10 Saddest Doctor Who Companion Exits

Doctor Who has bid farewell to a staggering number of companions over the years. That's the reality of life with the Doctor; human life-spans pale into insignificance against that of a Time Lord (or whatever it is the Doctor actually is now).

However, the real-world reasons for companion exits are usually much more mundane than that - the result of contract negotiations breaking down or actors being offered better work elsewhere.

Some of these departures have been victorious happy endings like Martha Jones' moment of self-actualisation when she accepts that the Doctor will never see her in the same way he saw Rose. Other times they're hastily written in, such as when alien warrior woman Leela decides to marry a soppy Gallifreyan guard instead of going out in a blaze of glory.

As we approach Yaz and Dan's final adventures, what will their departures be like? A companion exit is most successful when the audience feels something. A Doctor Who companion is their way in, the identification figure amongst all the madness of time travel and alien planets. This list collects those companion exits that have broken our hearts over the years.

Earthshock begins with Adric trying to convince the Doctor that he can mathematically plot a course back to his homeworld. It ends with him staying onboard a crashing space freighter, determined to work out the final logic code. When a dying Cyberman blasts the console, Adric is doomed to never know the answer and is blown to smithereens as the freighter crashes into Earth.

What's interesting about the death of Adric is that it's not a noble sacrifice to save the Doctor and his friends, it's the result of his youthful arrogance. He says he's trying to stop the crash to save Earth, but it's his obsession with being right that ultimately leads to his death.

What really sells the sadness of the moment isn't the lingering close-up of his shattered star or mathematical excellence. It's the emphasis on the Doctor's inability to do anything. Despite how he's remembered now, Adric's death traumatised a generation of young viewers, and the Doctor not reassuring the audience that everything will be okay plays a big part in that.

Years later, towards the end of Billie Piper's second series, Fifth Doctor actor Peter Davison emailed Russell T Davies in order to reassure his kids that Rose Tyler wouldn't die. Davies emailed back simply with "You killed Adric, what do you care?"