The Companions of Doctor Who were a series of original full-length novels related to the long-running BBC science fiction television programme Doctor Who. Published by Target Books in the 1980s, they were the first original novels based on Doctor Who. (Previous Doctor Who fiction had been either short stories in Annuals or novelisations based on television serials.) The books were based on characters who had appeared in the television series as the Doctor's companions, and explored their lives after leaving the Doctor's company.
The first two books were Turlough and the Earthlink Dilemma by Tony Attwood, published in July 1986 based upon the character played by Mark Strickson in the early 1980s, and Harry Sullivan's War, written by Ian Marter, who had actually played Harry Sullivan on the series a decade earlier, published in October 1986. These books sold well, but after a third attempt (a 1987 novelisation of the 1981 Doctor Who spin-off, K-9 and Company) the series ended due to rights disputes between the publishers and the BBC. Other novels would have featured Tegan, the Brigadier, Victoria and Mike Yates.
Famous quotes containing the words doctor who, companions and/or doctor:
“It seems to me that your doctor [Tronchin] is more of a philosopher than a physician. As for me, I much prefer a doctor who is an optimist and who gives me remedies that will improve my health. Philosophical consolations are, after all, useless against real ailments. I know only two kinds of sickness—physical and moral: all the others are purely in the imagination.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“My only companions were the mice, which came to pick up the crumbs that had been left in those scraps of paper; still, as everywhere, pensioners on man, and not unwisely improving this elevated tract for their habitation. They nibbled what was for them; I nibbled what was for me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)