10 Most Depressingly Realistic Lessons From Doctor Who

4. Know When To Leave

Back in 1986, a good chunk of Fandom was less than kind to Bonnie Langford. To be fair, these days we know that Bonnie is gracious, amusingly self deprecating, and an all around good egg. At the time however she was a former child star who played a new companion with a cutesy-squeaky voice, toxically saccharine chipper attitude and a depth of characterization that rarely surpassed one dimension. It should be acknowledged that the person fandom was really upset with was John Nathan Turner. The character that Bonnie was given to play was merely an unfortunate amalgamation of all of the things that we'd been politely trying to pretend we didn't like. The outfits beggared description. The dialogue given to her by the good people at Pip and Jane enterprises would have been unsalvageable even if Glenn Close had been cast as the new companion. The cards were very much stacked against fandom ever embracing Melanie Bush. And so it seemed sort of logical when, after the end of her first full year, her character basically said, 'Well, I'm clearly not working out as your companion. No worries, here's Sophie Aldred. You kids have a good time." The scene itself is actually one of the most likeable moments Mel ever had, and her deciding suddenly to leave with Sabalom Glitz cements her position as firm number two in the annals of 'Companions who apparently were just travelling with the Doctor until they found an opportunity to leave and have a lot of rough sex.' Number one of course was Nyssa, in case you were wondering.