Companions Poll: The Eighth Doctor

[Rob McCow]

"I came back to life before your very eyes, Grace. But does that make you an official companion? And if we say you're a companion, then why not Cass? She didn't want to travel with me either."

"These are my companions, though they were probably not the ones you were expecting."

"All my companions, Charlie, C'rizz - oh wait not C'rizz you were rubbish. Fitz! What about Fitz eh? And Kroton... but if we're counting you we might have to count Davros! Who could ever forget Izzy? Or was that Destrii? Which one was the fish? Chang Lee! Did you count? Apparently I travelled with Bazima - who in Rassilon's name was that?! I'll have to Google that one!"

"Power up the crystals, Cardinal - I've got an appointment with Uncle Borusa. And he doesn't like to be kept waiting, he simply doesn't have the time!"

Lost? Try the Tardis Core Eighth Doctor Companions Wiki: http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Categor...tor_companions

[Andrew Curnow]

It's Anji, end of discussion. Move along now.

[Wayne]

Charlie Pollard for me.

[Rob McCow]

While I've chosen Izzy! Although she started out as a sketch, she developed into a very well-rounded and interesting companion.

[SiHart]

Charley Pollard- one of my favourite companions of all time.

[Andrew Curnow]

No, no. It's definitely Anji.

[Dirk Gently]

Charlie Pollard for me.

What he said.

[Anthony Williams]

LUCIE BLEEDIN' MILLER!

[Jon Masters]

Charlie might have got my vote pre Neverland, but then she made the error of falling in lurve with the Doctor and forcing us all to endure the horror that was Scherzo.

Lucie would be a close second, until they went all New-Hoo Crazy and made the stories more about her than the Doctor.

Fitz, OTOH, was just this geezer, you know ?

[Junkyard]

Lucie B. Miller. Has to be. Although Charlie Pollard is a close second.

[Tanlee]

Quite illogical of me but I'm going to go with Lucie Miller.

I only say oddly because I always found her a fun ladette companion, and had she had a TV era she'd be up there for me with the Romanas, Amy, River, Clara and Rose for 'ding-dong! the Doctor is in and his patient needs her shot!' sex appeal (possibly even enough to warrant a self-employed hand-job in a way previously only Billie Piper did for me- even back in her 'Honey to the B' jailbait years )

But, I always found it near impossible to overlook the black stain of Orbis, which for me must be the most skewed, tasteless and downright *wrongest* Doctor Who story (as in, making me wish the cancellation/end of BBC contract had come sooner) since Warriors of the Deep. For the same reason, in that instead of doing an optimistic story about the Doctor prevailing and saving the day, it decides for no reason at all to go for an utterly mean-spirited vile ending where in contrived fashion everyone dies for no reason and the Doctor and friends just slip away trying to deny responsibility for their utter failure in their narrative role to a downright illiterate degree, with us left with the worst impressions of them for again no decent story reason.

And worst thing about it for me is the mean-spiritedness exhibited my Lucie. Sure any RTD companion might in response to the Doctor's amnesia about them start whining selfishly at what an affront this is to their womanly ego that demands to be noticed and remembered by the bloke because it's all about them! 'Me me me me me! It's not fair!'

But I can't think of any companion out there who'd behave so deplorably as to think the appropriate response to this and the perfect answer to his possible head injury or confused state of mind was to violently smack him one. I'm sorry but this is just disgusting behaviour from Lucie and based on an idiocy that suggests no thought or respect has gone into portraying her realistically... which like Warriors sums it up really, no thought no respect. Just horrid petty sound and fury. To say Nothing of her maliciously wounding that poor jellyfish girl by biting her and leaving her howling in pain like a harmless unassuming little toddler left distressed and confused by experiencing their first soldering iron burn from a particularly psychotic and incomprehensibly vindictive school bully.

Worse it came off like by this point they'd started to get the Rose complex with her and assume the popular audience loved this little fish-torturing monster as much as they wanted them to and started treating her as though she was never wrong and beyond reproach despite her appalling behavior, when nothing goes against the show's moral message further.

I found this an annoying constant in many of them actually. Max Warp was great fun (though not an audio for shandy drinkers if you get my meaning) but I can't help think pitching fiesty Lucie against a moronic misogynistic twatty radio DJ couldn't have been playing more safe with the odds.

Likewise in Sisters of the Flame/Vengeance of Morbius the writer seems almost as terrified and paranoid as Russell when commisioning Sarah's return for the new show. Namely what if we put Lucie in a scene with classic female characters from the good old days of the show, and had to try making Lucie look better than them?

And so it is with the Sisterhood of KArn. They used to be a cruel almost Arab nation sect of religious fanatics bordering on xenophobic lynch mob. But at least they were honourable, graceful, mature, devout and more importantly nurturing to each other and to females in general. They were the archetypal sister's keepers.

In this they're duplicitous, needlessly cruel out of sheer malice and ignorance, and lie and pretend and make false promises to lure their victims into a trap. I can't see any prior Doctor wanting to save or protect them when letting them die would probably be for the universe's best. Instead of a compassionate nurturing nunnery, they've been retconned into some horrid two-faced high school mean girls clique. And it especially rings false that they're willing to murder Lucie in cold blood for no reason at all when they know shes a good kind-hearted person, and it should be completely against the sisterhood's principles to ever harm a fellow female without serious good cause. It just came off as making Lucie look good by making them look bad.

Blood of the Daleks final scene with Lucie going from surpise and disappointment that the Doctor decided not to sod off and leave her, to being affronted and offended to learn he is still an atroctiously bad, barely even half revised anti-climax, and reveals that the makers so love her feisty ranty moments that they'll contrive them out of think air. Which bothers me because I am sick of trash like BB, The Jeremy Vile Show, Eastenders the new BSG and the RTD era Doctors and companions convincing the youth that being a hotheaded, petty belligerent who fights and acts based on the worst emotional imbalances is somehow the makings of an interesting character, when frankly nothing could be more boring, compared to a character of strength of self control, restraint and integrity.

Actually the whole story came across as a poorly revised, excessively overwritten mess. Not least in that the story basis is that the Doctor knows Klint's Daleks are just as bad and in need of extermination as the real Skarosian deal, despite having no evidence of this being true and much to suggest these Daleks have harmed no-one unless their own life is immediately threatened (indeed their first contact with the evil Skarosian Daleks isn't so different in deference and inexplicable to the Thals in the first Dalek story).

But I guess that's testament to the moronic emotive moral ghastliness of Warriors of the Deep and RTD Who (i.e. Dalek to Doctor "you kill, I kill, we are the same..." what bollocks!!! there's a quantum realities of various tangented parrallel universes of difference between killing evil to save the rest of the world or universe, and killing as a means to destroy said world and universe) to put forward that killing in self-defence as a last resort is *just* as bad as killing as a first resort as part of some kind of warped fascistic elimination rhetoric, which in a despicable way, in both, ends up validating the latter completely, in the idea that any action that isn't appeasement is wrong, so what have we got to lose by using the total annihilation weapon, and worse, that it's possible to suggest that the victims of a genocide the Doctor inexplicably and snidely allows clearly had it coming. After all they responded predictably with violent means of self-defence, that *proves* they were savages all along doesn't it?....



This is *definitely* a byproduct of the revisions because apparently in original script, there was a thread in which Hayley Atwell's character was meant to try experimenting with mutating herself into a Dalek too, believing it will give her strength of character and enhance her will, only to find gradually the Dalek will that's overrunning her isn't her own and is leaving her miserable and afraid of losing control completely, hence explaining her all too willing suicide later...

This would've explained the Doctor's position better. I mean pragmatically it's less a question of the threat these new Daleks will be to the universe, and more like his decision in the conclusion of The Sea Devils that allowing this small amount of the species to live when it's only going to lead to further reinforcements being sent and thus further deaths on their side as much as any of the millions caught in crossfire, and thus it's perhaps better to put the waking ones back to sleep, and not let the sleeping ones be woken up. Add this angle to it and you have more of a case of suggesting these new Daleks were still beyond reason or negotiation whether their intentions or nature were genocidal or not, and also that their existence is a 'perpetual nightmare' and that in a way the Doctor is almost humanely euthenasing them.

Anyhow.... despite which I think Lucie Miller/To The Death is what clinched it for me. Featuring some of the strongest characterisation of a companion in any medium, and the most authentic and from the heart dialogue I've heard in a long while (I'm thinking particularly of the scene where he's trying to persuade her like a broken record that he has to go back to Amothist and she comes out with all her rage and sense of betrayal blaming him for all that happerned because he didn't get here in time... and then can't apologise enough because even she knows it was a downright horrible thing to blame him for).

So yeah, Lucie Bleedin Miller wins!

[dalekkiller]

Hello TC