Doctor Who: 10 Worst Classic Series Companions

There are fan favourites. And then there are these guys.

By Mikey Heinrich /

From the very beginning the Doctor has been a mysterious traveller who is accompanied on his adventures by a variety of companions. Sometimes they've been female. Sometimes they've been male. Sometimes they've been shape-changing robots. On one occasion, they were very nearly a talking cabbage (if the story is to be believed). The role of the companion, as has been widely noted, is to be our viewpoint into the Doctor's adventures. They ask the questions that we would ask, need the things explained to them that we would need explained to us, and allow us to experience the Doctor's adventures vicariously through them. In the best cases, the companions are someone that we might pretend to be, roleplaying our way through the viewing experience and reassuring ourselves that we would be just as clever, just as brave. In other cases, however... There are companions littered throughout Doctor Who's original run whom we very decidedly did not aspire to be. We instead kind of aspired to one day see them get locked into a spaceship and chucked at prehistoric Earth. (Note: This did not happen as often as we might have hoped, but it did happen at least once, so we should probably just count ourselves lucky. Consider the fans of the programme Angel, who are still to this day waiting for something unpleasant to happen to Vincent Kartheiser!). These, then, are the other companions. The Anti-Sarah Janes. These are the 10 worst Doctor Who companions of the Classic Series. You were all thinking it.