#AtoZChallenge2023: Doctor Who Companions

 "When you run with the Doctor, it feels like it'll never end. But however hard you try you can't run forever. Everybody knows that everybody dies and nobody knows it like the Doctor. But I do think that all the skies of all the worlds might just turn dark if he ever for one moment, accepts it."

- River Song

More than time and space, more than aliens, more than maybe even the TARDIS and the Sonic Screwdriver, it is the Companions that define the Doctor.

The role of the companion is dramatically a simple one. They are the eyes and the ears of the audience in the Doctor's world. They stand in for us. 

Historically the job of the Companion was to scream, to get captured, and ask "What is it, Doctor?"  Certainly, we saw a lot of that in the early years and even later on. But in 60 years the companions have changed with the times. Susan knew popular music, Jo Grant was very fashionable, Sarah Jane was a go-get-them reporter, and Leela...well I have to get back to her.  There is no way I can go through all the companions here, even all the ones I liked the most, but I will do some.

Susan - Susan is the Doctor's first companion and his granddaughter. Like the Doctor she is a Time Lord, though we don't see her doing much other than having knowledge of the future. She doesn't regenerate, as far as we have seen, but the actress Carol Anne Ford is still alive and could return.

Jamie McCrimmon - A companion of the Second Doctor Jaime breaks the stereotype of companions. First off he is male. Though he is still showing off some leg, since as a Highlander he wears a kilt. He has no problem talking back to the Doctor and has been a fan favorite for years. How much of a favorite? Well this is going to get it's own post later! He also has appeared in more episodes than any other companion. 

Brigadier Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart - The Brig is another stereotype-breaking companion. First seen with the Second Doctor, he was there for all the Third's Doctor exile on Earth when they both worked for U.N.I.T. (yes, you guessed it, more on that later!) The Brig was no nonsense, by the book and was already tired of the Doctor's shenanigans. They butt heads all the time but there was obvious great respect and even love between them.  As he got older (and encountered the Fourth, Fifth, and Seventh Doctors) he showed his respect more. The Seventh and Twelfth Doctors in particular expressed their respect for the Brig.  Sadly the actor, Nicholas Courtney, passed in 2011. But the Brigadier's daughter, Kate Stewart, continues her father's (and the Doctor's) work as U.N.I.T.'s scientific advisor. 

Sarah Jane Smith - Sarah Jane. She started out as a companion to the Third Doctor and then the Fourth Doctor where she became one of the most favorited companions of all time. She was a reporter looking for a story about U.N.I.T.'s mysterious scientific advisor. She was so popular that she came back in the new series with the 10th Doctor and then again in her series with the 11th Doctor.  Sarah also was the only companion to get not just one, but two spin-off shows.

Honestly, seeing her come back with the 10th Doctor is one of the highlights of the new series. 

Leela - Leela was so different as a companion to what had come before she also gets her own post.

Romana I and II - I always like Romana. She was a Time Lord sent to help the Doctor recover the Key to Time.  She was smart, funny and was more than a match for the Doctor. At the end of her first season, she regenerated and Mary Tamm became Lalla Ward. I always had huge crush on Lalla Ward. I was not alone, since she and Fourth Doctor Tom Baker got married. Though they got divorced soon after. 

Adric - Ok. Now to be fair, I never liked Adric. I thought he was whiny and a jerk. I was also not alone in this. There is a rumor that when Tom Baker was filming his last scene where he regenerates into the Fifth Doctor (Peter Davidson) he turned to Matthew Waterhouse (Adric) and said "Adric, you're a cunt and always will be."  Ok. maybe harsh.  Adric is here though for his exit. Adric was killed off. The first time I ever saw that and I was in shock! Just killed and there was nothing the Doctor could do about it. 

Perpugilliam "Peri" Brown - Peri was a new companion for the Fifth Doctor and was unique in that she an American. I always thought it might be due to Doctor Who's growing popularity in America. She is also the only companion to call the Doctor (the Sixth Doctor now) an "asshole" I was shocked. But I also admit I had a bit of a crush on Nicola Bryant (she is not American at all I learned). 

When we last see Peri her mind and body are taken over by the villainous Kiv. King Yrcanos (played by the amazing and always over the top Brian Blessed) had fallen in love with Peri and ended killing her, Kiv and Sil, and everyone else.  I understand that this ending was her idea.  We later see Peri in 2022. She married Yrcanos and became known as the Warrior Queen.

Dorothy "Ace" Gale McShane - was a chemistry student bored with her life on Earth. She managed to whip up a Time Storm and was transported in time and space where she encounters the Seventh Doctor. Her story becomes central to the Seventh Doctor's as he investigates her past. She is more akin to modern companions really. Plus she liked to blow things up.

Rose Tyler - Rose was the first new companion of the rebooted series in 2005/6 and she was the perfect point of view character for new viewers. They can discover the Doctor's universe as she does. She was quite popular and I have to say I was very, very pleased she was not killed off. I talk more about her in my Bad Wolf post.

Capt. Jack Harkness - Capt. Jack almost got his own post. He brought many firsts to Doctor Who. He was an American played by an American (ok American-Scottish), he was openly pan-sexual, he may not have been all he seemed and was certainly not a "good guy" when he started. But he was changed (in a lot of ways) with his time with the Doctor and Rose and became a well loved character. So well loved he got his own spin-off Torchwood.

River Song - Ah. River. So much to say about her. So much, in fact, she is getting her own post.

Amy and Rory - The first married couple on the TARDIS and the best friends of the Doctor.  The chemistry between the three actors was amazing. Amy and Rory would leave the Doctor in a tragic way (no, they did not die). But their legacy lives on in the form of River Song and Rory "The Last Centurion" Williams.  Rory made every other husband in the universe look second-rate.

Clara Oswald - The Impossible Girl. She met the Doctor on the Dalek homeworld, where she died. Then she met him again in Victorian England...where she died.  And then again in London in modern times where...she didn't die, and traveled with the Doctor. When the Doctor was forced to go to his own grave and see the rip in time his death caused. Clara jumped in to save him but got lost in his own timestream. It was here we find the Doctor's darkest secret. That in between his 8th and 9th regeneration there was another Doctor...the War Doctor and it was he that destroyed the Daleks and Galifrey.

Bill Potts - Bill didn't walk the Earth, or absorb the heart of the TARDIS, she was just a girl that kept the Doctor grounded. She was also the first openly lesbian companion.  In the end, she was converted to a cyberman thanks to the Master, but she was rescued by a girl she had fallen in love with who had merged with a synthetic living fuel. She rescued Bill and then they traveled the universe together.  To give you an idea of the respect the writers gave these characters they were named Bill and Heather, named after William Hartnell (the First Doctor) and his wife Heather.

All images are used with permission from the BBC and are copyrighted 2023 by the BBC.

#Dungeon23 Tomb of the Vampire Queen, Level 4, Room 4

 Going back to Room #2, and taking the tunnel on the left (now on the character's right) takes them down another tunnel.

This tunnel is long and makes a lot of turns.  It opens into a very large cave. There is a glowing portal near the far wall near the ceiling.  Out of the portal a bunch of flying figures.

These are tiny Dragonettes (2+2 HD, attacks #3, (claw, claw, bite) 1d3+!/1d3+1/1d6+1 + Breath Weapon.  Their breath weapon is a puff of hot smoke that is mildly irritating causing 1d4 hp of damage or half on a save. 

They fly in and eat a pile of Rot Grubs feasting on the corpse of a goblin.

If the characters ignore the Dragonettes they will eat the grubs and fly off.  If the characters approach the grubs they will be attacked and there is a chance the rot grubs will also attack.

There is a small stream that runs through this cave. It comes from a waterfall and flows into a hole in the ground. The water is dark, cold and has a sulfury taste, but it is otherwise fine.  There are blind fish in the stream the characters can try to catch. If they are using spears to get fish then the fish have AC 4.

It will take the PCs a couple of hours to fully investigate this cave, party due to its size and complexity of the terrain.  They cant reach the portal, there are no rocks near enough and the stream is not deep enough.

Note: Tonight's visual was created using Stable Diffusion XL from NightCafe.

#AtoZChallenge2023: Doctor Who Bad Wolf

"No, no, in this form, I'm called...Bad Wolf. Are you afraid of the big bad wolf, Doctor?"

- The Moment in the form of Rose Tyler/Bad Wolf.

Bad Wolf was an "easter egg" / recurring theme/motif in the first season of the Doctor Who revival in 2005/2006.  The ninth Doctor (in his only season) and his companion, Rose Tyler, kept running into the words "Bad Wolf" wherever they went in Time and Space.

At first, it seemed it was all the places where the Doctor was going, but in the end, it was revealed to be Rose. During the final episode of the season, the Doctor has to face off alone against the enemy he thought he had destroyed, the Daleks. So to protect Rose, he sent her to the TARDIS and had it take her home to 2006. 

Rose, not wanting to leave the Doctor behind and not knowing how to operate the Doctor's TARDIS (his time machine, come back on T-day for that!) forces the console open and accidentally absorbs the heart of the TARDIS. Which is essentially, a contained black hole.  She takes the TARDIS back to the future where the Doctor is about to be killed by the Daleks (again, come back on D-day for those guys) and... well it is spoilery if you have not seen it, but it is a great scene.

What is significant here is Bad Wolf/Rose's line "the Time War ends."  When we next see the Bad Wolf in the 50th Anniversary episode it/she is the interface for a weapon known as The Moment. A weapon that the War Doctor (the one before the Ninth) was going to use to end the Time War.

Time travel, especially in Doctor Who, is never a straight line. It is, as the Tenth Doctor would say a "big ball of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff."

What is great about Bad Wolf is how the Companions of Doctor Who would come to be viewed by the Doctor in this new refresh of the series. This would give us such companions as Martha (the girl who walked the Earth), Donna (the most important woman in the universe), Amy (the girl who waited) and Clara (the Impossible Girl). And, of course, River Song. But she gets her own day.  And in 2006 after dealing with the toxic way Whedon treated his characters and actors this was a breath of fresh air. EVERYONE thought Russel T. Davies was going to kill off Rose, but no. He did the opposite. 

The Bad Wolf would make other appearances, but never like that first season. Likely good too, the times she has shown up again have usually meant the end of the Universe. 

All images are used with permission from the BBC and are copyrighted 2023 by the BBC.

#Dungeon23 Tomb of the Vampire Queen, Level 4, Room 3

 Taking the center opening leads down a rough-hewn passage. There is a light ahead, but it is diffuse.

It looks like there is a room beyond, but this is an illusion. The Gelatinous Cube uses this illusion to trap victims. Even its simple brain has learned that it can trap the most food here.

There is only a 1 in 6 chance that anyone will notice the gelatinous cube here unless they are specifically searching for something strange or out of the ordinary. Beyond the cube is a collection of treasures from years of victims.

There is 1,000 gp, 1500 sp, 3000 cp, and about 50 gems worth 5,000 gp total.  There is a dagger +1 and a mace +1.  

#AtoZChallenge2023: Doctor Who The 3 Doctors

Sunday is not a normal posting day for the A to Z Challenge, but I always use Sundays as "Special Topics." This challenge will be no different.  Plus Sundays were the day Doctor Who was on for me in the 1980s, so it has always been "Doctor Who day" for me.

For my Sundays, I am going to talk about the various Multi-Doctor episodes, ones that have more than one Doctor in them. Since this is our first Sunday, I am going to start with the first multi-Doctor story, the 10th Anniversary "The Three Doctors."

The Three Doctors aired from December 1972 to January 1973 during the time of Jon Pertwee's run as the Third Doctor.

The story involves a lost member of the Time Lords, Omega, the engineer who figured out how to harness the power of a black hole to give the Time Lords enough power to be able to travel in time and space. Believed lost he existed in an "anti-matter" universe created by his own force of will. He began draining all the power from Gallifrey (the Doctor's home world) and leaving the Time Lords helpless. The only one not affected was The Doctor who was on Earth in exile.

The Time Lords realized that only the Doctor had a chance of stopping Omega, but not a great one, so they figured if one Doctor had a chance, then two Doctors had double the chance, even if it meant breaking the First Law of Time. Something even a renegade like the Doctor was unwilling to do himself.

The story was a great one to be honest and I recently had the chance to rewatch it.  William Hartnell even got to reprise his role of the First Doctor, despite being in very ill health. The rapport between Patrick Troughton (the Second Doctor) and Jon Pertwee (the Third Doctor) was just so much fun it made me wish we could have seen more of them together. 

It also set the stage for more multi-Doctor shows to occur for the anniversaries of the show, though not always.  

Complaining about the special effects from the time feels like a cheap shot, so I will not do it, instead, I want to focus on the story and the acting. Nicholas Courtney was at his very best as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. He played the role with such convincing annoyance at the Doctor (all of them) and confusion he stole every scene he was in. Katy Manning was wonderful as always as Jo, and John Levene gave us his typical strong turn as Sergeant Benton.  Though I understand Frazer Hines was due to return as the Second Doctor's companion Jaime and that would have been fun. Thankfully Frazer, and Jaime, get to come back later, and he has some lasting appeal even today.

This is also an interesting one for me. In the 1980s I read all the Doctor Who books I could get my hands on and this was one of the ones I read long before I ever saw it. My mental image of everything was different than what we got on screen, but I was not disappointed.

Sadly this was William Hartnell's last acting role and his health was so poor that his role here was only in cameos. He later died in 1975.

All images are used with permission from the BBC and are copyrighted 2023 by the BBC.

#Dungeon23 Tomb of the Vampire Queen, Level 4, Room 2

 This is a large cavern. The ceiling of the cave is 20' high (about the about they went down the stairs). There are three tunnels extending out from the far wall. One to the left, one to the center, and another to the left. 

In this cavern are 4 Carrion Crawlers (or Carcass Crawlers). 

They will attack as soon as the characters are nearby. They have a small treasure horde nearby.

#AtoZChallenge2023: Doctor Who Aliens

Starting the A to Z challenge off easy with one that always comes to mind when talking about Doctor Who; Aliens.

The Doctor (an alien from the Planet Gallifrey) has encountered numerous aliens in the 60 years since the show began. While the very first episode, "An Earthly Child" didn't encounter any aliens (they went back in time) the Doctor (in his first incarnation) and his granddaughter Susan were the aliens, though we did not know that yet at the time. We knew the Doctor and Susan were from the far future. 

Honestly, I could do an A to Z of just the aliens. Starting with Autons all the way to Zygons.

But instead, I want to talk about the aliens in a more general sense.

Steven Moffat (writer 2005 to 2008, executive producer 2009 to 2017) once commented that the Doctor does not have superpowers, he has two hearts. He does not have a gun, he has a screwdriver to fix things. So the notion that aliens are not always some galactic threat, like we see in the Christmas Invasion (2005), but are here to help. 

ADRIC: The Earth people use it to beam messages to the stars. The Doctor calls it reiterated invitation to alien intelligences in deep space.
NYSSA: And that's us.
ADRIC: So they'll be very pleased to see us.

- "Logopolis," Season 18, Serial 7, March 1981.

While I will call out some of the more prominent alien species through out this month I'll mention a couple here.

Autons. An alien species that can live in and bring to life plastic. They are connected via a linked consciousness, the Nestene. 

Cybermen. Actually a race of humans from a planet much like Earth. The humans there depleted all their natural resources and had to replace their bodies with cybernetics. One of the Doctor's oldest foes.

Daemons. Not demons, but they do look like them. A group of transdimensional scientists.

Draconians. If Doctor Who had a race closest to the Klingons of Star Trek, then it is these guys. They are a species of war-like reptile/humanoids who value honor above all else. They are a space faring species that often run into conflict with humans in the future. The masks and make-up used for them was a significant step up in terms of effects, allowing the actors a full range of facial features.

Judoon. These creatures look like bipedal rhinoceroses. They are not very bright but follow orders and are often used as police, peacekeepers, or mercenaries. Though they are smarter than the Ogrons below. 

Ogron. Largely space Orcs. These guys are mercenaries willing to work for whoever had the most coin or credits. They are brutal and not very bright. The make-up and masks come from the same time as the Draconians, so a large step up from previous creatures.

Ood. These guys look like monsters. Indeed they have more than just a passing similarity to the Mind Flayers of D&D; they are one of the most peaceful species in all of Doctor Who.  They are highly telepathic and empathic. Of course, humans use them as slave labor by lobotomizing them.  The message here is clear, in the future, humanity is still pretty much shit.

Silurian. Along with the Sea Devils. This is a race of reptile humanoids that evolved on Earth millions of years before humanity. When their scientists predicted the asteroid that would wipe out the dinosaurs they retreated far below the surface and went into suspended animation. Their computer would wake them when the Earth began to warm up enough for them.  Even in the 70s Doctor Who had a keen idea on what was going on.  There are three varieties. The Homo Reptilia which is split into two castes the warrior (female) and the scientists (male). There are the psychic Silurians (which I tend to think of as a third gender) and the Sea Devils a race of purely aquatic reptiles.

Slitheen. Pictured above. These aliens are bad. But they are also quite fun since the poke fun at the cheap rubbery suits that were a feature of Doctor Who aliens for years.  They look human until they unzip their human suits to reveal the alien inside. They come from the planet Raxacoricofallapatorius, which is just fun to say.

There are so many more. I hope this little taste is enough to prepare us for the month ahead.

All images are used with permission from the BBC and are copyrighted 2023 by the BBC.