Planet Skaro Nails The Great Companion Debate: Round 1

[Si Hunt]

It's a question that has haunted man, and the occasional jumpered woman, since the dawn of 100,000BC. Who is, and who isn't, a "proper" Doctor Who companion?

It used to be simple. A companion stepped into the TARDIS until she or he left amid a blaze of publicity and a perky replacement. Then came Sara Kingdom, the "companion" who travelled in the TARDIS but didn't span more than one story! WTF? If you include her, surely that leaves the gates open for Herbert, Benton and Ola the Heat Vampire?! And then we had Katarina, the companion who spanned more than one story but still died after a handful of episodes! The New Series has pledged its own "is he or isn't it?" Companion in the shape of Adam, the two-story assistant that the Doctor couldn't stand, even if he made some of us boys salute Lord Andy Pryor for his casting decision that week.

So anyway. Let's settle this once and for all! In a series of polls, we will vote on the most contentious of companions, and decide once and for all who "counts" and who doesn't.

Please also state your reasoning, and try and persaude your fellow posters who may be wavering!

Also if you have any nominees for future polls, folk you think are unfairly excluded from the companion rosta, please drop them a mention.

First up we have... Katarina! Does she count or not? She lasted only one story, bar a cameo in "The Myth Makers", and less than six episodes. She barely visited any planets at all, and there is little even left of her "tenure" in the archives.

So does she count? You decide!



Si.

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

A definite yes from me. She was only the victim of some the production team's indecision about what sort of female companion the Doctor should have after all. She never really had the chance to prove herself.
Oh and I've never bought that "must be in at least two stories" business so I suspect you can guess which way I'm going to vote in Round 2.

[Si Hunt]

Is that likely to be a myth though, that the production team were indecisive? The first scene she recorded was her death scene. Surely they knew what they were doing from the off?

Si.

[SiHart]

I'd say that's almost certainly not true and she was designed to be a stopgap.

That doesn't change the fact that she's a companion. The Doctor invites her along for travels. Yes, she doesn't last long, but that doesn't change the fact.

[Paul Monk]

One of the definitions in the Oxford English Dictionary of the word companion is " As a term of familiarity or contempt".

That seems to sit nicely into the Doctor Who use of 'companion' and is therefore a good criteria to measure the charcters by. For me its whether the TARDIS team build up some form of relationshiop with the person or not.
Did anyone ever really get to know Katarina at all? From memory I don't think they do. Neither the Doctor or Steven seem to really have any bond with her therefore I am going to say no, she's not a companion.

[Rob McCow]

I'd like to put her forward as a "Schrödinger's Companion" in that she simultaneously is and isn't a companion, but that would make things far too easy wouldn't it?

Katarina. She was a Daughter of The Gods. She was a child of Troy who was unexpectedly forced into the Doctor's TARDIS. She knew little of the strange journey through the Underworld she went on, but she did leap forward a few thousand years' of knowledge to find out that Space is a Vacuum.

If you asked Steven Taylor whether Katarina deserves the legendary 'Companion' status, he would definitely say "Yes!" and probably punch you for questioning it.

And yet... she didn't last very long, did she? Six episodes, if that? Katarina hardly even made her mark before she sacrificed herself.

It would be just as easy to cite the great Peter Haining in these matters. For it was written in the book of 'Doctor Who The Key To Time' that there were companions and Lo! One of them was named 'Katarina' and she was in two stories.

Actually I think she was a companion. My reasoning is that if you went to the pet store and bought a pet goldfish, but the goldfish died within two days (because it got trapped in the airlock on your fishtank or something) then you would still count it as a pet that you had owned. Therefore, like a goldfish, Katarina had the staying power to at least make it back from the shop and into the fish tank for a couple of days before going belly up and floating on the surface like a dead log.

[Si Hunt]

But Peter Haining thinks Peter Cushing was a proper Doctor.

Si.

[SiHart]

He was a Doctor, just not The Doctor.

But that's a different argument!

[J.R. Southall]

Sorry, can't accept someone who was in one-third of a story as a companion, regardless of whether she was invited aboard or crossed a story-border or travelled in the TARDIS or whatever.

Yes, the definition of 'companion' is somewhat nebulous. But it also must mean something, whatever you pin the definition as.

For me, I'd say you have to have been 'friends' with the Doctor for at least two whole stories, and in succession. That would make you a 'companion'. So Adam just about makes the grade, but Katarina (and Sara Kingdom) most certainly don't. Otherwise Lynda with a Y is a companion too, and so is Brett Vyon.

[Comicart]

Certainly one strike against her is that none, (virtually none?) of her screen time is existant, but that she holds no relevance to the greater storyline, has never been referenced in the show, and spent so little time on board should factor in as well. If she qualifies, then that kid from season one of the new show who ended up with the interface in his forehead should too. He came on at the end of one episode and was out by the end of the next story.
Anyway, just chiming in. Who fan from the US. Discovered you folks when I saw an Australian Ebay auction of your audio CDs and did some digging.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

This is sort of like the rather pointless arguments about whether Pluto is a planet, or where the line between a planet and large rock is. It's just an argument about how you label something, rather than about what the thing you are labelling actually is. And in this case it comes down to each person's individual definition of what "companion" means in this case. So we're getting odd things like they must be in at least two stories, but must be in at least more than one-third of one of them (even if that story happens to be twelve episodes long and so therefore one-third in this case is as long as most normal stories). How utterly arbitrary. Plus let's not forget that the concept of a "companion" probably didn't even exist until the 80s, when people started making official lists of things and suddenly people who travelled in the TARDIS had to be divided into two groups of people with an ill-defined and arbitrary dividing line.

Having said that, Katarina travelled with the Doctor for a (short) time, back in the days when it was a one-way trip, and so she's definitely a companion

[Alex Me]

Yeah, she travelled with the doctor between stories. She was just a very short lived companion.

I recall reading somewhere that she was originally intended to last longer, but the production crew had second thought on having a companion from the past, as it would require everything being explained to her. I'm not to sure how true that is, and it was clear they changed their minds a year or so later with Jamie and Victoria.

[Anthony Williams]

Katarina is a bit of an odd one. I certainly think that she holds more of a right to be considered a companion than Sara Kingdom, or say Lynda with a Y.

Yet, she was only in one full story, before being killed off in the next one. Of course, as we all know, she's known for being the very first "companion" to die.

But was she a companion? Well, it depends on the definition of companion. I've seen arguments that anyone who travels in the TARDIS and is present for more than one story is a companion - ergo, Katarina would be a companion, and Lynda not. But what about say, Benton? Then surely he would be considered a companion?

At the end of the day, I can't think of a solid methodology that determines who is and isn't a companion, and I believe that it's all up to personal preference. At the end of the day, I think I believe that yes, Katarina counts as a companion.

Anyway, just chiming in. Who fan from the US.

Incidentally, welcome to Planet Skaro! I'm not American, but I'm a Brit living in the US! There are a few of us colonial types on here these days!

[Si Hunt]

It's just an argument about how you label something, rather than about what the thing you are labelling actually is.

Except if the Doctor himself considers a "companion" to be a special, discrete entity, as we might presume to be the case from a number of stories, such as in "Trial" where he specifically says "There have been many companions" and others. It's pretty obvious that the Doctor almost considers this a "position", maybe even like a job description, seeing as how he is aware of the term, and indeed the role. This would tie in with the almost uncanny way that a new companion seems to join as another leaves - the Doctor clearly considers this a vacancy which has to be filled when someone leaves it.

Si.

[Si Hunt]

I love how Ant counts Katarina but not Sara, and how JR doesn't count Katarina, but includes Bret Vyon! Perhaps we should have a thread for him.

So if Bret and the Brigadier are both bona fide companions, that creates an interesting situation!

Si.

[Anthony Williams]

But was the Brig a companion!?

[Jon Masters]

Well, in Resurrection of the Daleks under the influence of the Dalek Mind Probe (yes, The MIND PROBE !) the Doctor clearly remembers both Katarina and Sara K as being significant figures from his past, and given who else appears in the same sequence, they'd appear to be on the same level as other companions.

The Brig also appears, but that's fine because he not only appeared in several stories but travelled in the TARDIS in Mawdryn (3 Doctors doesn't count as a TARDIS journey since the whole of UNIT HQ travelled, not the TARDIS as a separate vehicle - so that discounts Benton)

Of course, the only problem with using this as your yardstick is that Leela isn't a companion.......

[shada pavlova]

I saw this thread and felt I just HAD to re-enter the fray.

This is how I define a companion: Somebody who travels in the TARDIS for at least two consecutive adventures WITHOUT going back home in between. Note that I didn't say "stories", I said "adventures". To define what counts as an "adventure", I try to think of how the Doctor himself (or one of his companions) would go about recounting their adventures. For instance, if you wnt back in time to 1966 and collared the First Doctor on C-Day and asked him to tell you about what happened when he visited the planet Kembel, in between the "hmm"s, "ah"s and "anti-radiation gloves"
















"...drugs", he'd probably only tell you about what happened up to when they stole Mavic Chen's Spar.

By this logic, Sara Kingdom counts as a companion, because she had about three or four "adventures", and more if you count the BFCCs. Grace Holloway doesn't, and neither does the Brigadier, because neither of them had two or more consecutive "adventures" away from their natural time and place.

Okay, that's me done, let the fan-rage commence.

[J.R. Southall]

JR doesn't count Katarina, but includes Bret Vyon!

Aw, I only said you'd have to count Bret Vyon if you counted Sara Kingdom!

*

The 'travelled in the TARDIS' thing can be discounted entirely, unless you'd like to discount Liz Shaw.

And two consecutive adventures is fine, even if you're counting Katarina's role in DMP as being the equivalent of one normal-sized adventure. But just remember, she doesn't feature at all in parts one to three of The Myth Makers; rather, she appears at the end of the story in order for her first adventure to be The Daleks' Master Plan... which is why I believe it's so difficult to count her.

[Larry]

well I guess i'm in the camp that says if you've travelled in the TARDIS, with the Doctor than that makes you a companion.

[Andrew Curnow]

But poor old Liz never travelled in the TARDIS!!

I'd say that Katarina is a companion - it may be a rather dull definition, but I think that if the character is integral to a specific story (or stories even) then they're not a companion; if they're with the Doctor, and don't really add much to the story other than the writer giving them a bit of "What's that Doctor?" and "Ooh please rescue me" material to keep their agent happy, the sort of role that you could easily give to another character entirely without any difference... then they're a companion.

So Katarina, given that actually the story of the Daleks' Masterplan doesn't fundamentally need the character of a Greek handmaiden who doesn't do anything really except mop the poorly Steven's brow a bit, and follow the menfolk around, is a companion.

[J.R. Southall]

Interesting definition!

[Rob McCow]

a Greek handmaiden who doesn't do anything really except mop the poorly Steven's brow a bit, and follow the menfolk around, is a companion.

But that wasn't Katarina's viewpoint at all! Her journey through the Afterlife was far, far more important to her than anything that happened to any of the other characters.

[Paul Clement]

My definition of a companion is someone who travels with the Doctor as a part of his general travels. By this rationale, Katarina is a companion. From the Doctor's perspective, she was someone who would travel with him until such time as she chose to leave. The fact she died in the next story doesn't detract from the fact that the Doctor would have had her continue to travel with him had she survived. The only person who I would deem a companion that doesn't fall into this category would be Liz, who obviously never travels with the Doctor. There is an argument that she would be as much a companions as the rest of the UNIT crew, which to my mind is a 'not companion' status, but there are aspects to the character and her relationship with the Doctor that alters her status.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

Liking this thread ... yes I only got around to watching Katarina only surviving episode last weekend ironically. And overall I have to say I did like her, and thought it a shame she wasn't used more ...

But yes in my book she's a companion proper.