How the Doctor Companion Relationship has Changed (Besides Romance)

what's the doctor without his companions [Music] I am claiming to in the not so distant future revisit my ranking of modern era Doctor Who companions but before I do that I kind of wanted to talk about how the companion dr. dynamic has changed mostly what I talk about this I'm talking about classic era versus modern era now I've alluded to some of this before when I talked about some of the major differences between classic and modern and I sort of went down a number of things and I did bring up the companion doctor relationship but I really kind of want to drill into that a little bit more specifically at this point because it's not just the nature of the relationships between the doctor and the companions the campaign's themselves function different differently as characters than they used to the companion originally in Doctor Who was basically just what the name of light actually they've wanted to call companions for a long time they were usually referred to as assistants if they were referred to you know by any kind of title at all so their role was to be there on the adventure to be someone for the doctor to talk to to be an extra helping hand to ask the questions that maybe gets the doctor thinking about things from the angle he needs to to move things forward you know varies from command to companion but their time was was almost always really just limited to while they were on the TARDIS classic era companions we really didn't know much at all about their home life their family history what things are like for them back home it was just something the original show didn't deal much it knew who deals with it a lot and it's not that's not a bad thing I actually initially was one of the things that sort of distinguished it from classic era was it drilled much more into the companions as characters that's not to say that they weren't fully formed characters in classic Terra but they didn't have the same level of backstory we got like a couple of highlight points like we know ace hates her mother you know we know Jamie you know being Islander he's very gung-ho and and ready for a fight you've got Adric with his keen mathematics skills you know you've got a couple of traits but then we're just seeing them basically on the job and you know seeing how they gathering when we came from them based on how they react to the doctor in the situation's they're put in we get much more backstory these days and sometimes that works sometimes that doesn't I've gone on record as saying I'm not a huge fan of the domestics of how much of the home life we see of the various companions at this point and honestly I think this part of the reason I like to bill as much as I did because bill didn't have a ton of ties to earth to this era I mean we kept coming back to it annoyingly but she we didn't that she didn't have to keep checking in with family and recurring friend characters in a significant other she felt much more like a classic era companion in that she was just traveling with the doctor on various adventures but aside from her most of them we get quite a bit of family dynamics and Rose was a little bit mixed for me in that department I found Jackie to be kind of irritating I did like Mickey though as a character especially the way he developed with Martha her family was not always there but when they were there they were pretty heavy focus which wasn't a bad way to handle it Donna loved her family you know you see her mother you get a lot of white Donna is the way she is and then Wilf I gotta love Bernard Cribbins so it's re Bernhard Cribbins I guess is the way it would be correctly pronounced for my British subscribers but him as Wolff is he's astounding is amazing I love him both his relationship with Donna and as a character and then we get into the Moffatt era and I like Amy and not only that I like Amy and Rory's relationships and I do like that we didn't get a ton of additional you know family back I think that was one of the things that bugged me about save Rose is we got all this extra family baggage or at least it felt like we did you know having to keep checking in with her mother and her boyfriend and her alternate-universe dad whereas with Amy it was really just Rory and we got to see that relationship belong I think that worked I don't know why we touched base with Clara's family the couple times that we did like I legitimately don't know why that was done and God the other when she when she was babysitting or nanny or whatever she was to those kids um I actually like Danny pink better than a lot of people do but it's not handled as well as say Rory and Amy were and then as I said bill that's one of the things I like about her it looked like a classic classic error though the whole idea of the doctor having to come back and pick up the companion like the companion just living in their own place on earth and the doctor coming to get them to go on an adventure that was never really the case in classic who in classic Who companion traveled with the doctor pretty much continuously either because the TARDIS is really obnoxious about going where the doctor wants it to go and it takes him forever to take them back home or they travel until they choose to stop there are exceptions of course especially when you're talking about the Third Doctor's era where he was earthbound for a decent chunk of that but by and large that was how it worked I think really though the biggest way in which things have shifted is how significant the doctor is in the lives of these companions now that's not to say that the doctor was not significant to the lives of companions in classic era more that is just something that the show never really dealt with you know most of the Companions chose when they were gonna stop traveling with the doctor they in some way communicated to him okay I'm done I've had enough and he drops them off and that's it again a couple of exceptions in the case of his granddaughter Susan he made the choice for her cuz you could see that she was kind of torn up by it every now and then he had a character who left involuntarily possibly by death you know with folks like a drinker it didn't even have to be that you know Sarah Jane Smith didn't choose when she left because the doctor got called to Gallifrey and she couldn't go with him there so that was that for her it wasn't the time that she chose to leave and so you've got a few things like that but by and large characters say okay doctor I'm done now and he drops them off and often with a melancholy to him but you know he drops them off he has his little moment about that and he moves along and the persona the presumption at least that I get the sense of was that the Companions kind of did the same you know it's it's like it's like going on a on a whirlwind you know European travelogue with somebody and once you're done you go well thanks for that you go home and you live your life and you always remember it was you know it may have been a really pivotal point in your life but you know you move on and you do other things how crucial the doctor becomes to the lives of companions it seems to have been ramped up quite a bit in modern era to the point that we've only really had one companion choose to leave the TARDIS that was Martha pretty much everybody else has been forced out by circumstance you know Rose got stuck in the end the alternate dimension Donna had to get her mind wiped Amy and Rory died kind of sort of eventually of old age but you know they that wasn't their choice for timing for when to leave Clara died and she didn't but whatever and then you know bill died basically and and you know and nardole got got left behind so they've made the connection between the doctor and the Kamiya is so strong that they they the writers seem to have become unwilling to believe that someone would ever choose to not continue to travel with the doctor forever so they have to force circumstances to allow for the companion to leave or the force that khomeini leave more accurately and I'm not saying that any or even all of the ways in which the companions have been removed in modern era is bad but I do think it's an upshot of something that happens when and and I might do a future video on this because because it impacts more than just Doctor Who but I think it's an upshot of something that happens when you have fans of something writing it because when you have writers who grew up watching Doctor Who and like EDD themselves as kids wanting to travel with the doctor they can't imagine why anyone would want to stop therefore they don't really know how to write someone wanting to stop so instead they write them being forced to stop and that again does really jack up the intensity of the connection that companions have and kind of making it the most important thing they will ever do in their own lives and I don't mean like on a galactic scale because it probably is but you know these people theoretically could still do things that that for themselves matter more than traveling with a doctor and modern Aero doctor who has even kind of gone back and retroactively lis done that to some of the past companions we got that a bit with Sarah Jane Smith because she came back and she was kind of ticked at him further for leaving her and she says how there was basically no one else and she never found that same kind of excitement in her life again now with Sarah Jane I do think that if you were gonna do that with the past campaign yet that one makes a lot of sense because she like I said didn't get to choose to leave but then if you watch the Sarah Jane Adventures they did it with Joe Grant too and if there's a companion that you shouldn't pull that I will I was always looking for you I was always hoping to travel with you again angle it's Joe Grant because she she left to get married she made a choice in her life for somebody else and the way that the Sarah Jane Adventures has her interact with Matt Smith's doctor kind of undermines that choice and shades it as if not a mistake at the very least as more conflicted than I think it was originally intended to be so it's it's something that I'd have a you know brought up when I've talked about things that dr. who needs to stop doing and whatnot because I this is something that is a little bit more nebulous than things like the companion template you know the the usually young female from modern-day England which I'm so sick of I mean that I can nail down and make punchy and make as part of a list but the shift in dynamic with the with the companions and making them making the doctor so central to their lives and making them so central to his because the doctor always appreciated his companions but they've really made them into like the doctor is incomplete without them to the point that certain writers feel they are justified in doing things like what went on in hell bent so the the strength of that relationship has just gone up severely and in a way that I feel is starting to hamper the show a little bit but unfortunately it's also something that I don't know if there's a way to roll it back because well I'll revise that you can have you could probably have companions who don't feel like the doctor is the only thing they have going on in their lives or will you know never do anything to rival their time with him you can certainly they could write companions like that I think it would be really hard to ever roll back the doctors new level of dependency on the guy I mean naked dependency I think you know naked blatant which I'd chosen different word of the naked now I'm just gonna say naked again because I don't know it's weird that I'm saying naked in any case it's now really blatant and it was in the classic era but it was much more of an undercurrent that he needs the Companions now it's really friend Center I think it's gonna be really hard to rollback that end of it of the doctors need for them be because I'm not sure how you do that without in a way undermining whoever the most recent opinion is because it's like oh well he obviously doesn't care about them the way that the doctor previously cared about someone like bill or Clara or Rose or Donna or what-have-you so that unfortunate is a movie we might be somewhat I mean I say unfortunately because I bet this is this is a this is a ship that like is that I feel is hamstringing the narrative a bit because since it's difficult to dial back the doctors dependency on companions and at least so far showrunners have been unwilling to dial back the companions dependency on the doctor from what they've built it up to over the last ten series then an unfortunate becomes repetitive you know the first couple of tragic departures for new era doctor who were in fact that you know rose in doomsday that was tragic donna in journey's end that was tragic I didn't hit me quite as hard but I know a lot of people got really choked up but angels in Manhattan with Amy and Rory but it's become just another thing that happens the companion travels until something tragic happens and I feel like we need to show a companion who is you know functional enough as you know as an independent entity to know when they're good and when they're done and we need the doctor to be able to process a breakup not look not a tragedy not a loss just effectively a breakup and I think that would be something that would that I'd like to see happen with the next companions except we've got three commands so how much you want to bet one of them leave voluntarily one of them dies I don't know into the third we'll forget about the third because three too many it may not be I don't know we'll see so that's kind of my not really building to a specific point ramble about the ways in which the doctor companion relationship have changed over time and sort of singling out the some of the specifics on that because it's something and like I said I've alluded to before and I really wanted to drill in on so that's it for this one what do you think about the way that the doctor companion relationship is handled in modern area do you prefer how it was done in classic do you like the way modern does it do you want to see it shake and I'm pretending from the way it's been done the last as I said ten series or so whatever your thoughts are drop something down in the comments let's talk about it there's all the stuff to do you support me on patreon follow me on Twitter I got a podcast bla bla bla bla bla links for all that stuff is down in the description so until next time this council is your [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Council of Geeks

Views: 17,443

Rating: 4.9449792 out of 5

Keywords: doctor who, companion, classic who, new who, modern who, editorial

Id: iQ71EZWEm7Q

Length: 19min 2sec (1142 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 01 2018