Tuesday 16 April 2013

How Do You Get To Be The Doctor’s Companion Anyway?


The route into the TARDIS can be a surprisingly common one, if you happen to be (or have been) female, youngish, human and British during the last 50-odd years of Earth history. All you have to do is wait for an alien invasion of some sort, and keep your eye out for a big blue box. If you see one, chances are there will be an eccentric man somewhere in the vicinity, barking strange orders and running about.
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Tuesday 9 April 2013

Doctor Simeon

Walter Simeon’s life changed forever during one snowy day in 1842. As usual he was playing on his own, watched over by his fretting mother who remarked, ‘He never talks to anyone... He’s so alone.’ But moments after she walked away, something incredible happened. Walter spoke to the snowman he was building and heard it reply. A sonorous voice concurred with his own thoughts. Don’t talk to them, the voice told him, they’re silly. Hadn’t he always said that? But still, the experience shook him… He began to run until the voice continued. ‘You don’t need anyone else!’ Walter paused… Whether he realised it or not, his life had just become colder…


Doctor Simeon appeared to be the Great Intelligence’s most important human servant and his devotion was absolute. ‘I serve you in this,’ he once declared, ‘As in everything else.’ Certainly, this misplaced loyalty was extraordinary and he was prepared to kill for the Intelligence, ruthlessly letting his army of deadly snowmen loose on unarmed workers. His dedication was all the more remarkable insofar as the on-going plan entailed ‘the last winter of humankind’. But Simeon’s childhood disregard for other people had mutated into something more sinister and extreme, leaving him hell-bent on the destruction of his fellow man. bbc

Monday 8 April 2013

The Shakri

The Doctor believed that the Shakri were a myth, a fiction to keep ‘the young of Gallifrey in their place’. But the Shakri exist: enigmatic, powerful and ruthless slaves to the Tally. Also known as: The pest controllers of the universe. Home Planet: Unknown Start to worry when: Brian Cox starts talking about perfect black boxes from space. Weaknesses: Shakri technology can be manipulated to act against them. First Appearance: The Power of Three


The Shakri are a force steeped in mystery. They serve the Tally, but even the Doctor didn’t know precisely was this was, reflecting that some called it ‘Judgement Day’ and others, ‘the Reckoning’. The Shakri implied it was an imperative which drove them to eliminate races that could be considered a contagion. Unfortunately, this was exactly how the Shakri viewed humanity, ignoring the species’ achievements and seeing the people of Earth as a plague to be expunged before it spread into space.

The Shakri attempted to destroy mankind through waves of cubes that were scattered across the globe. These box-life objects stopped people’s hearts but the Doctor was able to reverse their effect, restarting the affected organs using the cubes’ alien technology. He also halted the second wave of cubes and in doing so, defeated the Shakri’s plans.

For now. The precise whereabouts of the Shakri remains a mystery. The figure whom the Doctor confronted on their craft was enigmatic about his race. ‘The Shakri exist through all of time and none,’ he told the Doctor. ‘We travel alone and together… Serving the word of the Tally.’ And even he did not exist in any physical sense; the Doctor declared the vision was the ship’s automated interface, or to put it another way, ‘a talking propaganda poster’. bbc

Sunday 7 April 2013

Companions - Clara Oswald

Clara Oswald is the impossible girl. The woman ‘twice dead’. One of the most enigmatic figures the Doctor has ever encountered…. And she’s got a great line in put downs, as he’s already discovered.


It takes a lot to bamboozle the Doctor but Clara Oswald has definitely got the knack! She looks and sounds like the Clara he met in Victorian London, but she died… Didn’t she? And what links her to the former Junior Entertainment Manager of the starship Alaska – the ally he encountered on the Dalek asylum? So many questions, but for the moment at least, the Doctor is just looking forward to traveling with this sparky young woman who insists on calling the TARDIS his “snog box”…BBC

Saturday 6 April 2013

Companions - Craig Owens

Craig Owens (born 1983) lived and worked in Colchester, England. In 2010, he rented a room to the Eleventh Doctor. (The Lodger) In April 2011, Craig helped him defeat the Cybermen.

First adventure with the Doctor - The Doctor turned up with a paper bag of cash and no luggage. Craig said he was "weird", but after trying one of the Doctor's impromptu omelettes, agreed to let him stay. Craig learned to live with his strange habits and quirks, but was irritated at the Doctor's success at football and his interruption of an evening with Sophie. tardis.wikia

Friday 5 April 2013

Companions - River Song

River Song was introduced to the series as an experienced future companion of series protagonist the Doctor, an alien Time Lord who travels through time in his TARDIS. Because River Song is a time traveller herself, her adventures with the Doctor occur out-of-synchronisation; their first meeting (from the audience's perspective) is his first and her last. In later appearances, River is a companion of the Doctor in his eleventh incarnation, portrayed by Matt Smith. River Song was created by Doctor Who writer Steven Moffat for the show's fourth series in 2008, under the tenure of executive producer Russell T Davies. When Moffat took over Davies' duties as executive producer, he began expanding on the character's background, depicting adventures earlier in River's timeline, upgrading Alex Kingston from a guest star to a recurring actor in the series. Other actresses have subsequently portrayed younger versions of the character.


When the character was first introduced, much about her origins remained a mystery. Following the character's initial appearance, Davies had described her as "one of the most important characters" in the narrative, and "vital" to the Doctor's life. In series six (2011), Moffat's episodes unveil more about the character. Born Melody Pond, River is the daughter of the Eleventh Doctor's companions Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) and Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill), alongside whom Kingston had appeared several times in series five (2010). Having been conceived on board the TARDIS as it travelled through the space-time vortex, Melody is born with genetic traits and abilities similar to the Doctor's own race, the Time Lords, though she loses these in the course of the series. wikipedia

Thursday 4 April 2013

Companions - Rory Williams


Having been introduced at the start of the 5th series, Rory joins the Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) as a companion in the middle of Series 5. As Amy Pond's fiancé, Rory is initially insecure because he believes Amy secretly loves the Doctor more. Later, however, he proves to be a hero in his own right and he and Amy marry. The couple conceive a daughter aboard the Doctor's time machine, the TARDIS, while in the time vortex, but their baby is kidnapped at birth. In "A Good Man Goes to War", Rory and Amy discover their time-traveler friend River Song is actually their daughter Melody Pond. The Doctor and River marry in "The Wedding of River Song", and Rory becomes the Doctor's father-in-law. In "The Angels Take Manhattan", the fifth episode of the seventh series, he and Amy are transported back in time by a Weeping Angel, leading to the couple's departure from the series. A gravestone reveals that he died at the age of 82.