5. Just Marry Her Off - Isn't That What Chicks Do?
The departure of Susan set an unfortunate precedent in this regard. When Susan left the term 'companion' wasn't even remotely in usage, nor was the idea that the supporting cast could be replaced by other supporting cast. In practical 1964 terms what they were dealing with was, 'one of the main characters of our show needs to be written out, how are we going to do that'. Well, it turns out that 'the we they do that' was to spend more than the usual amount of care to properly set up why she leaves and then devote the last 8 minutes of the story in question to nothing but watching that play out. More significantly, Susan's leaving wasn't strictly 'I'm leaving the Doctor to get married' as much as it was 'I was a girl who traveled with my Grandfather and now I'm a grown woman leaving to go off and live a life of my own'. The way the scene was presented is not entirely beyond reproach, but it was at least a logical progression for her character. Child becomes adult. It's an archetype for a reason, and the way it's presented in this case works just fine. Unfortunately, because it worked this time it set an unfortunate precedent. When the time came to get rid of Vicki as quickly as possible (which is exactly how Innes Lloyd saw it, based on existing records), they just thought to themselves, 'Well, Vicki is just 'new-Susan'. Check how we got rid of 'old-Susan' and just do that again'. Check and Check. Vicki was dumped as quickly as they could find a suitable guest character to marry her off to and that was that. They
almost get away with it with Jo. Then made a total mess of it with Leela (deliberately- They were hoping that the sheer crappiness of her exit would cause Louise Jameson to give in and agree to stay. They were wrong.) The less said about Peri, the better (for the moment.) Getting rid of a female character by just dumping her off with some other male character to get married is lazy and offensive scripting. But not as lazy and offensive as the underlying assumption that that's what female characters are
for.