User:Irltoad/sandbox

Companion

Loss of a companion

In the original run of Doctor Who, companions mostly left of their own accord, with only a few exceptions. The first death of a regular companion was Adric, in the 1982 serial Earthshock, although other characters such as Romana, Victoria Waterfield, and Jamie McCrimmon also left unwillingly. This is different in the revived era, with companions more often given tragic endings, allowing the show to explore the theme of loss. Demaris Oxman makes further distinction of the way this theme is explored by different showrunners, arguing that companions in Steven Moffat's time as showrunner tended to have more tragic endings, while Russell T. Davies wrote departures closely tied to each companions character.

The impact of such losses has been explored within the show. For example, the loss of Amy and Rory Williams drives the Eleventh Doctor into solitude in Victorian London where he refuses to get involved in the world's affairs anymore. Series 9 dealt with the Twelfth Doctor's growing fear over the potential of losing Clara Oswald. Her death in Face the Raven leads the Doctor to undertake extreme measures to undo her fate, as depicted in the Series 9 finale Hell Bent. The impact of the death of his wife, River Song, is a subplot of both The Husbands of River Song and The Return of Doctor Mysterio.

Steven Moffat, showrunner between 2010 and 2017, has stated that companion deaths are "wrong for Doctor Who", explaining that this he does not believe the show should represent the "grittiness" of real life.

Deaths

Several companions are shown to have died in the show's history:

• Katarina, killed in episode 4 of The Daleks' Master Plan when she opens the airlock of a spaceship after being taken hostage by a convict.
• Sara Kingdom is killed in episode 12 of The Daleks' Master Plan when she undergoes extreme ageing as a side effect of the First Doctor's activation of a Time Destructor device.
• Adric dies at the end of Episode 4 of Earthshock while trying to prevent the explosion of a bomb-laden space freighter in Earth's atmosphere.
• Kamelion, an android companion, is destroyed by the Fifth Doctor in Episode 4 of Planet of Fire as an act of mercy after Kamelion is taken over by the Master and asks the Doctor to destroy him.
• K9 Mark III sacrifices himself in School Reunion to save the Doctor and his friends from a group of aliens. The subsequent K-9 Mark IV that the Doctor leaves with Sarah Jane tells her that the Mark III's files have been transferred to the new machine.
• Astrid Peth sacrifices herself to kill Max Capricorn by driving him into a reactor core at the end of Voyage of the Damned. The Tenth Doctor partially resurrects her and sends her atoms into space.
• Adelaide Brooke kills herself in The Waters of Mars to preserve a fixed point in time.

Others are implied (or said) to have died years after parting company with the Doctor:

• The Eleventh Doctor learns of the death of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart in The Wedding of River Song via phone call, coinciding with the death of actor Nicholas Courtney.
• Sarah Jane Smith is confirmed to be dead by 2023 in The Giggle by the Fifteenth Doctor when talking to the Fourteenth Doctor about what they had lost, adding that they "loved her".

Mitigations

Not all companion deaths have been permanent. Several companions have been resurrected at some point in the series, including Jack Harkness, Rory Williams, Clara Oswald, and Bill Potts. Other companions died in alternate timelines or alternate lives. In Inferno, evil counterparts of Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, Liz Shaw, and John Benton died in the destruction of their universe's Earth. Amy and Rory's death created a paradox that erased that timeline.

List

• In The Trial of a Time Lord Peri Brown is killed by King Yrcanos in Mindwarp after her brain is replaced by that of Kiv, a member of the Mentor race. In The Ultimate Foe, however, it is revealed that Peri had not been killed and had become Yrcanos's consort.
• Grace Holloway is killed by the Master, but revived by the TARDIS's link to the Eye of Harmony during the 1996 television movie.
• Jack Harkness is killed by Daleks, but is brought back to life and given immortality by Rose Tyler in The Parting of the Ways. He died several times in Doctor Who and Torchwood, always returning to life soon afterwards. In Last of the Time Lords it is implied that Harkness becomes the Face of Boe, who dies peacefully in Gridlock after living for billions of years.
• River Song sacrifices herself in Forest of the Dead to save the Doctor's life, but he uploads a digital copy of her consciousness to the data core. River continues to appear in the series at earlier points in her life, and her post-death consciousness reappears in The Name of the Doctor.
• Sarah Jane Smith dies as a teenager in an alternate timeline in Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?
• Rory is killed by the Silurian Restac at the end of Cold Blood, sacrificing himself to protect the Doctor. He is consumed by a crack in time, which wipes him from existence. Rory reappears in The Pandorica Opens as an Auton duplicate created from Amy Pond's memories, and is restored to his old life with the rest of the universe in The Big Bang. He is shown dying of old age in The Angels Take Manhattan, in front of himself, Amy, the Eleventh Doctor and his daughter River Song. He and Amy negate the timeline by jumping off a roof, preventing him from being sent further back in time to die of old age downstairs. This kills them both, but they are resurrected when the timeline where they died is negated.
• An older version of Amy Pond is killed by a handbot in The Girl Who Waited when it gives her medicine it does not know will kill her, but her existence is erased when the Doctor and Rory convince her to help them rescue the younger Amy (allowing them to erase the older Amy's timeline).
• Although Amy and Rory become stuck in Manhattan in The Angels Take Manhattan, they were able to live out the rest of their lives there.
• Clara is killed during Face the Raven but resurrected by the Doctor in Hell Bent.
• Bill Potts is shot and killed by the colony ship's last crew member to halt the advance of the Cybermen in World Enough and Time She is converted into an original Mondasian Cyberman and, during The Doctor Falls, is restored to human form.

Deaths in spin-off media

Several TV companions have died in spin-off media:

• Liz Shaw dies in the 1997 Virgin New Adventures novel Eternity Weeps by Jim Mortimore, the victim of an extraterrestrial terraforming virus contracted while part of a UNIT team investigating an alien artefact on the Moon. This is contradicted by the Sarah Jane Adventures episode Death of the Doctor, which indicates that Liz Shaw is alive and working on the Moon in 2010; the novel is set in 2003.
• Ace is killed by an explosion in the comic storyline Ground Zero while a companion of the Seventh Doctor. This is also contradicted by the Sarah Jane Adventures storyline Death of the Doctor which indicates she is still alive in 2010, no longer travelling with the Doctor, and running a charity called ACE. Ace then appeared in 2022's The Power of the Doctor.
• Jamie McCrimmon dies an elderly man in the comic storyline The World Shapers.
• Adam Mitchell is killed by an explosion in the comic storyline Prisoners of Time, sacrificing himself to thwart the Master's attempt to destroy reality and saving all eleven Doctors and their companions.
• Leela dies long after Gallifrey is destroyed (it is implied that she survived the Time War) in a trilogy of Big Finish's Companion Chronicles stories, where she is held prisoner by an alien race called the Z'nai.
• In the 2020 web story Farewell, Sarah Jane, Sarah Jane Smith is said to have died.