Mel Bush - Character Biography

Character Biography

Mel first appears in the serial Terror of the Vervoids, part of the 14-part story The Trial of a Time Lord. At this point, she and the Sixth Doctor have been travelling together for some time. The events of Vervoids are shown as part of a Matrix projection of future events being shown by the Sixth Doctor to the court, so from his point of view, he is seeing an adventure he will have with Mel even before he meets her in his own timeline. At the end of Trial, the Sixth Doctor leaves with this future Mel, presumably to drop her off somewhere, meet her past self for the first time (from her point of view), and then carry on from there. (This scenario is portrayed by The Trial of a Time Lord screenwriters Pip and Jane Baker in their novelisation The Ultimate Foe.)

Mel is at present the only one of the Doctor's companions (apart from his granddaughter and original companion Susan) never to have her actual first adventure with the Doctor chronicled on screen. Series producer John Nathan-Turner indicated his intent to chronicle this adventure in Season 24, which would have followed Trial of a Time Lord. However, the subsequent departure of lead actor Colin Baker prior to production of the new season made this impossible. Aside from the continuity issues arising from "The Five Doctors" that are never addressed nor apparently acknowledged, Mel is the first companion who had already met the Doctor before he met her and vice versa, and the only such companion in the classic era, setting a precedent for revived era companions such as River Song and others.

Mel is a computer programmer from the 20th century who comes from the village of Pease Pottage in West Sussex, England. She has an eidetic memory, and a cheery, almost perky personality. She greets most situations with a warm smile and good humour, and is an optimist whose views extend to believing the best of people's natures, but can also scream with the best of them. She is a health enthusiast and a vegetarian, often encouraging the slightly portly Sixth Doctor to exercise more. She is present (albeit unconscious at the time) when the Sixth Doctor regenerates into his seventh incarnation, and continues to travel with him. In the serial Dragonfire, she reunites with the galactic confidence trickster, Sabalom Glitz, whom she met in The Trial of a Time Lord and decides to travel with him on the Nosferatu II, leaving the Seventh Doctor with new companion Ace.