Companions: Fifty Years of Doctor Who Assistants (9 page)

An astrophysicist from an undefined point in the twenty-first century (
The War Games
) Zoe stated quite specifically that she was
born
in the twenty-first century, although in
The Mind Robber
she explained how she read
The Hourly Telepress
from the year 2000.

Zoe Heriot – Wendy Padbury
(
The Wheel in Space
to
The War Games
)

Zoe first meets the Doctor and Jamie in
The Wheel in Space
when she is working as a librarian. Highly trained in logic (which, the Doctor points out, only allows people to be wrong with authority), she is considered to be ‘all brain and no heart’ by her colleagues, especially Leo Ryan. She realises this is true and wants to feel more and not be like the students usually produced by the parapsychology teachers.

Her need to ‘feel’ expresses itself immediately upon meeting Jamie. She is fascinated by his girl’s clothing, having never seen a kilt before. This immediately annoys Jamie, and Zoe realises he is an easy target, setting the scene for much teasing and bossiness for the rest of their association. Her logical approach is called into question as she spends more and more time with the Doctor, who is the most illogical and instinctive person she has ever met. The Doctor intrigues her greatly, and when she learns about the TARDIS her curiosity is taken to a whole new level. So after being refused entry, she stows away as soon as the Doctor and Jamie’s backs are turned. The Doctor spots her, and gives her the choice; no doubt because he is still weary of the reasons behind Victoria’s departure.

Despite witnessing the Doctor and Jamie’s previous encounter with the Daleks by way of thoughts being transmitted to the TARDIS scanner by the Doctor (
The Evil of the Daleks
), Zoe elects to remain and thoroughly enjoys her first trip to the planet Dulkis (
The Dominators
). She is more than happy to assist the Dulcians, encouraging them to resist the oppressive Dominators, although she does make the usual first-traveller mistake of giving away too much information about the TARDIS and how they arrived on the planet.

When the TARDIS is removed from regular time to escape an exploding volcano, Zoe has to explain to Jamie the danger they are in, and the concept of ‘nothing’ being outside the ship is something she has no problem understanding. While there, she sees an image of her home city – a sprawling futuristic metropolis quite unlike anything ever seen on twenty-first century Earth! This image is soon swept away when she finds herself alone in the Land of Fiction (
The Mind Robber
); she reacts with sheer terror at being removed from everything she finds familiar. Her knowledge of history is not very good, but she is aware of some of the classic tales, like Theseus and the Minotaur, Perseus’ battle against the Gorgon Medusa and
Gulliver’s Travels
, and is also a fan of the Karkus’ adventures in
The Hourly Telepress
. She displays some basic self-defence training, and is temporarily turned into fiction by the Master of the Land of Fiction. Her photographic memory also comes into play when she corrects a mistake the Doctor makes as he reassembles Jamie’s face, thus altering his appearance for a short time.

Upon arrival in the 1970s (
The Invasion
) Zoe is enticed into a brief stint of model work by fashion photographer, Isobel Watkins, and through the subsequent friendship she discovers a much more normal, fun-loving side of her character. In particular, she finds posing for the camera ‘great fun’. Yet she finds it hard to relax while the Doctor and Jamie are off finding Isobel’s father and can’t help but sense that something is wrong. Isobel and Zoe encourage each other to visit International Electromatics and come up against the robotic secretary. Frustrated by its unwillingness to help, and refusing to be beaten by a ‘brainless’ box, Zoe sets it an unsolvable puzzle by use of the computer language ALGOL, a chance for her to prove that she is better than a machine. It is Zoe that computes the attack patterns needed to defeat the Cybermen spaceships, which leads to one UNIT soldier remarking that she is, ‘so much prettier than a computer’, a comment that pleases Zoe greatly.

On the planet of the Gonds (
The Krotons
)
Zoe displays knowledge of geology. She recognises the mica rocks and likens the Gond city to those built by the Incans. It is while there that the Doctor admits that Zoe is something of a genius, which can be irritating at times, while Zoe believes the Doctor to be almost as clever as she is. This appears to be proven when she initially gets a better score on the Kroton teaching machine but she is trumped as soon as the Doctor realises his mistake.

She is an expert in space flight and has total recall, which comes in useful when learning to fly Professor Eldred’s rocket in
The Seeds of Death
.

Like Jamie, Zoe is returned to her own time by the Time Lords, and her memory of the Doctor is erased, save her initial adventure with him. She doesn’t want to leave him and hopes that they will one day see each other again. It is sad that once she is returned to the Wheel, all that she learned and experienced is taken from her, and so she reverts back to the ‘all brains and no heart’ Zoe we first met. Although for a moment she can’t help but think that she has forgotten something.

We never see Zoe again, except as a phantom, alongside phantom Jamie, produced by the mind of Rassilon in the Dark Tower on Gallifrey in
The Five Doctors
.

The Second Doctor

Expanded Universe

There is a fascination with the companions of the Second Doctor among authors of the Expanded Universe material – what happened to them once they left the Doctor? With the erstwhile companions of the First Doctor, the writers seem more intent on expanding the background of these characters, giving them reasons for acting the way they do on television. Not so with Ben & Polly, Jamie, Victoria and Zoe...

One thing is certain in the minds of the majority of
Doctor Who
fandom, Ben & Polly end up together and most likely get married. Much like Ian & Barbara, writers of the books and comics seem intent on bringing these two characters together.

First of all there is the little matter of Polly’s surname. In the original character outline she is named Polly Wright, sharing the same surname as Barbara. It is a name that never makes it to the television screens, but it is confirmed as her surname in the 1995 novel
Invasion of the Cat-People
by Gary Russell. In this story we also learn that both Ben & Polly were born in 1942, a point later contradicted in the 2009 audio book
Resistance
, which tells us that Polly was born in 1943. We also learn that her father is Doctor Edward Wright and her mother the former Miss Bettingham-Smith. Polly later considers that she took them both for granted, spending so much time away from home enjoying herself. Another important point is mentioned – Polly and Barbara are not related, they simply share a common surname.

For Ben’s own part, not much of his personal history is revealed; save that when he was fourteen he snuck aboard his father’s ship, and as a result of his interest in the sea-faring life, the captain promised him a job when he turned fifteen.

Otherwise, the Expanded Universe stories set during their travels with the Second Doctor do not deviate much from what we already know on television, but a special note must be made of instances from the 1968
Doctor Who Annual
. In this collection of stories we see a different side of their journeys. These stories are at odds with their television counterpoints, especially the characters inter-personal relationships. In one story the Doctor favours Polly over Ben, considering her sensible and smarter than Ben. This may explain why, in another story, Ben and the Doctor have a very contentious relationship. In yet another, Polly manages to operate the TARDIS, something she never does on television. In the audio book
The Forbidden Time
(2011), we learn that Ben & Polly consider Jamie a ‘little brother’.

Much has been made of their lives since leaving the Doctor and once again it is Polly who receives the most attention. In the 2005 comic
The Love Invasion
published by
Doctor Who Magazine
there is a brief moment where the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler rush by at the top of the Post Office Tower in 1966 and witness Ben proposing to Polly. In
The Five Companions
Polly takes Ben home to meet her parents, much to their horror. But Ben & Polly each go on to marry other people. However, in the 1998 short story
Mondas Passing
the estranged couple meet up in 1986 – but separate as friends after reminiscing about their time with the Doctor and Jamie.

Polly’s life by the turn of the twenty-first century comes under the microscope in Joseph Lidster’s short story
That Time I Nearly Destroyed the World Whilst Looking for a Dress
published in 2004. Lidster describes her as something of a music mogul. She regularly features in
OK!
,
Hello
and
Heat
and has been married several times. Her first husband, Simon, is dead and she also, at some point, marries a gay boy-band member. As a result she suffers a few bouts of excessive alcohol dependency and bulimia. She has a son, Mikey, and by the end of 1999 she fears she will mess his life up too. She goes on a rather bizarre journey through time and encounters the First Doctor, Ian and Susan in Sherwood, and later the Fifth Doctor, Tegan, Peri and Erimem – the latter she has a catfight with. Eventually, as 2000 comes to pass, she encounters the Second Doctor and Jamie once again. The TARDIS crew take her to Ben, who is now running a pub in Sydenham, and the two finally admit their love for each other.

Before meeting the Fifth Doctor again in
The Five Companions
, Polly takes to searching the internet to find other companions of the Doctor. Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart has erased all such information, but they communicate via email and are joined by companion of the Fifth Doctor, Thomas Brewster (
The Three Companions
). The last we see of Polly in the Expanded Universe is in the 2012 play
The Five Companions
where she finds herself in an alternative version of the Gallifreyan Death Zone, coming into contact with several past companions and the Fifth Doctor. She admits to the Doctor that she feels like a useless companion, but he reminds her of how she stood up to the Cyberleader in 1986. She parts company with the Doctor once more, certain she will never see him again, but not before she tells him that she and Ben are, indeed, married.

Other than finding out that Jamie is twenty-two in the 2013 audio book
Shadow of Death
we learn very little that is new about him, save that he knows all about the Doctor’s regeneration from Ben & Polly, as revealed in the 1997 novel
The Dark Path
. The more interesting stuff comes after he is returned to Scotland following
The War Games
.

Before we get to that, however, we need to consider his solo adventures with the Doctor in the pages of
TV Comic
from 1968 to 1969. Trying to place these adventures has been a bone of contention among
Doctor Who
scholars for decades, but Jamie does appear to be older than he is on television, which does muddy the waters somewhat. For some unknown reason he is initially living in 1960s Scotland and working at a tracking station in
issue #872
. His final appearance is in
issue #898
, and nothing is said about where he goes; he is just not there from the following issue and never returns.

To explain away the obvious age difference of Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines in the 1986 adventure
The Two Doctors
, Season 6B was created by the authors of
The Discontinuity Guide
(first published in 1995 by Virgin Publishing). It suggests that before the Doctor was regenerated and exiled by the Time Lords he was, in fact, used as an agent. This is never confirmed beyond the guide until the 2005 novel
World Game
by Terrance Dicks, in which the Time Lords do indeed set him up as an agent – the alternative is his execution (a change from the television series, wherein he is merely threatened with exile). At the end of the novel the Doctor demands to have assistance on his missions. Consequently the Time Lords agree to return an older Jamie to him – albeit with his memory altered to include an awareness of their mission and the ‘knowledge’ that Victoria is absent studying graphology (as established in
The Two Doctors
). Various short stories have been written, seemingly set during this Season 6B, but mostly they see the Doctor travelling alone, with the exception of the 2007 audio book
Helicon Prime
. It is, in fact, distinctly possible that this older Jamie is the one seen in the pages of
TV Comic.

An older version of Jamie continues to appear in other Expanded Universe material including a Jamie some forty-two years after he left the Doctor. He appears in
The Glorious Revolution
in 2009 visited by an agent of the Celestial Intervention Agency of Gallifrey, who removes the memory block placed on Jamie by the Time Lords. At this point Jamie is happily married to Kirsty McLaren (who appears in the television story
The Highlanders
) with at least eight children and an unmentioned number of grandchildren. Once the Time Lord agent solves the problem of Jamie’s past, Jamie asks for his memory block to be restored since he doesn’t want the knowledge of his travels with the Doctor to threaten his happy life.