There have been many different travellers aboard the Doctor's famous time and space machine, the TARDIS, and when we join the crew in "Soap of Fatal Death", it is no different. So just Who is the current incarnation of the Time Lord, and what do we know about the friends assisting him on his travels?

In this regeneration, The Doctor is a calm, likeable yet authoritive figure with a toussle of light brown hair. He dresses somewhere between an Edwardian gentleman and a tramp, with a battered checked jumper beneath a dandified frock coat and finished off with an elegent trilby. The Doctor likes his comforts around him, and this incarnation runs the TARDIS always with fresh supplies of Battenburg cake and English Tea at hand.

The Doctor sympathises with the everyman, immediately taking to victimised Liam Hansen in his last adventure, but doesn't spare his enemies (or his friends!) when he has a point to make. Indeed, everything points to something rather dark bubbling beneath the surface of this incarnation - his private rooms aboard the TARDIS are always locked to his friends, and one of them may be about to find out that the forgiveness of a Time Lord only runs so far when mistakes cost lives...

Not a lot is yet known about the background of reliable, unfazed Nick - except that he has rather special mental powers, suggesting an ancestry or history we may find surprising. These powers make him both helpful to the Doctor, but also vulnerable - the evil Protii recently exploited them to almost destroy the time line. But contrastingly, Nick is perhaps the most human of the TARDIS crew, with his love of Cher and the charming twentieth century soap opera "Clear Waters", which he never misses an episode of - no matter where in time and space he is. Nick would be well suited to settling down with a nice girl, but is quite happy for the moment to continue exploring time and space with the Doctor.

Poor Rob was rather young when he first came aboard the TARDIS, on the day Autons burst into the shoe shop where he worked on Monserrat Road, Putney. Bored by his dull, suburban life with his Mum and Beatles records, he didn't think twice before accepting the Doctor's offer of a life of adventure. That all seems like a very long time ago now. Rob loves the Doctor with all his heart, but finds mistakes easy to make - the loyalties of a young man as insecure as Rob are easily twisted. Rob's biggest battle is for doing the right thing - which isn't easy, when you arn't even sure who you are...

You never choose your friends, but this unlikely team have bonded together to save the Universe on a regular basis. Ideally, they'd be friends forever. But time, space and fate very probably have other ideas...