10 Most Useless Doctor Who Characters

When futuristic space orphan Vicki left Doctor Who, the production team decided to go in the opposite direction for her replacement. Enter Katarina, a handmaid from Ancient Greece who joined the TARDIS to tend to Steven's wounds. However, either the limitations of a historical companion or the writers' imaginations led to her being swiftly, brutally written out of the show.

In some ways, Katarina was one of the most realistic Doctor Who companions. Her complete inability to wrap her head around the fantastical worlds she travelled to with the Doctor and Steven is reflective of how contemporary audiences may lose their own minds when confronted by the far future. The problem is that it doesn't make for particularly good drama. The far future is one thing, but wouldn't Katarina respond in a similar fashion if the TARDIS landed in the present day? This propensity to be dazzled by the future made her a fairly useless travelling companion.

She may have healed Steven's wounds from the previous story, but the rest of her scenes find her dazzled by futuristic technology, leaning on the fantastical myths of Ancient Greece to make sense of everything. Poor Katarina is so unfamiliar with the future that when held hostage, she opens an airlock door, ejecting herself and her captor into the vast emptiness of space.