Mark Harrison | On 11, Jun 2023

Offering more than 600 Classic Doctor Who episodes broadcast between 1963 and 1996, BritBox and BBC iPlayer’s The Whoniverse are bigger on the inside. If you’ve watched all of the new series already, then why not join us as we turn on the TARDIS randomiser for a monthly primer on the adventures of the first eight Doctors…

In Doctor Who’s first two seasons, the model of three regular companions travelling with the Doctor in every episode worked so well that the show has periodically returned that way, with more mixed results. Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor was somewhat crowded by her TARDIS fam across her first two seasons, and so it went with producer John Nathan-Turner’s attempt to replicate the formula with Peter Davison’s Fifth Doctor in the early 1980s.

Towards the very end of Tom Baker’s record-length tenure, plans were already afoot for the incoming revamp, and Season 18 gives the Fourth Doctor three new companions shortly before he regenerates. What follows for most of the early 1980s is a clash between Nathan-Turner’s broader and more retro approach and writer-turned-script-editor Eric Saward’s darker and more grown-up vision of the show.

Enter 29-year-old Peter Davison, at that time the youngest actor to play the Doctor, and he’s surrounded with other young actors in what some have observed as a bid to compete with ever-more-popular soap operas and their attractive ensemble casts. But counter to that, they don’t seem to get on with each other much. Indeed, we only get the now more typical Doctor-companion duo in one story, and it’s the Fifth Doctor’s final serial.

Happily, Davison is a strong enough actor to stand apart from an ever-crowded TARDIS in Seasons 19 through 21, but like Whittaker after him, he’s nevertheless defined by his relationships to multiple other regulars at once. Where the Fifth Doctor is often misremembered as a naïve or innocent incarnation because of his youthful affability, he’s by turns quite anxious and sardonic, either because or in spite of his friends, and that’s more representative of his personality.

So, for this month’s BritBox Who column, we’re going to take a tour through this brand-new throwback era through its companions – their clashing personalities, their tumultuous story arcs, and their grim determination to wear the same clothes almost all the time.

Nyssa

“So much for my friendly aliens.”

We start with Nyssa of Traken (Sarah Sutton). She’s brainy and calm in a crisis and perhaps the Fifth Doctor’s best mate out of the friends we’re covering here. In a show that seems quite unconcerned with addressing her origin story whenever the Master shows up wearing her dead dad’s body (Anthony Ainley), the cool-headed characterisation at least gives Sutton something to play.

Whether she’s short-circuiting androids with a graphite pencil in Four To Doomsday or guiding Tegan through a citadel of illusions in Time-Flight, (both Season 19) she’s the grown-up. She’s often side-lined in the ensemble, but in the Fifth Doctor’s very first story, Castrovalva, it’s safe to say that everyone on Team TARDIS would be dead if not for her quick-thinking approach.

What to watch

Castrovalva (Season 19, 1982) is the most Nyssa-centric story until her departure in Season 20, but she’s generally on form in the background of most stories in between.

Tegan

“Oh, rabbits!”

We’ve previously covered the highlights of self-professed “mouth on legs” Tegan Jovanka (Janet Fielding) in her own column ahead of her return in The Power of the Doctor, but she’s worth revisiting here to observe that, in Castrovalva, the new Doctor astutely observes that Tegan is the coordinator of the gang – even though literally just met the Aussie air stewardess in the previous serial (Logopolis, Season 18) – but also spends most of the rest of his life bickering with her.

All too rarely, there’s a prototypical version of the Tenth Doctor and Donna’s dynamic at work but, as the longest-serving companion of this era, Tegan is also the longest-suffering one. Buffeted by fickle storytelling, she departs in Time-Flight (Season 19) and returns in the very next story, Arc Of Infinity (Season 20), with hardly any acknowledgement either way. You’d be hard-pressed to disagree when she calls time because “it’s stopped being fun”, but up until then at least, she gives as good as she gets.

What to watch

As previously mentioned, Kinda (Season 19, 1982) and Snakedance (Season 20, 1983) make an excellent Tegan-centric double bill, but The Awakening (Season 21, 1984) is a strong, often underrated two-parter as well.

Adric

“Now I’ll never know if I was right.”

Your mileage may vary on Alzarian mathematical genius Adric (Matthew Waterhouse). Intended as a remedy to the “know-it-all” TARDIS team comprising the Fourth Doctor, Romana, and K9, Adric comes off as an infinitely more irritating hangover from the fun times before him. Blessed with all the wit and charm and personality of a pocket calculator, he’s an arrogant, chauvinistic twerp, both as written and played. Neither Baker nor Davison particularly seems to know what to do with the character.

Unavoidably, Adric is also best known for the unusual manner of his character’s departure. And perhaps it’s an indicator of the series’ skewed conception and execution during this period that his final story, Earthshock, sees the character at his most likeable. It’s a story in which he gets to be brave and clever and selfless in a notoriously dark Cyberman outing.

What to watch

Earthshock (Season 19, 1982) – people will tell you it’s not alright to cheer at the end but, if you’ve sat through the other Adric stories, you do what feels right…

Turlough

“Are you insane? Let’s get out of here.”

Whether planned this way or simply obfuscated for depth, Vislor Turlough (Mark Strickson) is more like the mysterious Clara Oswald – a mystery wrapped in an enigma squeezed into an English public school uniform. Is he the wild card we see in his first three stories, an unwilling agent of the Black Guardian – remember him? – helping to destroy the Doctor? Or is he as flaky as in Warriors Of The Deep (Season 21), where he writes the Time Lord off for dead after he falls five feet into some water?

As with much of this era, the answer seems to vary from one story to the next. But compared to Adric, who just seemed to side with any logical would-be alien overlord who flattered his intelligence, Turlough has a backstory that casts a long shadow over his friendship with the Doctor and Tegan. The mystery of his status as an alien exile on Earth isn’t fully unravelled until the end of his time in the TARDIS. We may never know why he continues wearing that bloody uniform though.

What to watch

The Black Guardian Trilogy includes Mawdryn Undead, Terminus, and Enlightenment (Season 20, 1983), but Planet Of Fire (Season 21, 1984) ties up loose ends.

Kamelion

“I am Kamelion. Was Kamelion.”

If Adric was a less fun K9, Kamelion is an even less manoeuvrable one. Nathan-Turner and Saward were persuaded to introduce a robot companion after a demonstration of the prop by freelance effects designers, but in a staggering tragedy, software designer Mike Power died after the filming of Kamelion’s first story, The King’s Demons, meaning no one was able to operate the prop effectively.

Voiced by Gerald Flood, the automaton character only appears in two stories, both times as a puppet of the Master, and gathers dust somewhere in the TARDIS in between. Given the tragic circumstances behind the scenes, it’s the most understandable failure of execution in this era, but it’s a failure, nonetheless.

What to watch

The King’s Demons (Season 20, 1983) and Planet Of Fire (again!)

Peri

“It’s funny, but just before I met you I was saying I wanted to travel.”

American botany student Perpugilliam “Peri” Brown (Nicola Bryant) bumps into the Doctor, Turlough, and Kamelion in the ubiquitous Planet Of Fire, a story that’s busy enough without being Davison’s penultimate serial. She’s saddled with putting on an American accent and has very little time to settle in, but Bryant’s spirited portrayal still pushes the show in an encouraging direction as an era winds down.

Plus, her introduction seems to show some lessons have been learned. Nyssa never got to have it out with the Master, but Peri quickly shows herself to be resourceful against his wiles and plotting. And while Tegan constantly wanted to return to Heathrow, Peri enthusiastically joins the Doctor for further travels. Nothing good lasts too long in 1980s Doctor Who, but we’ll get to her trickier relationship with the Sixth Doctor next time.

What to watch

Hoo boy, we’re giving Planet of Fire a lot of coverage here, but also, The Caves Of Androzani (Season 21, 1984) may be both Peri and the Fifth Doctor’s finest hour.

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