Steven is a human from the 23rd century who has been stranded on the planet Mechanus for two years when the Doctor, Ian, Barbara, and Vicki stumble across him while fleeing the Daleks and the Mechanoids. Rather than being invited aboard the TARDIS, Steven stows away, but he quickly becomes part of the TARDIS team, picking up the slack for the just-departed Ian in the Male Action Hero role.
Harriet Jones is a public servant representing Flydale North at 10 Downing Street when she becomes swept up in the Doctor and Rose’s attempts to stop the Slitheen. When we later encounter her, she’s risen to Prime Minister and though she’s driven out of office, she continues her work defending the Earth from her home.
Mel is a computer genius from the near future (when her stories aired, that is. She’s from the early 21st century). As the Doctor, and the audience, first meet her after she’s already met him, we don’t find out much about her backstory or her family and friends.
Christina is a lower-level aristocrat who moonlights as a notorious art thief. She is on the run from her latest heist, being pursued by the police, when she encounters the Doctor on the bus and sets off on their adventure.
Barbara Wright is a history teacher at the Coal Hill School alongside Ian Chesterton. We are introduced to her in the series’ pilot episode as the teacher of Susan Foreman, who is soon revealed to be The Doctor’s granddaughter. Perplexed by Susan’s strange behavior, Ian and Barbara follow her back to her home in a junkyard, where they see her enter a mysterious police box. They follow her in, only to discover the TARDIS, the time machine that serves as a home to Susan and The Doctor. Though they promise to keep the secret, the paranoid Doctor refuses to let them leave and instead whisks them off through space and time.
The Seventh Doctor begins his tenure as a rather comical, light-hearted figure. Sylvester McCoy was known for his vaudeville-style clowning and humor and the early Seventh Doctor stories play into this. As his stories progress, however, he becomes a much darker, more still figure and he’s perhaps the most manipulative and deceptive of the Doctors. He has an incredibly close bond with Ace, who is very much his protégé and a daughter figure, and this relationship is a clear precursor to the more intense, more closely-examined Doctor/Companion relationships to come in NuWho (minus the romance). It’s highly implied during this time that the Doctor has a far more significant, secret past than his “Time Lord on the run” cover story, but this is quickly backed away from later. This ominous, looming secrecy gives the Seventh Doctor an air of foreboding and drama that counterbalances his early and occasional silliness quite well.
Mickey is a fairly nondescript young man when his girlfriend Rose encounters the Doctor. Swept along (and nearly killed by the Autons), he initially reacts with fear and disbelief to the dangers represented by the Doctor. After Rose leaves with the Doctor, disappearing for a year, as far as her mother and the police are concerned, Mickey is suspected of being responsible for her disappearance and this nearly destroys his life. After a few more adventures with the Doctor on Earth, he’s invited aboard the TARDIS, but turns down the Doctor, still fearful, but eventually he invites himself aboard, much to Sarah Jane’s delight, and travels with the Doctor and Rose for a few stories before opting to stay in a parallel universe in which they find themselves. He of course ends up back home before too long, though.
Kamelion Voiced by: Gerald Flood Doctor(s): Fifth Doctor Tenure: 2 stories- The King’s Demons (March, 1983) and Planet of Fire (March, 1984) Background: Kamelion is a robot introduced in the control of the Master, as part of his nefarious scheme to undermine the reign of King John. The Master had discovered Kamelion prior to this …
Capt. Yates is likable and charming. He has somewhat of a potential for romance with Jo, but little comes of this on the series. He’s an able officer and his eventual complicity in a scheme to return the world to the time of the dinosaurs (due to concerns over the planet’s health) comes as a complete shock. This is one of the most effective twists in the classic series, demonstrating Mike’s determination (however misguided in this instance) to save lives and fight for the common good.
Leela is fierce, bold, and combative. She’s surprisingly flexible to life aboard the TARDIS, given her background, and she bonds quickly with the Doctor, who takes it upon himself to sand down her rough edges. As a warrior, her initial instinct in any given situation is to quickly and permanently shut down threats. This makes her a natural counterpoint to the Doctor and while she grows tremendously due to her travels with him, she never entirely abandons her more physical approach to conflict resolution. Leela is a woman of few words and an ally to the oppressed. She has little patience for weakness however, finding those unwilling to help themselves, relying instead on others for protection, obnoxious and unworthy of assistance. She’s incredibly determined and self-motivated, jumping aboard the TARDIS after the Doctor denies her request to travel with him, and despite these many elements to her gruff exterior, Leela can be sensitive and emotionally vulnerable from time to time.
Strax was a commander in the Sontaran fleet when he encountered the Doctor. To restore the honor of his clone batch, the Doctor sentenced him to service as a nurse, constantly having to help others recover from their wounds rather than inflict them, and this role actually suited him well, despite the bluster he initially demonstrates. Strax quickly grew into a firm ally of the Doctor, a wholly individual Sontaran, unlike his clone batch brethren. Thus far, Strax appears to be an anomaly- all the other Sontarans we meet are solely focused on conquest with very little if any unique or defining characteristics.
Dr. Grace Holloway is a cardiovascular surgeon in San Francisco. She has a strained relationship with her live-in boyfriend, due to her constantly being constantly either at work or on call. When she has to leave Madama Butterfly during the start of the second act, this is the last straw; he’s moved out by the time she gets home, with the newly regenerated Doctor in tow (he’s the patient she’s called in to do surgery on).
The Fourth Doctor can perhaps best be described as alien. After the very human Third Doctor and UNIT era, this new wide-eyed and unpredictable Doctor is a dramatic change and while each Doctor to this point is brilliant and clearly the smartest man in whatever room he enters, this incarnation is the first to embody that brand of genius that can keep any number of seemingly random threads whirling in their brain at a given moment, jumping between them at will and only later revealing to the rest of the room how they’re connected. He has a manic energy and bluster that seems endless as well as a penchant for bickering with or teasing his Companions, particularly Sarah Jane and Romana I and though he can be deadly serious, this Doctor is most likely to be found with a wide grin on his face and mad schemes percolating behind his eyes.
Jamie is a Scottish highlander, a piper for Clan McLaren, who meets the Doctor, Ben, and Polly in the aftermath of a battle with the English. He decides to join them in the TARDIS after their adventure, remaining vocal about and extremely proud of his heritage throughout his journeys with the Doctor.
Dr. Martha Jones is a medical student when she encounters the Doctor at her hospital, mid-investigation. What else is a girl to do after her workplace is transferred to the moon but begin time traveling with a charming alien who saves her life? In contrast to Rose, Martha comes from an upper middle class background and is a driven career woman. When given the opportunity to have an adventure or two and be home in time for rounds the next day though, she jumps at the chance.
Captain Adelaide Brooke is the famed commander of Bowie Base One, the first human colony on Mars, famous for mysteriously exploding. Orphaned during the Dalek attacks (the events of “The Stolen Earth”/“Journey’s End”), Adelaide grew up fascinated with space after staring into the eyestalk of a Dalek hovering outside her window who flew back to base and left her alive, rather than killing her as by all accounts, it should have. She dedicated her life to science and exploration, though she also had a family- a daughter and eventually, a granddaughter. When the Doctor stumbles upon Adelaide and her crew, he knows their death will galvanize the planet, particularly Adelaide’s granddaughter, and push the human race out to the stars, making the events on Mars a fixed point in time. Adelaide has a degree in mathematics as well as a doctorate in physics and she has extensive training as an astronaut, having worked for NASA before starting her work at Bowie Base One.
Susan is introduced as a British teenager who doesn’t particularly fit in with her peers at Cole Hill School. We discover in the pilot that she’s actually an alien (the Time Lords aren’t named until the end of the Second Doctor’s run) who lives with her grandfather in a dump, in what looks to be a police box but is actually the TARDIS, a space-time ship. She loves England of the ‘60s and wants to stay for a while, but when her teachers Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright follow her to the TARDIS and discover who she and The Doctor really are, the Doctor takes off in the TARDIS, kidnapping Ian and Barbara and kicking off the series.
Sarah Jane is a journalist sneaking in to UNIT with her virologist aunt’s credentials when she meets the Doctor. She’s eventually caught, but she leaves an impression and ends up replacing the recently-departed Jo Grant as the Companion. After traveling with the Doctor, he drops her off in the wrong city, if not the wrong time, leaving her behind when faced with a summons to Gallifrey. Sarah runs into the Doctor again much later, allowing her to meet Rose and Mickey and get some much-needed closure.
Pete is one of only a handful of characters on Doctor Who that audiences meet in separate dimensions, including Companions Liz Shaw, the Brig, Mickey Smith, and ally Jackie Tyler (though we only meet her doppelganger very briefly). First introduced as Rose’s father who’d died when she was a baby, a bit of a dreamer and get-rich-quick schemer who, though his heart was in the right place, wasn’t the best husband, the Pete we spend more time with is an incarnation from an Alternate Dimension, affectionately called “Pete’s World” by the Doctor. This version found success with one of his early schemes and is a well-respected, incredibly wealthy executive and inventor. In this timeline, though he and Jackie married, they never had any children, leading to somewhat strained interactions with Rose when he realizes their connection. It turns out that Pete is working under deep cover within the company manufacturing Cybermen in an attempt to bring them down. He teams up with the Doctor, Mickey, and Rose, eventually forming close ties with Rose and marrying Jackie.
While working as a temp at a large security firm in London, Donna meets a coworker to whom she eventually becomes engaged. On her wedding day, as she’s walking down the aisle, she starts glowing, screams, and is teleported into the TARDIS, where she meets the Doctor. She discovers her fiancé had been poisoning her coffee as part of a nefarious scheme and, after saving the day with the Doctor, turns down his offer to travel with him, being too afraid of what that life means. Soon, though, she regrets her decision and refocuses her life on finding the Doctor and getting a second chance, hunting out alien plots and schemes, which is what she’s doing when she comes across the Doctor a second time, foils the Adipose with him, invites herself aboard the TARDIS, and heads out to the stars.
The Sixth Doctor is extremely brash and outgoing. He’s quick to anger, but can calm quickly as well, if he puts his mind to it. He’s incredibly arrogant and self-assured and immediately assumes a position of authority upon encountering a situation that requires his attention. He is blustery and is often short with his Companions, making him among the most difficult Doctors for many fans to embrace. He suffered an extreme reaction to his regeneration and went temporarily mad, lashing out at and attacking his then Companion, Peri. He’s not particularly aware of others’ needs and dispositions, as his mind is usually elsewhere, but he cares deeply for his Companions and, like every Doctor, is incredibly protective of them.
Adric is a child genius, with a focus in math, from the 32nd century. Though he looks outwardly human, he’s actually Alzarian, or from Alzarius, a planet in E-Space (a parallel dimension). After working with the Doctor and Romana to help the Alzarians take to the stars, Adric stows away aboard the TARDIS and joins them on their adventures.
When Ninth Doctor Christopher Eccelston left Doctor Who after only one season, he left behind a set of episodes that were a great reintroduction to the classic series but more than anything, they were a springboard for whoever was going to take over the iconic role next. David Tennant’s Tenth remains one of the most memorable and beloved Doctors in the show’s long history. Bolstered by a robust and often deeply moving performance by Tennant, this five year run produced some of the finest Doctor Who stories in the show’s 50 year run. Here are Ten’s ten best stories: