Companions: Fifty Years of Doctor Who Assistants (6 page)

In terms of the ongoing narrative of the series, Ian & Barbara never surface again, until a
Brief Encounter
in which the Seventh Doctor bumps into an old Ian outside a conservatory in Greenwich. The Doctor says he is in the area visiting an old friend who is, unfortunately, out. Once home with his wife, Barbara, Ian is handed a present which has been delivered earlier that day; a Coal Hill School tie to replace the one destroyed on the surface of Vortis in the television story
The Web Planet
.

An older Ian also surfaces in the 2011 audio play
The Five Companions
. He is reunited with Steven Taylor, neither of whom have seen the Doctor since ending their travels, and both are much older now. When Ian first meets the Fifth Doctor he believes him to be a younger version of the Doctor he knew, but later learns about regeneration. He also explains that for thirty years he was a researcher, and after a bout of retirement he returned to teaching, which Barbara isn’t happy about but then again she has started writing a new book.

Both of these encounters indicate that the ‘rumour’ Sarah Jane Smith heard about Ian & Barbara, that they had not aged since the 1960s, was just that. A rumour. Of course, like everything above, until it is confirmed in the television show it remains merely a possibility.

No Expanded Universe mention of Ian & Barbara would be complete without a mention of
Doctor Who in An Exciting Adventure with the Daleks
, the novelisation of the television story of the (almost) same name, published in 1964. It is the first Expanded Universe appearance of Ian & Barbara, and is the book that begins
Doctor Who
’s forty-nine-year publishing history. It presents a truly apocryphal introduction to
Doctor Who
by having Ian, apparently older than on television, relate a story that is basically the same as its TV counterpart but with a few important differences; he is after a job as an assistant research scientist at Donneby’s (a big rocket component firm) who happens upon Barbara on Barnes Common, after she and Susan are involved in a car accident. Susan has mysteriously gone missing and Ian & Barbara meet the Doctor, who is as evasive as he was on television. They follow him to a Police Box on the common and, as per the show, they push their way in. It is interesting that neither Ian nor Barbara know each other, and he often refers to her as a ‘girl in her early twenties’, and Barbara is Susan’s private tutor. It makes one wonder what might have happened if this narrative was continued in all Expanded Universe versions of
Doctor Who
.

The first truly alternative look at
Doctor Who
came along in 1965 with the first ever
Doctor Who
cinematic release,
Dr Who & the Daleks
. Essentially a re-telling of the first Dalek serial from 1963-1964, the film differs in many key ways. Both Susan (most often called ‘Suzie’) and Barbara are the granddaughters of Earth inventor, Dr Who, while Ian is Barbara’s new boyfriend (the first occasion in which these two characters get romantically paired, and quite likely the origin of their perceived television romance, even though the film was released the day before Ian & Barbara departed the Doctor’s company in
The Chase
). Susan is a little scientist, and the apple of Dr Who’s eye, his protégé, while Barbara and Ian are very removed from their television counterparts; not a teaching credential between them. For the following film,
Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150AD
, released in 1966, things were changed a little and two new companions were introduced. First there is Louise, Dr Who’s niece and Susan’s cousin, and second there is police constable Tom Campbell (played by actor Bernard Cribbins, who would later go on to play Wilfred Mott in 2007-2010, the grandfather of future companion, Donna Noble), who stumbled into
Tardis
thinking it is a real Police Box.

Vicki has appeared in only a handful of Expanded Universe stories; less than ten short stories, only four novels and two audio books. It is not surprising, therefore, that we do not learn much that is new. The most we learn is in the 2001 novel,
Byzantium!
which reveals that she left Earth in 2493 and was only fourteen (an age contradicted by
The Myth Makers
). Her mother died when Vicki was eleven, and she wanted to call Vicki ‘Tanni’ (a name originally devised by the production team for Vicki) while her father preferred ‘Vicki’. She thought it a stupid name, which ties nicely in with her willingness to change her name in
The Myth Makers
. Most importantly in that novel we are told that her surname is ‘Pallister’, a name used in most Expanded Universe appearances of Vicki. And in the 1996 novel
The Plotters
we learn that when she was five she was inoculated against many diseases by medical laser injection.

During her travels with the Doctor, Vicki finds herself confused, having grown used to Ian & Barbara’s company, yet wishing they would find their way home. Her historical knowledge has as many gaps as it does on television; she confuses singer Dido with Sister Bliss, and has never heard of Plato, Archimedes or Socrates, although she is dimly aware of Charles Dickens. She also thinks Shakespeare is good, but prefers the works of Lynda La Plante – ironic since she would end up meeting a young William Shakespeare a few years after leaving the Doctor.

She also finds herself the unwilling object of King James’ affections in
The Plotters,
because she is posing as a boy called ‘Victor’, and in
The Empire of Glass
an alien Greld wishes to mate with her.

Two stories visit Vicki, or Cressida as she is known by then, a few years after
The Myth Makers
. First we have
Apocrypha Bipedium
which has the Eighth Doctor and his companion, Charley, arrive some time after the Fall of Troy. They are en route back to England, returning a young Shakespeare home. Vicki recognises the Doctor as a younger version of the man she knew, and so goes to great lengths to ensure that neither she nor her husband, Troilus, reveal any future knowledge of him. Eventually the Doctor explains things to Vicki and advises her and Troilus to move to Cornwall, as he is worried that she may end up becoming one of her own ancestors.

In the second of these stories, we come across an older Lady Cressida in 1164BC (confusingly twenty years before the traditional date of the Fall of Troy) in the 2007 audio book,
Frostfire
. She is living in Carthage, and tells a story of when she, Steven and the Doctor meet Jane Austen during the frost fair of 1814. During this adventure she witnesses the death of a phoenix, a cinder from which finds its way into Vicki’s eye – and there it remains until Cressida and Troilus settle in Carthage many years later. One day, missing her old life and feeling so alone Cressida cries and the cinder escapes her eye. It is still alive and able to communicate with her. She keeps the cinder in an oil lamp and often talks to it, since it is the only thing that knows anything of her life with the Doctor.

Steven has managed a much better Expanded Universe life, with many appearances in short stories and audio books, but he has only been in three novels. However, surprisingly, not much new information has been given about his past, or his life post-Doctor.

We discover in the short story
Ash
that he was given learning pills as part of his education, and in
The Empire of Glass
we are told that he spent most of his adult career in cramped quarters, with the first new smell for him being the burning forest on Mechanus at the end of
The Chase
. Also in
The Empire of Glass
Steven is seen to be flirting with Christopher Marlowe, inferring perhaps that Steven may have been the first gay companion in
Doctor Who
. During his time in space Steven pilots a streamlined Terran ship made of modified Dalek technology, and at one point, while on shore leave on Roylus Prime, he witnesses a woman being savagely beaten yet does not lift a hand to help. This guilt tortures him for some time, and resurfaces in the novel
Salvation
, compounded by the recent deaths of Katarina and Sara.

In the novel
Bunker Soldiers
, Steven is still smarting from the conclusion of the television story
The Massacre
and initially sides against the Doctor, in favour of interceding and saving lives, but the Doctor convinces him why it would be wrong to do so. We also learn that he does not believe in heaven, despite claiming to be a Protestant in
The Massacre
, since in all his travels he has seen nothing to convince himself of such a place. Indeed, he has learned to expect a rational explanation for everything he sees, even if he cannot understand the explanation.

In one touching short story, Steven and the Doctor accidentally ruin the future of a young boy called Bobby Zierath, and with more than a little guilt for his own part in events, Steven gives Bobby his panda, Hi-Fi – which, of course, is never seen on TV after
The Time Meddler
.

It is not until the audio adventure,
The Five Companions
, that we meet Steven again. Many long years have passed since he has left the Doctor. At first he is reunited with Ian, followed by the Fifth Doctor, who like Ian, he believes to be a younger version of the Doctor he knew, until the Doctor explains about regeneration. Steven is very surprised to encounter an older Sara in this story, having witnessed her death many years previously while still with the Doctor. Sara never really explains to him the reason for her survival, only that even the Doctor never could quite understand it, either. Nonetheless he is happy to see Ian, Sara and the Doctor again and, like the others, is convinced that the Doctor will not return to look them up, despite his promises to the contrary.

Since Katarina literally went from Troy to Kembel and then sacrificed herself there is no time for other adventures. Regardless of this, the short story
Scribbles in Chalk
tells of a ‘missing adventure’. There is not much that can be added to Katarina really – but this story does try to add a little something. We are told that Cassandra chose Katarina as her handmaiden because she had predicated Katarina’s death. We also learn that, although she likes Steven, Katarina finds him arrogant.

Something interesting happens in the 2003 short story,
Katarina in the Underworld
. We follow Katarina as she journeys to the Elysian fields of the afterlife. She does not have the coins to pay her way across the River Styx, and so an old woman summons the Doctor to help her. Before Hades she explains how she sacrificed her life to save millions. Persephone vouches for Katarina and she is allowed into the Elysian fields. Even as she enters she ponders that this may have been just be a dream, but even so she is convinced that the Doctor inspired her to achieve her destiny.

Poor Dodo!

On television she had a pretty rum deal – joining the Doctor without preamble or an introductory story, and then cast aside by the Doctor for no real good reason, and thus denied a final adventure. She fares little better in the Expanded Universe prose.

Salvation
, a novel published in 1999, attempts to give her a good introductory story, but only succeeds in messing up things even more. On television it is clearly stated that she ran into the TARDIS because she witnessed an accident on Wimbledon Common, but
Salvation
tells us otherwise. She is fleeing an increasingly insane alien metamorph called Joseph, who is one of six extra-dimensional beings who came into light as a result of the beliefs of those they encountered. This book also goes to great lengths to explain why Dodo’s accent changes so drastically between scenes at the opening of
The Celestial Toymaker
.

‘Dodo’ starts out a horrible nickname in school, because of her inferior North London accent; she later takes the nickname on to spite her peers, and uses one accent as Dodo in everyday life, and the other as the ‘proper schoolgirl’ Dorothea. We also learn that her mother died in 1962, while her father was institutionalised shortly after, which led to Dodo living with her Aunt Margaret, a tyrannical woman if ever there was one. These background details are contradicted in
The Man in the Velvet Mask
, in which we are told that she grew up in one of the poorer parts of London, and her parents died when she was young. She then moved in with her aunt, who was a wealthy social climber. Dodo had trouble marrying her previously poor existence with this new life, and found herself reinventing herself depending on each situation, thus explaining that her accent was ‘situational’ at best.

Just to make her life a little bit worse, the Doctor implies in
Bunker Soldiers
that her remark to Dmitri in Kiev, 1240, may have been the inspiration for the Black Death over a hundred years later. After Dmitri orders his food is thrown to the pigs, Dodo tells him, ‘You can’t just throw something away because you don’t like it,’ which leads the half-mad Dmitri to order the plague-ridden bodies hurled over the walls of Kiev at the Mongol horde. A tactic that would be later remembered and passed on.

Still, the Expanded Universe authors are not finished with her. In the 1996 novel,
The Man in the Velvet Mask
, Dodo loses her virginity to Dalville, an actor in an alternative Paris in 1804, and is infected by a virus created by mad dwarf Minksi – a virus that infects all her future lovers and possible children. In that novel we also learn that she spent most of her French lessons learning how to kiss behind the gym.