Why Every Classic Companion Left Doctor Who

Captain Mike Yates was introduced as a potential love interest for Jo Grant in The Terror of the Autons. Their romance never got off the ground, however. As with Nicholas Courtney and John Levene, Richard Franklin was also phased out toward the end of the Third Doctor era.

Unlike the Brigadier and Sergeant Benton, however, Mike got a decent storyline for his final two apperances - betraying the Doctor and UNIT in Invasion of the Dinosaurs, before trying to redeem himself in Planet of the Spiders.

Franklin made a brief return to Doctor Who in The Five Doctors, and a year later wrote the stage play, Recall UNIT: The Great Teabag Mystery, reuniting him with John Levene to foil a plot to kill....Margaret Thatcher.