strawbleberry

Hi guys....my love for DR Who has led me to writing an assignment for university based on travel companionship between the Dr and his associates (on what they offer each other...e.g an escape from their life, friendship, love etc).....if anyone has any ideas which i could use for my report it would be amazing

Hope to hear from anyone willing to help thanks

Mrs.Almeida

That is an interesting topic. Well done you for trying to sneak the show into university I did try that too during a presentation but it sort of failed

The dynamic of the companion and the Doctor is really quite an interesting choice. I have never really seen Classic Who but I think, depending on where you want to go with this, it would be nice to focus on New Who or even combine both things.

I think, ultimately, the relationship is about trust and friendship. They both can offer something to the other and make his life better. Like for example, Rose met the Doctor and sort of made him more human. He himself said that he needed her to find his way back. Later on, after he regenerated their relationship was about friendship (and the shipper in me says, love) - they really enjoyed life to the fullest together.
Then there was Martha, poor Martha. I think it would have been such a blast to see her and the Doctor travel without Rose's shadow looming over them.
Donna - friendship! There is nothing more to it. She helped him a lot, I think. They were more like equals, I think.
Same goes for Amy.

So there we are. I think it really is all about being with the people you need to be with in that stage of life. That doesn't always happen in real life, then again, I think choosing Martha for a companion wasn't the best choice - not because of Martha, but because he had just lost Rose and she just didn't deserve it.

I really want to believe that the Doctor chooses his companions as well as they choose him, you know. They can help each other - the Doctor helps them to become a better person and they help him to, basically, stay human.

But this is just my take, of course.

Raonaild

Funny, I was just watching the extra scenes from the S5 DVDs, and the Eleventh Doctor talks a bit about this...



Then there's also the answer Eleven gives to Amy at the start of S5 - he's tired of talking to himself, he's lonely and needs a friend. Other theories have also come up ... like in The Runaway Bride, Donna told the Tenth Doctor that he needed to travel with someone because he needed someone to "stop" him from going too far.

And those are all from a character point of view, which is what you're looking for I think. But there are other reasons at the show level for why the Doctor almost always has travelling companions. The basic reason from that point of view is that the companions represent the audience, that the Doctor is so alien and has knowledge and experience far beyond anyone else, so he needs someone not-so-all-powerful around to ask the questions the audience wants to ask. The companion is also often put into jeopardy for the Doctor to save. Both of these reasons are why his companions are almost always young girls - they know less and so ask more questions, and they tend to need rescuing more often.

These days they try to subvert that old model more, by making the young female companion more capable and less helpless, able to rescue themselves or even the Doctor, and by showing the Doctor at times that he doesn't know everything.

Doctor_Me

the doctor isnt human.

the majority of the companions on new who we're not intended on his part to become his complaion.

eccleston recruited rose because she was a good person and they sort of kept the doctors personality from the 1996 movie where he was all pissed off about the master and he knew that rose could calm his rage.

tennant originally invited martha on a trip to say thankyou for the help with the judoon when they stole the hospital looking for a futative, and seeing how well she handled herself when she was kidnapped in the future let to another journy into the past where they encountered shakespeare and once again she handled herself well so she continued to accompany him.

after tennant originally asked donna to join him in his travels and she declined he was alone for a while and in the first episode of s1 i dont believe he actually asked her to join she just piled her bags up and joined him. it was then he started to realise that she was important to the timeline, he just needed to figure out how.

if ud like i could go on about most of the companions from classic who and the roles they played in the various senario's.