Doctor Who: 5 Best And 5 Worst Companion Send-Offs

The great, good and grim of the TARDIS's revolving door policy.

All things must end, and so it is with companions and their time in the TARDIS. From the first companion, Susan, all the way up to Rory and Amy, almost every companion has had a start and a finish (there are three exceptions. Can you name them?). Some of those send-offs have been truly epic; bringing us to tears or moving us to great joy. Some of been...well, some have just basically been someone wandering off in the middle of the story and never coming back. Yes, that is actually a thing that happened. We're all looking at you, Dodo. For the purposes of this article, we are not considering Katarina, Astrid Peth, Adam Mitchell, or any of the other "one off" characters as companions. If someone was in basically two episodes, they aren't a companion, they're a guest star. There's nothing wrong with that, but they aren't a companion and who cares what the BBC has to say about that? Interestingly, even though she isn't on this list, we can count Sarah Kingdom as a companion, largely because of what Big Finish has done with her. We do, of course, consider the Brigadier to be a companion, because what sane person wouldn't? Anyhow, all that in mind, let's look at a list!

The Best...

5. Peri

Peri was the second, or third, if you count Sarah Kingdom, companion to be killed off (again, we aren€™t counting Katarina, because why would we?). She was an interesting and entertaining enough character, with two rather impressive credentials that many people enjoyed. The actor who played her, Nicola Bryant, did a good enough job at an American accent that it wasn€™t until years later that some in the audience learned she wasn€™t actually an American (the way she said "schedule" should have, in retrospect, been a clue). Peri wasn€™t always a great character, but she really was kind of adorable and kind of loveable. She was killed off when an evil space slug placed his mind into her body, destroying her mind in the process. The body was then destroyed by a barbarian warlord played by BRIAN BLESSED; a man so shouty his name must be in all-caps. This was a great departure! It took the Sixth Doctor, at that point on trial for his life, and punctured his bombast like a pin into a balloon. He completely deflated and was almost completely defeated. It was a truly daring and impressive moment for the series. It showed the Doctor being very vulnerable, and since, unlike with a certain other companion death we're going to get to later, it came during the middle of the story, it meant the Doctor had to keep reacting to it. We got see the ongoing trauma, as opposed to, "Ooops, Adric's dead. Well, let's move on, shall we?" It was one of those nice, rare moments when we got to see actual consequences for the Doctor, and it was nice to have that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e20Wn7Z7uAI
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Chris Swanson is a freelance writer and blogger based in Phoenix, Arizona, where winter happens to other people. His blog is at wilybadger.wordpress.com