companion, his later appearances in two anthologies
Short Trips: Repercussions
and
Short Trips: The Solar System
show him travelling alone with the Doctor. Jeremy is an office boy at
The Metropolitan
, the paper at which Sarah works, and is sent along as a photographer to assist Sarah at the grand opening of Spaceworld on Hampstead Heath. From the outset it is quite clear that Sarah doesn’t think terribly highly of Jeremy, who is definitely
not
a photographer – Clorinda, Sarah’s editor, sends Jeremy as some kind of joke. ‘She did her best,’ is the message Clorinda gives to Jeremy for Sarah, ‘so she sent me. And you’re not to laugh.’