10 Saddest Doctor Who Companion Exits

10. Adric in Earthshock

Earthshock begins with Adric trying to convince the Doctor that he can mathematically plot a course back to his homeworld. It ends with him staying onboard a crashing space freighter, determined to work out the final logic code. When a dying Cyberman blasts the console, Adric is doomed to never know the answer and is blown to smithereens as the freighter crashes into Earth.

What's interesting about the death of Adric is that it's not a noble sacrifice to save the Doctor and his friends, it's the result of his youthful arrogance. He says he's trying to stop the crash to save Earth, but it's his obsession with being right that ultimately leads to his death.

What really sells the sadness of the moment isn't the lingering close-up of his shattered star or mathematical excellence. It's the emphasis on the Doctor's inability to do anything. Despite how he's remembered now, Adric's death traumatised a generation of young viewers, and the Doctor not reassuring the audience that everything will be okay plays a big part in that.

Years later, towards the end of Billie Piper's second series, Fifth Doctor actor Peter Davison emailed Russell T Davies in order to reassure his kids that Rose Tyler wouldn't die. Davies emailed back simply with "You killed Adric, what do you care?"