Much like the Sixth Doctor himself, the Big Finish audios have completely changed the discussion about Mel. Primarily because they actually write for the character of Mel as designed, which is something that the TV show itself never actually bothered to do. To be fair, John Nathan Turner had a flair for promoting the show. This is why he went out of his way to hire "showbiz name Bonnie Langford" as the new companion in 1986, because it would get lots of headlines and get the show's name in the papers free of charge. That's actually the sort of thing that good producers do, so there's no crime in it. Unfortunately, good producers also care about the quality of their scripts, and that's something John Nathan Turner never really got around to doing. So they hired Bonnie Langford to play the character of Melanie Bush and then only ever gave her scripts that had her playing a pantomime caricature of Bonnie Langford. Between the incessant perkiness, the 'trademark quirk' of being obsessed with exercising and the 80s shoulder pads that she inevitable got saddled with, there was almost nothing about the character as shown on screen that didn't make you want to see her join Adric on the crashing spaceship. Sorry, Bonnie, but it's true.