Doctor Who: 10 Most Embarrassing Classic Series Companions

By Mike Morgan /

3. Katarina

Many fans of the Classic Series might be asking "Kata-who?" at this point. Since most of the episodes containing Adrienne Hill's Trojan servant are now missing from the BBC's archives, there's good cause for the low profile of this character. Katarina joined the TARDIS crew at the end of 1965's The Myth Makers and only made it part of the way through the next story The Daleks' Master Plan before being blown out of an airlock. Her brief tenure in the programme was nothing to do with Hill's performance, though, which was pretty good. The producer, John Wiles, decided to axe her character ASAP once he twigged onto how many writing challenges came with having a historical character aboard the time ship. A Trojan girl wouldn't even know what a key was, for example, and that made writing stories around her particularly problematic. What was embarrassing was that none of these difficulties had been properly thought through before bringing Hill back as a regular.