Companions
The Doctor almost always shares his adventures with up to three companions, and since 1963 more than 35 actors have been featured in these roles. The First Doctor's first companions were his granddaughter Susan Foreman (Carole Ann Ford) and her teachers Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill) and Ian Chesterton (William Russell). The only story from the original series in which the Doctor travels alone is The Deadly Assassin.
Dramatically, the companions' characters provide a surrogate with whom the audience can identify, and serve to further the story by requesting exposition from the Doctor and manufacturing peril for the Doctor to resolve. The Doctor regularly gains new companions and loses old ones; sometimes they return home or find new causes — or loves — on worlds they have visited. Some have died during the course of the series.
Previous companions have reappeared in the series. One former companion, Sarah Jane Smith (played by Elisabeth Sladen), together with the robotic dog K-9, appeared in an episode of the 2006 series nearly 13 years after their last appearances in the 30th-anniversary story Dimensions in Time (1993). Sladen also starred as the character in an independent film spin-off, Downtime, in 1995. Afterward, the character was featured in the spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures. Sladen once again appeared as Sarah Jane in the final two episodes of the fourth series of the new Doctor Who, and again appearing briefly in the 2009 Christmas special The End of Time. In the 2010 Sarah Jane Adventure episode, "Death of the Doctor", Sarah meets Third Doctor Companion Jo Grant (now Jo Jones,) and both Sarah and Jo run into the 11th Doctor. The Doctor tells Jo he saw her with her family when his previous form, the Tenth Doctor, was dying, and told Jo he was very proud of her.
In the 2005 revival, Billie Piper played the Ninth Doctor's companion, Rose Tyler. She stayed with the Doctor for the first two series until the series 2 finale, "Doomsday", in which Rose becomes trapped on a Parallel Earth with her mother and the parallel universe version of her father. The Doctor is not able to collect her, but he holograms himself to her in order to say goodbye. She confesses that she loves him. He is about to reply when the hologram disappears. They meet again in "The Stolen Earth" (series 4). In "Journey's End", the series finale, the Doctor takes Rose back to the parallel world with his clone, who is almost exactly the same as him and has all of his memories, but has only one heart and will visibly age. The two of them kiss and the other Doctor remains with her in that world. Rose appears for a brief moment in The End of Time before she ever meets the Doctor. A recurring theme in the series is "Bad Wolf." In "The Parting of Ways" Rose soaks up the time vortex in order to take the T.A.R.D.I.S. back to the Doctor and Captain Jack. In doing so she disperses the words "Bad Wolf" throughout time and space. Whenever Rose is about to return, the hint is given by hiding the words "Bad Wolf" somewhere in the episode.
Captain Jack was also one of the Doctors companions who reappears in many different episodes later on. He is also an undying human, caused by Rose Tyler when she was under the influence of the time vortex. He is a comedic character that flirts with any living creature he comes across. Captain Jack is also the main character in the spin-off series, "Torchwood."
The companions of the Tenth Doctor included a large ensemble, many of whom reappeared in "Journey's End" and/or the 2009 Christmas special The End of Time. Of this large ensemble were Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman) and Donna Noble (Catherine Tate). Martha first appears in the opening episode of series 3 of Doctor Who ("Smith and Jones") as a medical student whose hospital is transported to the Moon by the intergalactic police-for-hire, the Judoon. After this episode Martha stays with the Doctor until the series 3 finale ("The Last of the Time Lords"). Donna Noble first appears before Martha in the 2006 Christmas special, "The Runaway Bride", when her fiancé turns out to be working for the spider-like Empress of the Racnoss. Donna does not become a regular companion until series 4 "Partners In Crime".
Karen Gillan played the Eleventh Doctor's companion, Amy Pond, along with Arthur Darvill, who played Amy's husband, Rory Williams.
Jenna-Louise Coleman joined the cast as the Eleventh Doctor's new companion, Clara Oswin Oswald, in the 2012 Christmas special.
Though not always considered a companion, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart was a recurring character in the original series, first appearing alongside the Second Doctor and finally alongside the Seventh. The actor Nicholas Courtney, who portrayed the Brigadier, had previously also starred in the 12-part The Daleks' Master Plan. He appeared on television with every Doctor of the classic series except the Sixth, but appears with him in the charity crossover special Dimensions in Time and audio adventures from Big Finish Productions. Lethbridge-Stewart, again played by Courtney, appeared in Enemy of the Bane, a two-part episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures spin-off in 2008, more than 40 years after the character was first introduced, making him the longest-serving ongoing character in the franchise beside the Doctor himself. He and UNIT appeared regularly during the Third Doctor's tenure, and UNIT has continued to appear or be mentioned in the revival of the show and its spin-offs. In an episode of the sixth revived series, "The Wedding of River Song", the Brigadier is said to have died peacefully in his sleep, following Courtney's death earlier in 2011.
Also sometimes not considered a companion, Captain Jack Harkness (a human from the 51st Century) has appeared alongside both the Ninth (as a companion) and Tenth Doctors and actor John Barrowman has stated that he thinks it would be a "great idea" to appear with the Eleventh. Besides his various adventures with The Doctor, Harkness is also a protagonist in the spin-off series Torchwood.
Similarly, River Song (Alex Kingston) has become a recurring character since the series' revival. She is an ambiguous character with knowledge of the Doctor's future. In "A Good Man Goes to War", it is revealed she is the daughter of Amy and Rory, the Doctor's then-current companions. She first appeared in "Silence in the Library" alongside the Tenth Doctor, and her role has increased since "The Time of Angels". In "The Wedding of River Song", River and the Doctor marry; though this occurs in a redundant timeline, they both consider themselves to be husband and wife.
Read more about this topic: Doctor Who?Yer, Characters
Famous quotes containing the word companions:
“The poet is no tender slip of fairy stock, who requires peculiar institutions and edicts for his defense, but the toughest son of earth and of Heaven, and by his greater strength and endurance his fainting companions will recognize the God in him. It is the worshipers of beauty, after all, who have done the real pioneer work of the world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“To coöperate in the highest as well as the lowest sense, means to get our living together. I heard it proposed lately that two young men should travel together over the world, the one without money, earning his means as he went, before the mast and behind the plow, the other carrying a bill of exchange in his pocket. It was easy to see that they could not long be companions or coöperate, since one would not operate at all. They would part at the first interesting crisis in their adventures.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)