By Jeremy Lewit

Fans of Britain’s science fiction fantasy “Doctor Who” have their favorite incarnation of the central time-traveling character, but he isn’t the only changing face in the cast – the companions also change, people who travel through time and space with him. The average companion is a modern Earthling along for the ride so us poor, normal viewers at home can understand all the sci-fi nonsense the Doctor knows. Some companions are helpful, and some were more trouble than they were worth. Which raises the question: who might have been a better choice? Who should the Doctor have teamed up that he didn’t?

Time travel is a risky way to get your kicks. As often as the Doctor pretends to be playful, nonchalant even, about knocking about the continuum, he is more than willing to get himself and his traveling companions into dangerous, even melodramatic danger. So, how does a Time Lord pick a suitable lesser life form to partner up with?

There’s the theory that an alien Time Lord needs an everyday, time-bound point of view as a moral bellwether. Others believe he needs relationships with people to help ground him from all the abstract information he gets lost in. That’s, as wikipedia might decree, written from an in-world perspective: the real explanation is the show needs the companions to be the voice of the audience. They ask the Doctor to explain what’s going on. Nevertheless, from the Time Lord’s point of view: do you really want to have to constantly teach everyone how not to risk all of your lives everywhere you go?

Take the Fifth Doctor, played by Peter Davison. His companion, Adric, perhaps the most notoriously disliked by fans, was much more trouble than he was worth. In “The Visitation”, Adric spends most of the time complaining about how useless he is, and exasperatingly escaping the death his stupidity should earn him. While on the run, the Doctor meets an ex-actor turned highwayman, Richard Mace, a resourceful, roguish gentleman who, despite his vociferations, takes seeing alien technology quite well, and manages to help out quite a bit. Mace seems a much better choice to bring along for a bit of intergalactic swashbuckling, and he certainly was more charismatic. The patter around the TARDIS console could have only been improved.

Of course, Richard was a man. Most of the Doctor’s companions have been attractive young women. Why and wherefore is left as an exercise for the student. The modern series only introduced a constant, season-long male companion for series 6, and he comes attached to the hip of red-headed sparker Amy Pond. In defense of the series, the older doctors did usually have an younger man around to play action hero, and all the young women aren’t just damsels-in-distress. Romana was a Time-Lady, often more knowledgeable than the Fourth Doctor himself. The Seventh Doctor seemed to be training his explosively attractive assistant to be a Time’s Warrior in her own right when the original series ended.

The Doctor rarely seems to have looked specifically for a companion, and has met all sorts of people he absolutely refused to take along. In “Rose”, the Ninth Doctor wouldn’t take Rose’s boyfriend Mickey with him because he was a xenophobic coward, but later on, Mickey became a close ally and traveled in the TARDIS many times.

Whose your favorite ally who didn’t get an extended ticket on the TARDIS? Of all the people he didn’t take with him, who do you think he should have?

   

   

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