Let’s see:
K9 I
K9 II
K9 2
K9 III
K9 IV
K9 V
Kamelion
Handles
The Master
Rory
Amy
Sarah Jane
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I’ve given this question quite a bit of thought, as there was a time when I considered putting together either a blog or a podcast on companions, because I liked the idea of something called Doctor Who: The Companion Podcast. However, inertia won the day and I did nothing. But I did come up with a definition, that I think holds a lot more water than just the “travelled in the TARDIS with the Doctor” that people have used before.
My definition of a companion is someone who could reasonably be described as a series regular. For further clarity, in the new series, that is anyone whose name appears in the opening credits. For the classic series, it’s a little more complicated, given that the opening credits didn’t include actors’ names. However, I contend that, had the series had the kind of montage titles that were popular with US TV shows and have now migrated over here, would they have appeared? Are they a series regular or part of the guest cast?
So, for Season 7, the series regulars were Jon Pertwee (the Doctor, clearly not a companion) Caroline John (Liz Shaw, definitely a companion, despite no TARDIS journey) and Nicholas Courtney (The Brigadier). John Levene, who only appeared in Inferno, but had previously been in the Invasion, back in Season 6, would count as a returning guest star.
In Season 8, we have the slight issue that members of the UNIT family don’t appear in all of the stories, but I can use the slightly hand-wavy excuse that in many shows there are stories that not all series regulars appear in. They often remain in the titles, despite not appearing. So, I’d be happy to include Jo Grant, The Brigadier, Captain Yates and Sergeant Benton as series regulars, and therefore companions. The Delgado Master also appears in all the stories and is a series regular. Is he a companion? I’d be happy to include him. Come New Who Series 10, Missy travels with the Doctor in the companion role, so why not? I think the Series Regular rule works a lot better than any narrative rule put in place.
I can’t remember the titles for Series 1 The Long Game, but I don’t think Bruno Langley was included, which works for me. I think Adam was a returning guest, not a series regular. So, Adam = not a companion.
What about specials? I still the name above the title rule works best. It does mean promoting a couple of one off guest stars to the companion role, but in most cases that’s the function their character serves in the story, so I’m happy. And where there’s a two part special, then there’s no doubt in my mind that the actor whose name appears alongside the actor who plays the Doctor is a companion. So Wilf Mott IS a companion!
What about Grace? I say companion. Had this been made into a series, even though she was left behind, I’m fairly sure she would have been kept on. She wasn’t the Special guest star, she was treated as a regular. The same goes for Chang Lee. OK, I may be doing some mental gymnastics to make this work, but it makes sense to me, in my head canon, so I’m happy.
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I argue that Liz was definitely a companion, because she was a series regular. She wasn’t an assistant, though. The Doctor was asked to help her out, so he was HER assistant! In my view, the Doctor had one assistant, and that was Jo Grant. It was her job description. He occasionally claimed that Sarah was his assistant, although that was more a ruse to enable her to stay in London for the events of Invasion of the Dinosaurs. He stopped calling her his assistant after he regenerated, anyway. She and Harry were his human companions.
Definitely, this! But the hill I’ve decided to die on is that they are companions, not assistants. Apart from Jo Grant!
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Nardole perhaps?
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Possibly. I’d need to rewatch carefully to see if he’s ever actually described as such, but I might grudgingly admit that you have a point there!
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I would say a companion needs to be someone who decides to go on at least one additional adventure with the Doctor after their first trip / the story they’re introduced in.
Adventures don’t have to be trips in the Tardis.
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11 is interesting in that he has multiple people who he goes on multiple adventures with but not consecutively.
The Doctor visits Craig twice but there’s a gap between them in both of their lives.
He travels with Kazran at multiple points but if I remember correctly it’s only for 1 trip at a time.
He also has the Doctors second adventure with the Sarah Jane kids.
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I keep meaning to reply to this thread (particularly as I was self-appointed Wilf destroyer in the Elimination Game) but I’m not sure I can actually come up with a solid definition of what I consider a companion to be.
My umbrella criteria has always been ‘what did the production team intend’ and ‘what is their narrative role’. This gets around the whole ‘travelled in the TARDIS multiple times’ issue for characters like Liz.
It’s pretty undeniable that those characters we ‘traditionally’ accept as companions are those who were created as the second, third or fourth lead characters after the Doctor. Admittedly some, such as Jamie or Nyssa, were created as one off characters and then kept on but this was always at the behest of the production team who saw potential in them as regulars.
It also means we can include Katarina, Sara and Kamelion (the most often argued about characters from the classic series). Katarina was created to be a companion but when the production team had second thoughts, they wrote her out. Sara, narratively, behaves like a third lead character for the majority of the Masterplan. I don’t believe Vyon does this, not least because he doesn’t survive long enough but his death’s import to the script is very different from Sara’s. His really only has an impact on Sara and motivates her (much like Varsh dying and spurring some of Adric’s character (what there is of it). Sara’s death, however (and notably Katarina’s in the same story) impact directly on the Doctor and, most significantlym on Steven.
That all said, Jean Marsh doesn’t consider herself a companion even slightly - despite the expansion of the character in the Companion Chronicles.
Kamelion was scuppered mainly by technical difficulties and over-ambition but the intention was there to replicate, in some part, the dynamic of K9.
But what about the UNIT regulars? Do they count? Liz and Jo are inarguable. Narratively, they are the second lead in all their stories. But what of the Brig, Yates and Benton?
I’d argue that they are a subsection of their own. Certainly in the case of the Brig, he is the third lead character in a lot of the stories he appears in. But Yates and Benton? I’d argue they are supporting characters (and not even that regular). And there are other recurring characters such as Corporal Bell and one offs that perform similar narrative functions such as the pre-Yates captains in Season 7 and the Brig-replacements in Courtney’s absence later on.
The modern series has, on the whole, kept it simple and actually clarified it a bit by putting the lead actors names in the titles.
Of course this gets muddied by the inclusion of Bernard Cribbins, Kylie Minogue or the exclusion of Bruno Langley.
Adam is, as far as I’m concerned, a companion. But he has a very specific narrative purpose. He is the ‘companion who couldn’t’ - he is a truncated version of Turlough. Someone who joins the Doctor for all the wrong reasons. That this is dispensed with so swiftly doesn’t change the fact he is effectively third lead in The Long Game.
Wilf, I’m sorry, is not a companion. He starts as a one off, returns as a replacement for Donna’s dad after the sad passing of Howard Attfield and continues as a recurring family character in the vein of Jackie Tyler, Francine Jones and Sylvia Noble. He is no more a companion than Tish Jones or Pete Tyler.
But what about The End of Time. Yes, he fits aspects of the companion role in that story and yes his potential death impacts directly on the Doctor (if I follow my argument for Sara Kingdom) but that, for me, doesn’t override the fact that he still just feels like a recurring character who manages to get a trip in the TARDIS.
His name in the titles means very little. It’s just that he is second lead for that one story. It’s the same for Kylie as Astrid. It’s the production acknowledging the kudos of having such a ‘famous’ person is a lead role. It doesn’t indicate companion status any more than David Morrisey in The Next Doctor or Lindsey Duncan in The Waters of Mars or, even more obviously, Nick Frost in Last Christmas. They are main guest stars, no more no less. Narratively some of them fulfill aspects of a companion’s role but often their characters are more complicated than that.
There will always be characters who skirt around the ‘criteria’ for counting as a companion and leave us in disagreement as to whether they count but I still think my two main questions answer it for many of those debatable characters or at least give some evidence towards counting or discounting them.
What we mustn’t forget, though, is that they are all the Doctor’s friends and whether they have one adventure with the Doctor or many trips in the TARDIS, they’re all special.
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Yes, but (and it’s a BIG ‘but’) that’s so much less fun!
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As per usual, a really interesting read. Well considered and with plenty of food for thought. I largely (though not completely) agree with you. We differ, for example, on the classification of Adam. “The Companion Who Couldn’t” equates, to me, as someone who tried to fill that role but was rejected because of his failings. In this regard, we also differ on Wilf (pretty much the polar opposite to Adam).
One-off companions, I quite agree, are not companions at all. They serve the narrative role of companions in the stories they feature in but, in another sense, are simply the most significant of the characters that the Doctor encounters during that adventure. There’s no difference in my mind, for example, between Adelaide Brooke (The Waters of Mars) or Christina de Souza (Planet of the Dead) and Spandrell (The Deadly Assassin) yet Spandrell is never really considered to be a companion.
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Thanks for this thread @sircarolyn. Most interesting and kind of a parallel piece to the “What Maketh a Monster?” thread. Some equally interesting questions regarding classification.
I’m not convinced that travelling with the Doctor is a necessary criterion, though most of the characters who travel with the Doctor qualify as companions via other criteria in my mind.
The way I see it, the most important trait of any Doctor/Companion relationship (because the role of companion IS surely defined as a relationship with the Doctor?) is genuine and ongoing warmth and friendship. This is particularly important during the Pertwee years, where Liz is clearly portrayed in the role of companion across multiple stories yet never travels in the TARDIS. If she is a companion (and I would absolutely defend this), then so is the Brigadier. We have an ongoing friendship, which deepens over time. Their association starts as professional but certainly becomes much more over time. Whilst there are plenty of other recurring characters that appear to have an ongoing friendship with the Doctor, this is of a qualitatively different nature to the Doctor’s friendship with Liz and, especially, with the Brigadier.
Benton and Yates are more challenging. I do think the Doctor has an ongoing friendship with both of them, but not to the same degree that he does with the Brigadier. He’s fond of them, sure, but much moreso of Liz and the Brig. As you say, vibes are important (but I’m positing that it’s evidence of growth in affection between the Doctor and said possible companion).
Hoping I’ve articulated this with sufficient clarity. I feel, truth be told, on far less solid footing here than when discussing monsters, but the conversation is every bit as interesting to me!
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I think it’s a shame that Chris Chibnall’s attempt to rename the Fam as “The Doctor’s Friends” didn’t stick. It’s much easier to determine all the potential companions as friends, plus the companion who couldn’t as not a friend. The Friends category is broader than that of Companions. I guess Companions are a subset of Friends.
I still think that anyone who could be considered a regular or not part of the guest cast should qualify as a companion, even the Master, from his Pertwee days, but I know I might be alone in this.
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Well, I’d also consider that the Master would be one of the Doctor’s friends, or once was…
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I 100% disagree that the Master should be considered a companion. That is not the role they are fulfilling narratively by any stretch of the imagination. They are an antagonist who occasionally has to switch sides for their own benefit. Regular isn’t equatable to companion.
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This is an interesting line of thought, @Mindfog and @SweetAIBelle. Does this show that the companion role can be contextual though, and thus subject to change? I would argue that the Delgado Master is never a companion to the Doctor, even though they share common goals (though motivated differently) at times. Likewise, you’d have a hard time convincing me that Pratt/Beevers, Ainley, Jacobi or Simm are ever companions. Missy, I’ll grant you, is different yet still sits uneasily with me. She uses the Doctor’s sense of responsibility towards her (which is his error) and their past friendship. She does companion-like things, but also continues to pursue her own agenda (leading to the mortal wounding and cyber-conversion of Bill) in a most uncompanion-like way. There is an argument here, I’ll grant you, but I don’t think it’s a straightforward one. Back to Dhawan and I think we would all agree that he is never portrayed in a remotely companion-like way on screen.
Overall, I feel the Master has a far weaker claim to companionhood than the Brigadier (for example). I’m much closer to @deltaandthebannermen in my position here.
That said, such an interesting character and it is a joy that we can even consider this with a returning villain.
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I wouldn’t even say Missy counts. So she goes in the TARDIS at the end of Season 10. And? She’s not fulfilling a companion role - if anything she’s play acting as the Doctor and ultimately has her own agenda and absolutely no loyalty towards the Doctor or his other companions.
She’s a villain. End of.
(And I stress this is of course, just in my opinion).
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Oh and just to be contrary - in my head Herbert (Wells) and Will Chandler both have off screen adventures and so count as companions. 
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Aww, can’t you fin dit in your heart to slip to 99%? Just for me? 
Your point is valid, but I think the relationship between the Doctor and the Master is more complicated than that and was so from the off. But I 100% respect your opinion.
One of the Jacobi Masters was a companion, albeit a robotic, animated one in Shalka.
I agree. The Brig is a great friend of the Doctor, although there are hints that the Master might have been the Doctor’s best friend in the past.
Re: Missy. I think she really wants to be the Doctor’s friend and she spends time learning to be good. She’s far more interesting than just a villain (end of or not). She ultimately fails, but I believe she really wanted to be good and that’s what made her so interesting.
It’s only a matter of time for Big Finish.
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I agree, though I accept that it is more complex in her case (which I really applaud Moffat for doing). She, to me, is a complex villain and not a companion, but I love that the whole friendship thing is explored in more depth with her incarnation. At the end of the day, though, she’s a manipulative user who, in the end, finds herself challenging her own long held beliefs and values (yet, still, in a selfish way).
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This is why I think companion is highly contextual. It is possible for a character to change their status. Yet, also, whilst I see friendship (and a friendship that evolves over time, increasing fondness) as a necessary criterion for companionhood, I don’t think it (on its own) is sufficient.
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