10 Major Unanswered Questions From Classic Doctor Who

2. What Became Of Mel And Glitz?

Poor Melanie Bush. Unloved by fandom in her time, history has... not changed that opinion very much. Which is a bit unfair. Hindsight has made it clear that Bonnie Langford came to play a character, while John Nathan Turner just wanted her to play Bonnie Langford. It's important to remember the backstory to her character's creation. One of the more frequent complaints about Doctor Who during the great hiatus of 1986 was that there was far too much time in each episode spent just watching the Doctor and Peri bitch at each other. This in itself was a result of the show transitioning from 25 minute episodes to 54 minute episodes. More specifically, the show made the transition but the script editor didn't quite come with it, which led to a larger amount of padding than usual. Pointless arguing scenes are quick to script and can work wonders to fill a few missing minutes. That is, in small doses. After the hiatus, though, the production team's solution to the problem was to replace Peri with a happier, chirpier pep-squad of a companion. Enter Mel. And, after a year, fandom was relieved to see her go. The production staff appeared to feel the same since they simply wrote her out as quickly and expediently as possible. To whit, she decided completely out of the blue to leave with Sabalom Glitz, intergalactic mercenary, at some nebulous time in the future, in some unspecified galaxy, to do "much more crazy things". Whatever that means. It was a bit like watching Gidget suddenly hook up with Locutus of Borg and take off for that prison planet in Alien 3... except this made absolutely no sense.