3. Ian Chesterton
Ian has a legendary status in Doctor Who lore as one of the Doctor's first companions. Investigating a strange - yet brilliant - student of theirs who apparently lived in a junkyard, schoolteachers Ian and Barbara discovered that the girl was actually an alien from another world and that she lived in a spaceship shaped like a police box. Fearing that his secret would be exposed, the Doctor dematerialised the TARDIS - with Ian and Barbara still inside! The rest was history... and the present and the future. Due to the nature of his joining the TARDIS crew, Ian was a reluctant adventurer, forever hoping that the TARDIS' next destination would be 1960s London so that he and Barbara could return home. But there was much more to Ian than that. With William Hartnell's elderly Doctor much more retiring than the character we know today, Ian was the action man of Doctor Who's early years and, as our human viewpoint into the Doctor's world, was really the hero of the whole show. In many ways, Ian and Barbara are the most important companions in the Doctor's long life. When he first meets them, the Doctor is a calculating alien with little care for others' safety. But over his travels with them, he grows kinder and braver and into the hero fans know and love. See. Ian Chesterton: legend.