Imaginary Worlds - Traveling in The TARDIS

Episode Date: February 8, 2018

If The Doctor offered you a spot traveling with him on his spaceship/time machine The TARDIS, would you go? Would you still go if you knew what happened to all his previous companions? For many Doctor Who fans the answer to both questions is unequivocally yes. Traveling in the TARDIS will blow open your knowledge of the universe -- but you'll change in ways you can't begin to predict. In the second of my three-part series on Doctor Who, I look at whether The Doctor's companions are better off in the end, and why. Featuring Sarita Robinson, Emily Asher-Perrin, Alyssa Franke, Frank Collins, Nick Randell and Mac Rogers. Warning: spoilers ahead!Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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our disbelief. I'm Eric Molenski, and this is part two of my miniseries on Doctor Who. Now, in my last episode, I talked about the Doctor, but there's another big aspect of the show, which is that the Doctor always has traveling companions. And the origin of these characters usually goes something like this. The Doctor arrives in the UK, and it's the year the show is broadcast, which is worth mentioning because he is a time traveler. He discovers there's an alien plot that needs to be foiled. In the meantime, he meets a human,

usually it's a woman who lives in London, and she helps the Doctor save the world. He's impressed and asks if she wants to join him on the TARDIS, his spaceship slash time machine. Now, the most ingenious twist on this formula was the introduction of Amy Pond, who was played by Karen Gillan. The doctor, played by Matt Smith, has just regenerated into this body, so he's really disoriented. He accidentally lands in her backyard when she's a child, which blows her mind. He steps back in the TARDIS for what he thinks is about five minutes and accidentally comes back 12 years later. She is both thrilled and furious to see him. You hit me with a cricket bat. 12 years? A cricket bat. 12 years and four psychiatrists. Four.

I kept biting them. Why? I said you weren't real. Of course, Amy helps the doctor save the world from an alien invasion. And then comes the pitch. So what do you think? What? Other planets want to check some out.

What does that mean? It means, well, it means, come with me. Where? Wherever you like. Come with me. Where? Wherever you like. What's so brilliant about this episode is that the showrunner, Stephen Moffat, has taken the experience of Doctor Who fans,

who wished when they were children that the Doctor would land in their backyard and ask them to be his companion, and he made it actually part of Amy's character. And as I was interviewing people for this miniseries, I discovered that almost every one of them had seriously considered at one point in their life, usually when they were kids, if the doctor asked them to be a companion on the TARDIS, would they go with him? Absolutely. In my mind as a child, that's exactly what I wanted. I think that's what every child wants to do

is when they watch the program is I want to travel with the doctor. Frank Collins blogs about Doctor Who in the UK. As an adult, I really have my doubts having seen what's happened to various companions over the years. And he certainly never lets any of the companions know how dangerous this is going to be. Oh, no, no, no. It's only after the fact that he kind of, oh, by the way, it could be a bit dangerous. It's almost a bit of a poison chalice, isn't it, really, to be a companion,

because you just don't know what you're going to end up being. Nick Randall works at the BBC, and he says he also, as a kid, dreamed of going with a doctor. But now... I'm not as young as I was. I'm in a very happy, settled 10-year relationship. I've got a cat. I've got two goldfish. He gets himself into nasty, dangerous scrapes and people die. You know, if I felt he could definitely get me back for tea

and we could have an adventure which was a bit scary, but not too scary, and I knew I was safe. But not everyone feels that way. Oh, absolutely, and I'd 100% go with the Doctor. Melissa Franke blogs at the website Whovian Feminism. My only obligation is a cat, and I'm pretty sure a cat would fit on the TARDIS just fine. They could roam around and they would be fine. Emily Asher Parin writes for for Tor and she says she and her

mother were watching Doctor Who and there was a scene where a companion leaves her mother on the show to join the Doctor. Emily's mother looked at her and said, but would you have done that? And I was like, you couldn't stop me. I'd die. You know, I would be like, I'll see you later. I have no idea when. It's a time machine, but he seems like he has no idea what he's doing. So for the record, I would never have gone with the doctor, even as a kid. And I would have to probably spend the next 20 years of my life reassuring my mother. No, no, no. I told you I wouldn't have gone with him. I just got a tour. That's it. Now, in the early days of Doctor Who, the writers didn't give a lot of thought towards the companions. They didn't really have backstories or character arcs. But that changed as television changed. In fact, one of the reasons why the fans were so upset that the show was

canceled in 1989 was because the writers had finally come up with a multi-season character arc for one of the companions. What's your name, incidentally? Everyone calls me Ace. Oh, how do you do? I'm the Doctor. Sophie Aldred played the character Ace, who was this feisty teenager when the Doctor, played by Sylvester McCoy, first discovered her. But there are three rules. One, I'm in charge.

Whatever you say, Professor. Two, I'm not the Professor. I'm the Doctor. Whatever you want. And the third? Well, I'll think up the third by the time we get back to Perryville. And by the end of her run, Ace was going to become like a time lord in training. Or that's where they were heading, but the show was cancelled. Now, when Doctor Who came back to the BBC in 2005,

the new showrunner, Russell T Davies, wanted to pick up where they left off in terms of having a multi-season character arc for Companion. And he wanted to dig even deeper into who these people were before they met the Doctor. Why did they stay with him after they had many, many near-death experiences? And could they ever go back to their normal lives? But there's one question that I keep asking myself. Are they better off? I mean, we're supposed to believe, yes, they are all better people because of what they've seen and done. But I'm not so sure. And there are moments when the doctor isn't sure either, and he swears he will never take another companion again. Well, the only way to figure this out is to go aboard the TARDIS.

So, get ready to take off, just after the break. Alright, so this is another heads-up reminder. This episode is going to be filled with spoilers, because I want to talk about all the really interesting stuff that happens to these characters. And when you travel through space and time, really interesting stuff happens. Now, the companions are on the show for a very functional reason. They're supposed to be the stand-ins for the audience. Because the Doctor has been around for millennia.

He's seen it all. We need the companions to react to everything as we would. That's why I really liked Rose, who was played by Billy Piper. Like, even if she's looking at a green screen, and the special effects they fill in aren't that good because it's 2006 and the show doesn't really have a big budget back then, her reactions just feel so genuine to me that she completely sells me that they're in a whole other world. Oh, I'll never get used to this.

Never. Different ground beneath my feet. Different sky. Oh, I love this. And that's why my other favorite companion was Bill, played by Pearl Mackie. She was really genuine in her reactions, but she was also really funny, without being arch or ironic about it. What's that? That is a robot. That is not a disappointing robot. Will we understand it?

Well it depends upon what aspect of your language has survived over so many thousands of years. Emoji! It speaks emoji! Of course it does. Emoji! It speaks emoji! Of course it does. Aw, it's cute. So in that sense, it's not really a mystery why the companions go with the Doctor. They have a taste for adventure, and he shows them worlds they can never imagine. But there's a more important question we need to ask at this stage.

Why does the Doctor need companions? Mac Rogers has wondered that for a long time. He's a playwright who recaps Doctor Who episodes for Slate. But the thing that seems strange to him is not that the doctor is apathetic about these companions. He's kind of obsessed with them. Whoever the doctor is currently traveling with is the most prioritized person in the universe. And then when they stop, someone else becomes the most prioritized person in the universe. And then when they stop, someone else becomes the most prioritized person in the universe. That is nuts. That is an emotionally bizarre way to behave. Everything is fixated on the current traveling companion. The others, sometimes he runs across them later on in certain circumstances and is always very fond of them, always very pleased to see them again. But he isn't thinking night

and day about how to save them from peril or whatever. Yeah. It helps a lot that he's an alien. It helps immensely that he's an alien. Sarita Robinson has a theory about this. She teaches psychology at the University of Central Lancashire in the UK. And as part of the 50th anniversary celebration of Doctor Who in 2013, the university asked if she'd be interested in drafting psychological profiles of the doctor and his companions. And I just went, hold my coat. I've been waiting for the last all my life really to be asked to do this.

She came to the conclusion that the doctor is attracted to companions who remind him of himself. They're restless and dissatisfied with just regular old daily life. They crave adventure, the rush of adrenaline. They're very curious people, and they're also very clever in a crisis. On the flip side, the doctor does take some companions who aren't that academically bright in the sort of traditional sense,

and I think it's quite important to realize there are different types of intelligence. So sometimes the doctor selects on emotional intelligence. So that's the ability to sort of recognize emotions in other people and act empathetically. In fact, she thinks that empathy is the key ingredient that all the companions have that the doctor actually lacks, or he lacks when he's not around companions. Like take the 2008 episode, The Fires of Pompeii. The doctor is played by David Tennant. He's got a new companion named Donna, who's played by Catherine Tate. And this is their first trip back in time.

Coliseum, Pantheon, Circus Maximus. They discover they're actually in Pompeii right before the volcano is gonna erupt. Now he has no plans to save these people because they're supposed to die. But Donna begs him to change his mind. Eventually he does but strangely enough the family that the doctor saves is led by Peter Capaldi, the very actor who would later be cast as the doctor. And the way they justify this on the show is brilliant. Right from the start, Capaldi keeps looking at his reflection saying,

why did I choose this face? And then eventually he has a flashback to that Pompeii episode. It's like I'm trying to tell myself something. I think I know what I'm trying to say. Just someone. Not the whole town. Just save someone. I know where I got this face and I know what it's for.

Okay, what's it for? To remind me. To hold me to the mark. I'm the Doctor and I save people. Sarita says there's another reason why the Doctor prefers traveling with humans. They remind him of all the limitations he doesn't have. He sort of says that he likes his companions to be like mayflies because if they are like mayflies,

then they sort of remind him of the importance of life. So he doesn't like his characters to be immortal. So I'm on a winner there, I think. I'll be all right with that one. You see, the mayflies, they know more than we do. They know how beautiful and precious life is because it's fleeting. The companions also remind the Doctor of how fleeting life can be because they're almost killed in just about every episode.

Yeah, I think there's certainly post-traumatic growth that goes on, as we would say. So they have their reality shook up. They may witness things that are traumatic at the time, but they are framed in such a way. And you can see the doctor helping to frame the experiences that they've had to the point where they're seen as positive. There's also a negative but unfortunately truthful way of looking at their role in the show.

And this critique came in the show from one of the villains, this alien scientist called Davros. In the 2008 episode Journey's End, David Tennant's doctor has gathered all of his companions for the last few years to stop Davros and his evil plan. But Davros points out that the Doctor is really just using these people to carry out his plans. The man who abhors violence, never carrying a gun. But this is the truth, Doctor. You take ordinary people

and you fashion them into weapons. Already I have seen them sacrificed today for their beloved Doctor. And then the Doctor has a series of flashbacks and winces because he knows it's true. Now in real life, Doctor Who has been subject to a more serious critique. As I mentioned, most of the companions have been women. Most of the writers have been white men. That hasn't always worked out so well.

A lot of fans felt that the show did a poor job handling the racial aspects of the Doctor's first black companion, Martha Jones. There was also widespread criticism that the showrunner Stephen Moffat treated female characters as plot devices. For instance, the Doctor sometimes traveled with a woman named River Song, who turned out to be his wife from his own future. But a lot of fans felt that she wasn't treated like a character who should be developed, but instead a puzzle for the Doctor to solve. And on top of that, the women on the show just couldn't stop swooning over him. I'm an English teacher from the planet Earth,

and I've grown up with a man from space because I really fancy him. Amy, listen to me. I am 907 years old. Do you understand what that means? It's been a while. He is everything. He's just everything to me, and he doesn't even look at me, but I don't care. Because I love him to bits. Alyssa Franke felt like the companions were not getting the respect they deserved. And that's why she started her blog, Whovian Feminism.

It was one period of time that there were a number of things happening that I personally found pretty problematic. Which isn't to say that's my view of the entire show. I think there's been a lot of very great moments for women on Doctor Who. Now, Alyssa's favorite companion actually comes from the classic series, Joe Grant, who was played by Katie Manning. This is back when the third Doctor, who was played by John Pertwee, was stuck on Earth working with a government agency called UNIT that fought aliens. And Joe Grant was assigned to be the doctor's assistant.

Three months of delicate work, and now look at your ham-fisted bun vendor. But this whole place might have gone up in flames. My dear young lady, steady-state micro-welding always creates more smoke than fire. Steady-state micro-welding? Yes. So I started watching Joe Grant

when I had just graduated from college and was entering my first post-college job. And it was a sort of scary, nerve-wracking time for me. I was doing a lot of things that I had never done professionally before. I was very nervous about whether or not I was actually good at anything that I was doing. And Joe Grant starts off her adventures with a doctor really in sort of the exact same place. She's a very young woman at the time that she gets partnered with the doctor. And nobody really believes that she's good or qualified for it. She grows from there.

She's a woman by the end of her time traveling with the doctor that knows and is in control of her own mind, who's forced to be reckoned with. Even as a young boy, Nick Randall found Jo Grant to be an inspiration. She could get very scared like I would when an alien would come, but she would be brave as well. So I'd be hiding behind the sofa, terrified as she was, but I was getting inspired by the fact that she was standing up for herself as well. It's all great stuff for life skills, you know. That's it!

The thing I saw! No, don't shoot! Look! Whatever it is, you better follow it. Come on. That's actually a common experience for the companions. They get to be very brave. They save the day when the doctor can't,

which can be really satisfying if the companion is from a working-class background. Or like Joe Grant, she's just working with a pompous guy, like the third doctor. But there's a downside to all that. The companions are a little bit like war veterans. They have this incredibly intense high adrenaline experience when they're young, and then they have to go back to their normal lives.

And because the show has been around so long, we can see how this plays out in real time. Like, take Sarah Jane Smith, who was played by Elizabeth Sladen. She actually came on the show right after Joe Grant. But Sarah Jane was not an assistant. She was this headstrong journalist

who worked with the third doctor and Tom Baker's fourth doctor. Listen, listen. There are no measurements in infinity. You humans have got such limited little minds. I don't know why I like you so much. Because you have such good taste. That's true.

That's very true. Mac Rogers says he will never forget her final scene with Tom Baker in 1976. Their separation was supposed to be temporary, but the doctor knew he was not going to come back for her. And the way that that's played between the two of them is beautiful. Tom Baker and Elizabeth Sladen's chemistry is extraordinary. It's again an emotional low-key thing because they didn't do a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth on the old show. Don't forget me. Sarah, don't you forget me.

Bye, Doctor. Bye. Sarah Jane was the first companion from the classic series to show up in the modern series. And after 30 years, she had a lot to say to the Doctor, who at this point was played by David Tennant. Did I do something wrong? Because you never came back for me. You just dumped me. I told you. I was called back home, and in those days humans weren't allowed.

I waited for you. I missed you. Oh, you didn't need me. You were getting on with your life. You were my life. You know what the most difficult thing was? Coping with what happens next. No, with what doesn't happen next. You took me to the furthest reaches of the galaxy. You showed me supernovas, intergalactic battles,

and then you just dropped me back on Earth. How could anything compare to that? All those things you saw, you want me to apologise for that? Now, after she appeared on that episode of Doctor Who, Elizabeth Sladen got her own spin-off series, The Sarah Jane Adventures, which was aimed at a younger audience. Her character adopted a boy and they fought aliens on Earth with the help of his friends and a supercomputer.

The show was a hit, but it was cut short for tragic reasons. Elizabeth Sladen developed cancer and she died in 2011. Again, Mac Rogers. I remember when she passed away, like, my whole Twitter feed, I follow tons of, like, you know, Dr. Superfans, you know, like, they were just flattened.

They were just like late middle-aged grown men telling each other they loved them because they were so devastated. It felt like losing your buddy. Like, how could we ever lose Sarah Jane? so devastated. It felt like losing your buddy. Like, how could we ever lose Sarah Jane? The character of Sarah Jane shared something in common with a lot of the other companions. When you travel with a doctor, something is gained and something is lost. When Sarah Jane returned to the show in 2006, she told the doctor she had never been able to find a romantic partner because no relationship could ever compare to the one she had with the doctor she had never been able to find a romantic partner, because no relationship could ever compare to the one she had with the doctor, even though their relationship was platonic.

And she had one of the more upbeat endings. I mean, some of the companions end up trapped in the past or trapped in a parallel universe, and some of the companions, by the end of their travels, of the companions, by the end of their travels, aren't even human anymore, or technically alive. But the most controversial fate for any companion had to be Donna Noble, played by Catherine Tate. I just want a mate. You just want two mates? I just want a mate. You're not mating with me, sunshine. A mate. I want a mate. I just want a mate. You're not mating with me, sunshine. A mate. I want

a mate. Well, just as well, because I'm not having any of that nonsense. I mean, you're just a long streak of nothing. You know, alien nothing. There we are, then. A lot of the people I spoke with said that Donna was their favorite companion.

She was brassy and funny and did not have a crush on the doctor. Donna is so many, so many people, but explicitly so many women that I know. Again, Emily Asher Perrin. The idea of sort of ranting at the universe because you don't think anyone's listening. This sort of feeling that you have to be overbearing and very sort of loud and in people's faces because you don't think that anyone has any interest in what you what you're saying at all, I think is something that most women can relate to.

And I think that Donna embodies that incredibly well and also very happily not quite as young as the rest of the companions, which I think as a woman, it's really sort of aspirational to see someone, you know, someone who is over the age of 30 still stepping on the TARDIS and saying, yes, I want to do this. This sounds like fun. Now, when we first meet Donna, she's fairly shallow. She gets worked up over all sorts of petty things at her job. She wants to be married for the sake of it. No stupid Martian is going to stop me from getting married to hell with you. I'm not. I'm not, I'm not from Mars.

But Donna grows tremendously in her travels to the point where she saves the doctor and the whole universe by absorbing part of his energy and taking on his mental powers. But that kind of knowledge is not meant for a human mind. So to spare her life, the doctor erases all of her

memories of traveling with him. She begs him not to. She would rather die with this incredible knowledge in her head than go back to the person she was. But the doctor finds that unacceptable. I was going to be with you forever. Oh, no. Rest of my life traveling in the Tardis. And by wiping out all of her travels with the Doctor, Donna's character development is wiped out as well. Now, she does get married.

In fact, she even wins the lottery thanks to the doctor. And so for Donna, or at least the Donna that we met at the beginning, this would be like a dream come true. I mean, she's clearly very happy with the way her life turned out. She has no idea what was taken from her. But everybody I spoke with felt that Donna had the worst fate of any companion. And I'm still to this day heartbroken about what happened to her at the end. I think it's the worst thing I've done to a companion on that show. And I've seen companions die multiple times in old Doctor Who.

Like, here's Riley Silverman. She really saw how much more there was to the universe, which is kind of the whole point of Doctor Who. Like, the whole point of the show is, come with me and I'll show you how wonderful the universe is. And Donna's the character who was basically denied that wonder. So I think that's why, as fans of the show, we find it so hard, because we're like, but that's all we want. We want to be Donna.

We don't want to be put back into our lives. Whenever the companions go home and realize they can't really go home again after traveling with a doctor, they can't relate to their old friends and their family. I'm always reminded of this essay that Salman Rushdie wrote in the early

1990s about the Wizard of Oz. He talked about how the movie and the books have different lessons. Because at the end of the movie, we're told that there's no place like home. But in the books have different lessons. Because at the end of the movie, we're told that there's no place like home. But in the books, Dorothy realizes she can't go back to Kansas. She can't live there anymore, not after she's seen Oz. And Salman Rushdie in this essay argues that we all have our own personal Kansas and our own personal Oz in our life. Leaving home and then realizing you can

never really go back home again, not in the same way, it's bittersweet, but it's a really necessary part of growing up. And since Doctor Who has always been a family show, I think that's why so many children identify with the Companions. In my last episode, I talked about how the Doctor's regenerations can be seen as a metaphor for how we can become better people. But I think the companions tell a slightly different story about change. Evolution is important. It's necessary. But evolution also comes at a cost. Something is gained and something is lost.

But if what you gain is knowledge, then the journey's worth it. Well, that's it for this week. Thank you for listening. Special thanks to Sarita Robinson, Emily Asher Perrin, Alyssa Franke, Frank Collins,

Kelsey Jefferson Barrett, Nick Randall, Mac Rogers, and Stephanie Billman. Next time on Imaginary World's Doctor Who, I try to get to the bottom of another question that has been bothering me ever since I started watching the show. Why is the scariest thing in the universe a giant salt shaker with a sink plunger sticking out of it?

I started out thinking what everyone thinks, I think, which is that the Daleks are based on the Nazis. We obey no one. We are the superior beings. One Christmas which was called the Dalek Christmas because it was, they were everywhere. The plunger, I guess, is a little bit obvious, but then they've had it quite animated in recent series and suffocating people and all sorts of stuff imaginary worlds is part of the panoply network you can like the show on facebook i tweet at emilinski if you really like the show please leave a review on itunes it actually It actually really helps people discover imaginary worlds. My website is imaginaryworldspodcast.org.