"In my experience, assistants mean trouble," the Doctor tells the White Guardian in "The Ribos Operation" (1978). "I have to protect them and show them and teach them and...couldn't I just manage with K-9?" Read "female companions" for "assistants," and you have Doctor Who's view on female characters in a nutshell. The Doctor, knowing the amount of "care and feeding" that goes into having a female companion, would rather make do with his low maintenance robotic dog. The situation in "The Ribos Operation" differs slightly from the norm, of course, since he is having this assistant foisted upon him. Usually, the Doctor meets his companions in his travels, and he makes the invitation for them to accompany him -- not surprisingly, almost of all of them are women. Of the twenty-nine companions the Doctor has had over the years, only eight have been men [1]. The "girls," as the women of Doctor Who are invariably called, both in the show and by the fans, exist for three reasons: 1) to scream; 2) to run away and wait for the Doctor to rescue them, which often provides much of the action in any given episode; and 3) to ask the Doctor what is going on so that he may explain it to the viewers. But mostly to scream.
Despite the fluid nature of the show, this treatment of female companions has remained curiously static. In every other way, Doctor Who has what Siobahn Morgan calls "an infinite flexibility," [2 ] meaning that the show has virtually limitless possibilities as far as plot and characterization. The title character, after all, can go literally anywhere, in any time, and become literally anyone. But while the show's direction has changed many times over the years, its treatment of the companions, apart from a few brief exceptions, has not. Some of those exceptions, such as Sarah Jane Smith and Leela, have shown themselves quite capable of taking care of themselves, without the need of a man's help -- or at least, they have at the start of their travels. But as we shall see, the series generally changes the character of even strong women like these, making them more and more dependent on the Doctor, or any other male figures available, for their protection and safety. In short, Doctor Who turns its female characters from women into "girls."
An obvious question springs to mind: why does this happen? One could respond that the show simply mirrors the pattern of male domination inherent in its own production. Writing in 1983, Tulloch and Alvarado point out that, even though Verity Lambert was the series' first producer,
...all subsequent producers have been male; that in the first nineteen years of the show there have been only two female writers...and a handful of women directors...that the companions are still only "companions" (and the majority have been "screamers"; that generally and dominantly Doctor Who has maintained the male view of the world to which most "Sci-Fi" subscribes...In fact, in terms of the roles women occupy within the series one would have to argue for the extreme narrative conventionality of Doctor Who (8).
I believe, however, that these external influences have not determined this inherent male domination as much as the series' very beginnings have. When Doctor Who first aired on the BBC on 23 November 1963, it introduced a "family" of time travellers, much in the same way that Lost in Space, albeit less successfully, would later do in the US. The Doctor's very first companion is his granddaughter Susan, whose familial ties to him are obvious. Her age automatically makes her a girl in the literal sense [3]. His next two companions, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright, both teachers at the school which Susan attends during her stay in 20th century London, exercise their right of in loco parentis -- as well as attempt to sate their curiosity -- by following her home one night to discover what is so "unearthly" about this "child." This leads to their meeting the Doctor and eventually being whisked away in the TARDIS against their will. As the series progresses, however, the initial hostilities between the characters change, and the family dynamic evolves. The schoolteachers become, in a sense, children to the Doctor, as they in turn have become surrogate parents to his granddaughter Susan, continuing the role they played in her school. Not only Susan and Barbara but also Ian become subject to the Doctor's will since he controls the TARDIS, effectively controlling their lives [4]. Even after Susan leaves -- to be married off to another protecting male figure, no less -- and new companions arrive and subsequently depart, the family dynamic remains.
I argue that this fundamental set-up, which constitutes one of the series' proairetic codes, has never changed. The "head of household," so to speak, has always been the Doctor. Like Ian and Barbara, he holds the power of in loco parentis over those who travel with him, becoming a surrogate parent for them in the process. We see this particularly in his relationships with the traditional female companion -- ie, "the screamer" -- whose feminine coded dependence on the Doctor mirrors that of a child's dependence on a parent. Even Barbara, a stronger female companion than many of her successors, becomes a screamer from time to time, the first instance occuring as early as the second episode of the series, "The Cave of Skulls."
This code may also account for the odd way in which the series refers to its female characters. By and large, female companions, as well as other female characters who aid the Doctor and company, are referred to by the male characters, including the Doctor, as "girls." For instance, when the Fourth Doctor tells Harry Sullivan to protect not only Sarah Jane Smith but also First Med-Tech Vira, who appears to be Sarah's senior in age, he says, "Look after the girls, Harry" ("Ark in Space" 1975). We could say that the Doctor's advanced age -- given as anywhere from 450 to 952 years -- would lead him to think of any sentient female under the age of 200 as a girl. But that would not account for his tendency, or that of other characters, to refer to female villains as "women," as in "It's all the fault of that woman Adrasta" ("Creature From the Pit" 1979). The equation becomes clear -- if you help the Doctor, like Sarah does, you're a "good girl." If you work against him, like Lady Adrasta, you're a wicked "woman." Not to mention that "women," unlike the "girls" under the Doctor's care, take care of themselves, thereby subverting the series' code.
Producers of the programme, to their credit, have tried from time to time to break out of that dynamic by introducing stronger women characters. These introductions tried to subvert the code. For the most part, however, the effort has been unsuccessful. The code reestablishes itself fairly quickly, and one of two things happens. The first is that the character is soon gotten rid of altogether, this being the case with Dr. Liz Shaw. Dr. Shaw was an extremely intelligent woman with degrees in many fields. As such, her character immediately failed to live up to one of the traditional companionly duties: asking the Doctor what is going on so he can explain it to the audience. As Barry Letts, the producer at that time, put it in his interview for More than 30 Years in the TARDIS, "They could discuss things and the science fiction fans or the scientists in the audience would know exactly what they were talking about, but the majority of the audience wouldn't." That, coupled with the fact that she was not the screaming type and rarely needed rescuing, ensured that the character lasted only one season.
If a character who exhibits traditionally male-coded characteristics continues in the series, however, she soon becomes more feminized, thus making her less of a subversive element, and also allowing the original male dominant-father figure dynamic to reassert itself. We can see this feminization process by looking at two of the series' strongest female companions, Sarah Jane Smith and Leela. One is very definitely considered a screamer, while the other is not. But over the course of their time aboard the TARDIS, both make this shift from strong, masculinized women to less empowered, more feminized characters [5].
According to Tulloch and Alvarado, "Sarah [Jane Smith's inclusion in the series] is often taken to mark a new era of the programme in its search for more positive female roles" (212). Sarah was the first (and oddly last) companion who identified herself as "feminist" -- or more accurately, as a "women's libber" -- and many elements in her first story reflect this. First of all, her appearance is "appropriate[ly] 'tomboyish'...designed in accordance with the dominant media representation of feminists" (Tulloch and Alvarado 102): she wears a dark green jacket, slacks, and a sweater vest, and keeps her hair in a short bobbed haircut. She acts out the stereotype of the bold, no-nonsense reporter, which leads the Doctor to tease her, as he does with anyone who takes themselves too seriously. For example, when she sneaks into a top secret think tank in hopes of finding a good story, the Doctor tells her that he will not give her away. When she asks him why not, he replies, with a straight face, "You can make yourself useful...we need someone around here to make the coffee" ("The Time Warrior" 1973).
Sarah, however, ends up becoming much more useful than that. She stows away aboard the TARDIS in which she in transported to medieval England. She at first believes that she has somehow stumbled into "some sort of pageant." Thus, when confronted with Irongron and his band of ruffians, she first tries to fight off the guard who takes her prisoner, and later gives her captor Irongron an earful about what she considers to be an acting job taken a bit too far. Later, however, when she discovers that she has actually travelled in time, she takes the whole thing in relative stride. She even goes so far as to ally herself with Irongron's rivals to capture the Doctor, whom she suspects of being a traitor. After organizing a raid on Irongron's castle to kidnap the Doctor, she finally realizes her error and helps him defeat Irongron and the Sontaran warrior for whom the story is named.
In all these instances, Sarah is much more active as a companion intially than many of her more passive predecessors, though she sets a precedent which allows later companions to do the same. She also fulfills one part of the established companion's role, that of asking the Doctor what is going on, in a more logical way than many of the previous companions. Her immediate predecessor Jo Grant, for example, is in some ways equally as active as Sarah, but the reason for Jo's inquisitiveness is a complete lack of knowledge, an ignorance which leaves her intellectually powerless. Sarah, as a reporter, has a more logical reason for questioning the Doctor about what's going on -- her occupation itself makes the questioning virtually second nature. In addition to this, she brings much more knowledge with her initially than Jo does. Despite Jo Grant's training in escapology and the necessary skills for becoming "The Girl from UNIT," her lack of knowledge of science, history, and other areas limits her. Sarah, however, often shows herself to be quite knowledgeable about such things -- sometimes even to the Doctor's amazement. In this sense, she echoes the earlier companion Zoe Harriot, who comes close to being the Doctor's intellectual equal.
Sarah's first serial takes a great deal of time playing up these so-called feminist characteristics of Sarah's character. The story presents her as a woman who, despite being "not uncomely," can face manhandling soldiers with a sharp tongue; who can organize a military-style raid of a medieval castle to capture a single man; and who can accept the reality of having travelled in time without inordinate fuss. And, most importantly, she can do all these things without uttering a single scream -- something which, up till that point in the series, was extremely rare. Even when confronted with the hideously ugly Sontaran Lynx, she reacts with replusion, not fearful screaming.
By the end of her travels, however, Sarah's character drastically changes. It changes, in fact, to the point that the woman who bends Irongron's ear in "The Time Warrior" is not the same as the "girl" who leaves the Doctor at the end of "The Hand of Fear" (1977) four years later. We can see the most obvious signs of this in her apperance. By "The Hand of Fear," Sarah's hair has gotten longer, and her clothing has become more feminine, and even childlike. Her costume in that story consists of a bright red turtleneck shirt, a red-and-white striped set of bib overalls with three red stars on the front, and later in the episode, a white feathered jacket -- much as a child would wear. Even the temporal setting of the story can't completely excuse this fashion nightmare -- later in the story, one of the characters refers to her outfit as being "just like Andy Pandy." She also finds herself helpless and powerless throughout this story, which has by this time becomes Sarah's lot in the TARDIS. In this instance, an alien entity takes over her mind and uses her to take control of a nuclear energy plant. To take this example to its obvious conclusion, we can say that she is penetrated by what we later discover is a male-gendered force, and loses control of her own body. But the Doctor soon rescues her from the alien's control -- just like he would with any of his previous companions.
This passivity on Sarah's part alone differentiates her final apperance from her initial one. Instead of rescuing the Doctor, the more masculine coded action she takes in "The Time Warrior," she reverts to the time-honored role of the companion, which is to be rescued by the Doctor. She also plays a more passive role in the rest of the serial. After providing the (possibly vaginal?) gateway through which the alien recreates itself on Earth, she does little more than chase after the Doctor while he solves everything. This directly opposes the Sarah of "The Time Warrior" who works with the Doctor to defeat the Sontaran.
Before she leaves the TARDIS for good, Sarah gives us an overview of what her life with the Doctor has been like, and many elements in it tell us how her character has changed:
I'm sick of being cold and wet and hypnotised left, right, and center...I'm sick of being shot at, savaged by bug-eyed monsters, never knowing if I'm coming or going or being...I want a bath, I want my hair washed -- I just want to feel human again...("The Hand of Fear" 1977)
The Sarah of "The Time Warrior" would never have delivered this monologue. Whereas that Sarah still felt reay to take on anything with her feminine strength and bravery, time spent with the Doctor has worn this Sarah out. She now plays a passive role which allows her to be hypnotised constantly: Sarah falls under alien control in five of her eighteen stories, most of them taking place after her first season -- and, conspicuously enough, after a change in the producer's chair. Thus bug-eyed monsters quite often do "savage" her, with all the sexual overtones that phrase carries. Another important point about this monologue is Sarah's anger at not knowing whether she is "coming or going or being." At this point, Sarah no longer controls her life, or even her very existance -- the Doctor does, in the same sort of in loco parentis he has adopted for time travelling females since the series began. Her speech comes before her decision to leave the TARDIS for good, however, so one might think she has made the final decision and has put herself back in control. In fact, however, she makes the decision without knowing that the Doctor will soon receive a call from the Time Lords, resulting in his decision to leave her behind. When she returns to the console room from "packing her goodies" -- clutching a stuffed toy owl, of all things, protectively to her chest -- he tells her of his decision. She immediately apologizes for her outburst of temper and begs him to take her along, but to no avail. In this, the question of who is in control of the TARDIS -- "Who," indeed -- is resolved, and when the Doctor says, "You're a good girl, Sarah," we never question the fact that this "girl" is three years older than the woman who originally began travelling with him.
We can see the final proof of the change in Sarah when she talks about what she would need to "feel human again." Of all the possible things she could list, she tells the Doctor she wants a bath and wants her hair washed -- preferably by someone else, given the way she puts it. Some may not consider these feminine-coded activities in and of themselves, but when we consider that she could have said, "I want to get back to my career," we see how the strength of her character has been diminished. Her desire for adventure, travel, and the newspaper story of a lifetime has been reduced to the need for a bath, a clean head of hair, and a stuffed toy owl clutched possessively to her breast.
The producer at the time, Phillip Hinchcliffe, was well aware of this degeneration of character. In Tulloch and Alvarado, he discusses Sarah and Jo Grant, whom he sees as another degenerated female companion. Hinchcliffe points out that
[both] were extremely emancipated feminine women, but as soon as they got into the programme you had to drag all that in by the scruff of its neck, because although they had the accoutrements of their era, which was the late "Swinging Sixties," basically they were acting out The Perils of Pauline every week. That's the basic dichotomy of those characters (213).
Thus the next companion Hinchcliffe created became markedly different from any who had gone before, and from most since: the savage warrior Leela. This response to the degeneration of Sarah from a strongly male-coded character to the stereotypically screaming feminized one seemed completely feasible. Instead of running away when seeing a monster, Leela would try to knife it to death. Instead of screaming for help when confronted with a menacing madman from the 51st century, she would shout threats of her own, and never was there any doubt that she would carry them out.
Even though Leela's character was more masculinely coded, her appearance still showed off her feminine attributes -- which is what the male viewing public wanted. After all, the traditional female companion also exists for an additional, and quite obvious, purpose: to draw the male audience. As Haining points out in Doctor Who: A Celebration, men in particular
flocked back to the series in droves with the advent of Leela...It was not hard to appreciate why. With a plunging neckline, leather boots and an ample display of leg Leela was a hefty piece of artillery in Doctor Who's ratings arsenal (211).
The costume consistedly mainly of false leather skins bound together with thongs, and as Haining's description suggest, it left very little to the British imagination. The costume changed briefly during her travels, but in color only -- and in one episode, "The Talons of Weng-Chiang," Leela even dons the frilly feminine clothing of the Victorian era. As far as the male audience was concerned, this was still not a man, and the code was not being broken that much.
The producer and writers, however, seemed determined to make the character more than just another of the Doctor's "sex kittens." Certain aspects of the masculine coding of her character continued until her last stories, often in less than subtle ways -- the Doctor's constant admonishments to "put her knife away" suggest something of this. And yet the feminization process continued, in much more subtle ways.
Part of this stems from the initial setup of the character as envisioned by Hinchcliffe. Tulloch and Alvarado call her an "Eliza Doolittle character who...ask[s] questions as part of [her] 'civilising' process" (213). And in an interview for More than 30 Years in the Tardis, Hinchcliffe himself stated that
...we had the idea of [the Doctor] having a sort of a savage as a companion -- in other words, doing a sort of Professor Higgins, Pygmalion...kind of relationship. The idea was to make the girl assistant less a sort of Perils of Pauline [and more] a dynamic role model for the girls who watched the programme.
While the idea of using Leela as a role model seems like a good one, the Eliza Doolittle/Professor Higgins relationship mirrored in Leela's relationship to the Doctor still puts her in a dependent position. Even though she makes the decision to join the Doctor, seemingly much against his will, she still depends upon the Doctor for her education and indocrination into a more civilized society, much as any child would. The presence of this dynamic automatically takes away some of the power her character would normally hold.
In a way, the Doctor holds even more power over her than he does his other companions. For them, the Doctor is an alien, but comfortingly humanoid, scientist and traveller, but they see his powers as technological in nature. They do not see him as the powerful, otherwordly figure that someone from a less civilized culture would. But Leela does -- or intially, at least, in her first story "The Face of Evil" (1977). Since the Doctor shares the same face as the Evil One, the Satan of her particular tribe, she regards everything he does with a mix of suspicion and awed horror. Even when he offers her a jellybaby, she breathes in horror, "It's true, then. They say the Evil One eats babies." This co-mingling in her mind of the Doctor with supernatural forces does not immediately wear off, however, even after he convinces her that he is not the Evil One. Remember that at this point, Leela still believes in magic, as do all the members of her Tribe. She has always known the creatures in the jungle as the demons of the Evil One, and not the manifestations of a schizophrenic computer's id that the Doctor says they are. Additionally, everything she sees around the Doctor -- from the yo-yo he gives her in the next story, which she mistakenly thinks is a magical device; to the TARDIS itself, which is totally beyond her understanding -- makes her think that he must be some sort of god, or at the very least a very powerful shaman. If we look at it from this viewpoint, we see that the Doctor will indeed become a sort of saviour-figure to her -- he will open her eyes to new knowledge and teach her the ways of Science. By the same token, of course, he could be seen as the Snake, tossing(?) an apple to Eve to lead her away from her own true, and equally valid, beliefs. More on that later.
While the Doctor never quite civilizes Leela completely -- even in her last story "The Invasion of Time" (1978), she runs around the Doctor's homeworld gleefully knifing Sontarans -- he does manage to subordinate some of her unique abilities to his own. Many of these abilities, such as her ability in her earlier stories to literally sense evil, are coded as feminine in our culture. In other words, she exerts a form of the proverbial "feminine intuition," and most of the time, she senses the evil around them accurately. But in almost all instances, when she reports this to the Doctor, he tells her that she is "imagining things." For one thing, this response reminds us of that of a parent to a child who has told him there is a monster under the bed. Although, in Leela's case, the monster is indeed under the bed, the Doctor never reverses his original view of her overactive imagination, just as a parent would never waver from this view. For another, the Doctor's response shows us his failure to see her abilities as equal, or even superior, to his own. Her intuitive abilities fall under the category of "superstition" or even "magic," both of which may be coded as feminine by some. The Doctor's scientific abilities directly oppose hers, not only because of the science vs. superstition dichotomy, but also because science is masculinely coded -- and male, according to the series' established proairetic, is of course superior to female.
By Leela's fourth story "The Horror of Fang Rock" (1977), the Doctor already has her convinced. Leela has a brief conversation with the hysterical Adelaide, who is presented in stereotypical Victorian female mode and directly contrasts Leela throughout the serial. Adelaide, after being informed that her employer has fallen from the lighthouse lamp gallery, tells Leela that she has just consulted an astrologer in Deauville who told her that something horrible would happen to her. When Adelaide explains to Leela what an astrologer is -- Leela at first refers to her as a "shaman," and she's not far off, really -- we see much of the Doctor's disdain in her reply: "A waste of time. I too used to believe in magic. But the Doctor has taught me science. It is better to believe in science" ("The Horror of Fang Rock" 1977). Note closely the language here: Leela uses the word "believe" when she refers to how she sees science and has seen magic. The word carries religious connotations, especially given Leela's background. After all, when she first met the Doctor, she believed in the power of Xoanon, who turned out to be a twisted image of the Doctor. Now that belief has shifted to the new "religion" the Doctor has taught to her, as her new "shaman": science. In this way, Leela's feminine coded intuition has been effectively subordinated to the Doctor's masculine coded rationality. Ironically, though, Adelaide's astrologer turns out to be right. Leela's devotion to science does not allow her to see the evil all around her as she did previously, which would have helped the Doctor in this instance. Unfortunately, the Doctor has blinded her with science.
As she continues on her travels with the Doctor, Leela remains very childlike in some ways, allowing the series' established family dynamic to continue. By playing Professor Higgins to Leela's Eliza Doolittle, the Doctor is, in effect, raising Leela as his own. When their time together ends in "The Invasion of Time" (1978), however, she still has not fully matured, and the Doctor, as always, is still looking out for her safety. In that story, the Doctor returns to Gallifrey to become Lord President of the High Council of Time Lords. Although he appears to be collaborating with the Vardans to take over the planet, he actually plans to lure them into a trap. He knows that Leela presents a threat to his plans. Given the nature of the telepathic Vardans, he knows he cannot tell her anything of his plans as her mind is not strong enough to block them out, in spite of all he has taught her.
In an attempt to keep her -- and, incidentally, his own plans -- safe, he keeps his distance from her, allowing her care to be taken on by surrogates. For example, during the period of preparation for his coronation, Leela is given into the care of the Commander of the Royal Guard, Andred. In a very telling scene, Andred attempts to help Leela choose appropriate clothing for the coronation ceremony, none of which she likes. It mirrors the situation when a parent, knowing that he will be attending a fancy dress party that evening with his family, is trying to choose clothes for one of his children. This comparison is not too far off, given the fact that Leela has the equivalent of a temper tantrum to get her knife back.
The surrogate parenting can only go so far, however. Not long after his coronation, the Doctor orders Leela expelled to Outer Gallifrey, a savage wasteland. His real reasons for doing this still stem from his concern for her safety -- better to put her outside, in an environment in which she can survive, than keep her in the sterile and artifical underworld of the Time Lords, which will soon be under attack by aliens. Although she escapes her guards, she eventually finds her way out to the wasteland anyway in order to get help for the beseiged Citadel.
This particular example also exposes Leela's continuing lack of control over her life. As he has done with Sarah before her, the Doctor has dragged Leela in an alien environment, meaning she must depend on him as her main source of protection despite her knife and hunting skills. In "The Invasion of Time," she is not even aware of this dependence -- because he cannot tell her of the Vardans' plans without upsetting his own, the Doctor's behaviour strikes her just as oddly as it does his fellow Time Lords, if not more so. Yet even though he first threatens her life by having K-9 hold his blaster on her in the TARDIS and then later expels her into the wasteland, she retains her childlike faith in him, so much so that she is willing to give up her life to "rescue" him. Her faith becomes clear in the following exchange with the more adult and rational Time Lord Rodan:
Rodan: The invaders are in control!
Leela: Good. Now we can fight them.
Rodan: Didn't you hear the Lord President's announcement? We must submit!
Leela: You keep your Lord President, I'll keep my Doctor. He has a plan.
Rodan: What plan?
Leela: I don't know.
Rodan: Then how can you say?
Leela: He always has a plan!...Now, if the Doctor wished me banished, it was for a reason...
Rodan: Reason dictates the Doctor is a traitor!
Leela: Never!
Rodan: Reason dictates!
Leela: Then Reason is a liar!
Rodan: And if I am right?
Leela: Then I am wrong, and I will face the consequences ("The Invasion of Time" 1978).
One could argue that Leela's instincts have reasserted themselves here, despite the Doctor's efforts to make her a more rationally thinking being. However, during this dialogue, Leela says nothing about her instincts telling her that the Doctor is not a traitor, and given how often those instincts are mentioned in previous stories, their absence here is conspicuous. Her faith in the Doctor appear to be nothing more than that of the uncritical child towards the parent who can do no wrong. When confronted with the Doctor's irrational behvaiour, she attempts, using the new skills he has taught her, to rationalize it. Luckily for Leela, the Doctor indeed has a plan and is not a traitor after all, so her rationalization is justified.
Finally, no matter how masculinely coded Leela's character may often be, her departure from the series marks her firmly as a "Doctor Who girl." As the Doctor is preparing to leave Gallifrey, Leela informs him that she is staying. "Staying? Here?!" he exclaims. "Why?" She responds by reaching for Andred's hand, with the obvious implication that she is staying becuase of him. When the Doctor motions for K-9 to come along, K-9 replies that he is also remaining, "to look after the Mistress" [6].
One could read this as a betrayal of the parental figure, which allows Leela to regain some of her previous power. But the Doctor retains a form of control over Leela -- he has virtually "given the bride away" to Andred, who happens to be a member of the Doctor's own race. Even though he has lost a daughter, he has gained a son-in-law. And since he has a new model of K-9 waiting for him in the TARDIS, he has not even lost a dog.
As for Leela, she has traded one alien environment -- the ever-changing life aboard the TARDIS -- for another -- the sterile Citadel of the Time Lords. While she is fully equipped to protect herself in the wilderness of Outer Gallifrey, Leela will require protection of a different sort in the Citadel -- a protection which only Andred, the Doctor's Gallifreyan proxy, can provide. Logically, Leela should have married one of the renegade Time Lords living out in the wastelands. In that sort of marriage, at least, Leela would still be empowered, and the marriage would be a true partnership between equals. With the milquetoast Andred, however, Leela enters into such an unequal and, one would imagine, unsteady partnership that even K-9 deduces the need to stay and look after her [7 ].
Thus do Leela's travels end, in much the same way as commentators of fairy tales have often noted stories of such heroines ends: in marriage, the happiest possible "happy-ever-after" for a female companion. Unfortunately, Leela's departure does not even have the virtue of being original. Three previous companions -- Susan, Vicki, and Jo Grant -- all left the TARDIS to stand by, or behind, their men, too. The fact that this places Leela on the same level as those companions is depressing, at the least. We have at least seen, in "K-9 and Company" and "Downtime," that Sarah Jane Smith eventually regains her feminine power, so that her time with the Doctor has not left her a "screamer" forever. We can only imagine what Leela might do after the Doctor leaves -- will she see the error of her ways and divorce Andred to marry one of the so-called barbarians in Outer Gallifrey? Will she remain unmarried, taking only K-9 to serve as her hunting dog? Or will she actually learn something of Gallifreyan time technology, steal a TARDIS, and go out exploring herself? While the last possibility seems unlikely, it's not entirely impossible. But whatever she chooses to do with the rest of her life, we must hope that her choice will be her own, made as a fully grown woman and not as the "good girl" she was while being protected, shown, and taught by the Doctor.
"The Ark in Space." By Robert Holmes. Doctor Who. BBC. 25 Jan.-15 May 1975.
"The Creature From the Pit." By David Fisher. Doctor Who. BBC. 27 Oct.-17 Nov. 1979.
"The Face of Evil" By Chris Boucher. Doctor Who. BBC. 1 Jan.- 22 Jan. 1977.
Haining, Peter. Doctor Who-A Celebration. London: W.H. Allen, 1983.
"The Hand of Fear." By Bob Baker and Dave Martin. Doctor Who. BBC. 2 Oct.-23 Oct. 1976.
"Horror of Fang Rock." By Terrance Dicks. Doctor Who. BBC. 3 Sept.-24 Sept. 1977.
"The Invasion of Time." By David Agnew. Doctor Who. BBC. 4 Feb.-11 Mar. 1978.
More than 30 Years in the Tardis. Prod. John Nathan-Turner. Videocassette. BBC Video, 1993.
"The Ribos Operation." By Robert Holmes. Doctor Who. BBC. 2 Sept.-23 Sept. 1978.
"The Time Warrior." By Robert Holmes. Doctor Who. BBC. 15 Dec.-5 Jan. 1974.
Tulloch, John & Manuel Alvarado. Doctor Who: The Unfolding Text. London: Macmillan Press, 1983.