Doctor Who: the companions' best and worst performances

In an essay in the summer of 2018, I looked at the actors who've played the title role in Doctor Who, and judged their best and worst performances. I thought I'd do the same for the companions. Doctor Who has, by and large, been blessed with such extraordinary actors as companions that it's easy to take their work for granted -- to presume their performances are uniformly strong. But actors, like the rest of us, have good days and bad days, and in the case of Doctor Who, there are all kinds of factors that can contribute to the quality of a performance -- just as there are all kinds of criteria I have for judging them. A few words in advance. I'm only considering companions who stuck around for more than two full-length stories, and I’m not including the threesome traveling with the current Doctor, as they’re only partway through their journey. And just to mix it up, I'm listing the companions alphabetically — so get ready to bounce around the decades. (As in my essay about the Doctors, I've bolded the stories that contain the companions’ best and worst work, but I vary the order in which I present them. Sometimes, I list the good before the bad, sometimes vice versa; if you only look at the titles bolded, you might be surprised, when you read the text, to discover which is which.)

Freema Agyeman (Martha Jones): Agyeman is a firecracker in her introductory story, “Smith and Jones.” Her alternately fascinated and disbelieving delivery, the thirst with which she seems to be absorbing and processing information, the way she projects intelligence through her physicality — she instantly establishes Martha as the anti-Rose. Rose was a (marvelous) creature of instinct; Martha is a woman of science. Her eyes are forever flickering, and when she cocks her head to one side, it’s as if she’s doing private double-takes. If the Doctor directs her to get a machine up and running, she doesn’t rely on intuition; she hunts for the instruction manual — and wastes no time in doing it. When she and the Doctor step outside the hospital (which has been transported to the moon), and she asks, “We’ve got air — how does that work?”, it’s not rhetorical; as Agyeman inflects it, she really wants to know. You believe Agyeman as a doctor. The script plays to all her strengths — as no other episode that season does. Within weeks, Martha’s reduced to “another Rose,” pining after the Doctor: forgoing her intelligence, her fast sass and her skill set in search of unrequited love. Agyeman, sadly, never gets to be as formidable again as she is in her very first appearance. By the series' midpoint, she seems to have been beaten down by the subpar scripting; her once-swift shifts of emotions feel deadened. In fact, I’m sure to the horror of Who fans, I’m going to declare Agyeman’s performance in the eighth episode of Series 3, the much-loved “Human Nature” — in which Martha is forced to pose as a maid in 1913 — her worst work on the show. Oh, she does just fine as Maid Martha, but when the other characters are out of earshot, Agyeman has a chance to reengage with her character’s wiry energy and skeptical sense of humor and let them stand in contrast to the actors performing in a strict period style; she has the opportunity to show Martha resisting the urge to appear too self-assured, and to let us see the toll that her submissiveness is taking on her. But they all seem like missed opportunities — she too often seems merely lost in thought: muted and dutiful. When she’s fiddling with the TARDIS controls, seeking a solution to the predicament she and the Doctor have found themselves in, there’s no thirst or rush of adrenaline. (She was more restlessly alive thumbing through that manual in “Smith and Jones.”) And when she whines to an image of the Doctor, “You had to go and fall in love with a woman — and it wasn’t me,” it’s miserably self-pitying. Her eyes are downcast, and she’s wearing a sad frown. There are so many stronger choices Agyeman could have made, and I’m baffled why she didn’t. I suspect she’s giving exactly the performance Russell T. Davies wanted — he was infatuated with the notion of the Doctor as “the unattainable man,” and women who go weak at the knees in his presence. But it’s precisely because Agyeman has the potential to go so much further than she does — in a meaty role in which her character is playing a role of her own — that I find this performance so dispiriting. "Human Nature" should have been a tour-de-force for Agyeman (as, say, "Turn Left" is for Catherine Tate and "Flatline" for Jenna Coleman) — it should have been as much a character study for Martha as for the Doctor — but most of the other characters seem far more vibrant than she does.

Sophie Aldred (Ace): There’s sweet symmetry with Aldred: her first serial contains her worst performance; her last boasts her best. She learned on the job, and beautifully. But that first story, “Dragonfire,” is tough going; Aldred is still honing her craft and finding her character. Seated at a table with Sylvester McCoy, Bonnie Langford and Tony Selby, she seems out of her depth; her face keeps going blank between lines, then reacting just before she’s about to speak. And she has the unfortunate habit of telegraphing every emotion. But equally problematic is that for Aldred, then in her late 20’s, playing a teenager is clearly not coming easy. Although Ace is meant to be around 16 or 17, Aldred at times seems to be playing her a good five years younger. When she’s sullen, it doesn’t seem like she’s struggling with independence or identity — there are none of the complexities common to a girl on the verge of womanhood; she just seems like a brat. And when she’s sincere, it’s unbearable. Halfway through, Ace has a big monologue after she's been fired from her waitress job. She speaks of her childhood fantasies of seeing the universe and how they've all been dashed; she confesses that her real name is Dorothy, but she's christened herself Ace because her "real" Mom and Dad never would have given her a "naff" name like Dorothy. It's supposed to make us go, "Ooh, and now she'll get to fulfill those dreams by traveling with the Doctor," but Aldred’s approach is so determinedly winsome, you just want to reach through the screen, grab her by the T-shirt, and say, "Get a name, get a job, get a life." (She’s practically gazing at the stars, even though she and Mel are deep underground — you half expect a Disney choir to accompany her.) But by the time Aldred resurfaces in “Remembrance of the Daleks,” the improvement in her acting skills is notable, and within a couple more serials, she’s acquired new on-camera ease: able to match McCoy in spontaneity — no small feat — and to tame his intensity. It’s fitting that her final serial aired is a celebration of Ace, because it features her best work. By “Survival,” Aldred has improved so considerably that she makes its tale of adolescent empowerment invigorating and even moving in spots. Director Alan Wareing fills the screen with images that intensify the struggle between savagery and civilization at the serial's core — the orange sun burning a hole through the pink sky, the barren dunes giving way to enticing lakes — and Aldred effortlessly embodies the themes in human form. She truly seems, as the story suggests, a force of nature, struggling to come to terms with her essence and her sense of self — and what exactly has kept her running all these years. Her bonding with her “sister,” at first tentative and ultimately intimate, is delicately played, and when Kara dies saving her, and Ace rushes towards her lifeless body, then sobs in agony, it’s Aldred’s finest moment. She’s left to mourn her friend and the complex feelings that friendship engendered: “I felt like I could run forever, like I could smell the wind and feel the grass under my feet and just run forever.” The Doctor assures her, “The planet's gone, but lives on inside you,” and Ace, satisfied, smiles: “Good.” There had been companions who needed to travel in the TARDIS to feel fulfilled; in "Survival," Aldred gives us the first companion who might even be too big for the TARDIS to contain.

Nicola Bryant (Perpugilliam Brown): Although I find Bryant wonderful, do I feel she was used well during her time on Who? God, no. By her second story, she was reduced to a perpetual victim — and during her travels with Six, Peri's natural ebullience was too often submerged by his manic anger. So as much as I enjoy her performances in the Colin Baker era, I find her best in “Planet of Fire,” because she’s allowed to do more, and Bryant had so much to offer. She’s full of pluck and initiative: a spoiled little rich girl who, overnight, turns into a smart cookie. She’s a clever sneak while purloining her stepfather’s rare artifact (“Could be platinum,” she purrs, practically stroking it); she has grit and determination as she holds the Master at bay by dangling his prized possession over a cliff; and she’s shrewd enough to wrest Kamelion from the Master’s clutches with the caring but insistent sound of her voice. And although her first off-world adventure challenges her, it never defeats her; as Bryant plays it, even Peri's exasperation is amusing. So when she ultimately asks the Fifth Doctor if she can join him, she seems like the ideal travel companion — but that image is shattered in the very next story, “The Caves of Androzani." It's widely known that when Robert Holmes was commissioned to write "Caves," he'd never seen a Fifth Doctor serial, so he wrote a Tom Baker script, and Peter Davison had to take Four's galumphing swagger and make it work for a character defined most by his empathy. What's rarely (ever?) discussed is that Holmes clearly wrote the companion's role with Lis Sladen in mind. Nothing in Peri's dialogue suggests this is the same young woman we'd just met in "Planet of Fire." Two minutes in, she's asking, "Can we go?" What's happened to her spirit of adventure? She calls the Doctor "a pain" and "a very difficult person," and as he walks away, she rolls her eyes. What's become of the vivacious coed? Lis Sladen was a master at tempering her most contrary lines with playfulness or irony; Bryant plays them straight, and comes off like a wet blanket. And it only gets worse. Sladen was given to wonderful, unexpected shifts of inflection and intent; writers would often cram multiple thoughts into her lines, knowing she'd delineate them clearly. Bryant has no gift for that, or perhaps no idea that that's what Holmes is doing. When she tells the Doctor, "I can take an insult, I just don't want to be shot," you can hear the line on Sladen: the first half would have been amusingly resigned, the second half impatiently outraged. Bryant reconciles the twin emotions by going quiet and muted: making, arguably, the least interesting choice. Later, after grilling an unhelpful Salateen in Jek's lair, the Doctor asks Peri, "Do you detect a certain coolness?", and she replies, "Ice cold — I don't think anybody likes us." Sladen would have found it alarming, but also have been devoutly curious. Bryant goes for glib, the punchline to what Davison determinedly doesn't play as a joke. This pattern continues throughout "Caves": Bryant is too muffled when you want her to be expressive, or too flip when you want her to show concern — and the results, time and again, come off as mannered and self-conscious. And it all comes down to a role written for another, and an actress — however beguiling — too green at that time to address the incongruity.

Jenna Coleman (Clara Oswald): Well, of course her worst performance comes from Series 7, when Steven Moffat is so intent on keeping the “Impossible Girl” mystery going, he’s unwilling to characterize Clara. Coleman has to do all the heavy lifting, and acquits herself well, particularly in “Rings of Akhaten” and “Hide”; where she succeeds least is in “Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS.” Like Peter Capaldi, Coleman was best when meeting a challenge; it’s why she and Capaldi were such an effective team, because the actors — like their characters — were risktakers. You believed they thrived on an element of danger. (Moffat ultimately designs Series 9 as a commentary on — and a consequence of — their shared acting style.) “Journey” casts Clara as a damsel in distress, the stock ingenue in a horror film — that’s not a role, it’s a type, and what you see Coleman respond with are a lot of gestures and half smiles that never add up to much. It’s a largely passive role, and it’s especially deadly for Coleman, who is always at her best being required to multitask, to wear a dozen emotions simultaneously on her face. Once Moffat gives her an actual role to play, at the top of Series 8, she never hits a false note; Moffat shrewdly (re)characterizes her as a bit of a control freak, and that, of course, plays to all of Coleman's strengths. As brilliant is she is throughout Series 8 — and I could easily have chosen “Listen," "Kill the Moon,” “Flatline” or “Dark Water” as her finest work — I think all of her skills come to the fore most in the episode that follows them, “Last Christmas.” Coleman puts fresh spins on her lines that convey information well beyond what’s on the page: the wonder in her voice as she responds to the Doctor’s query if she believes in Santa, realizing and relaying how much she’s missed their adventures; her twinge of delight when warned how dangerous the aliens are, as if relishing the adrenaline rush. And her scene under the table trying not to think about the dream crabs — furiously spinning mathematical equations, apologizing to an imagined Danny for all the ways she let him down, then screaming as the crab bursts through the table — is a tour-de-force. "Last Christmas" is one quick mood shift after another for Clara, and Coleman's skill at juggling emotions — and at creating a complex character whose flaws help make her so fascinating — is never more impressive. But Coleman’s achievement here goes beyond hitting the necessary beats well. In “Last Christmas,” Coleman clarifies a series’ worth of scripting, with respect to the relationship between Danny and Clara. The two of them were never less than engaging, but their brief time together was tinged with so much deceit on her part and self-sacrifice on his — and it ended so suddenly — that it was tough to get a read on it. Was Danny, as suggested by the appearance of Orson Pink in “Listen,” truly Clara’s romantic destiny? In “Last Christmas,” Coleman gives us our answer. Her joy at seeing Danny appear at her bedside on Christmas morning; her delight at guessing what gifts he’s gotten her (her love of being right is never more charming); the sad, soft intensity of her gaze when she’s forced to admit it’s all a dream; and the mix of grief and adoration in her eyes as Danny makes her promise to think about him for just five minutes each day — it’s extremely powerful and altogether convincing. In "Last Christmas," Coleman makes the relationship rich and moving in a way that neither she nor Samuel Anderson had a chance to do in Series 8; she accomplishes the rare feat of legitimizing the love story after the fact.

Michael Craze (Ben Jackson): Like Maureen O'Brien before him, and a couple after, Craze is never better than in his introductory story, in this case “The War Machines.” He has his character down pat, plus an appealing ease in front of the camera. One of his earliest scenes, in which he and a stranger come to blows over Polly (the other guy is hitting on her, Ben comes to her rescue), really does seem like the kind of fight two alpha males would have in a bar. It sets up sailor Ben perfectly: he’s the guy who, when faced with a problem, is all too willing to jump in feet first. Ben was basically a replacement for Steven, and if you read the script to “War Machines,” it’s easy to hear just about all Ben’s lines being spoken by Peter Purves. Producer Innes Lloyd and story editor Gerry Davis wanted the new companion to better reflect the Swinging Sixties, and indeed Ben’s dialogue is sprinkled with modern slang, but at heart it plays like a Purves script — but with a crucial difference. Craze gives it a new kind of neurotic edge. Seeing Polly under WOTAN’s control, he cries out, “Have you gone mad?” It’s exactly the kind of thing you can hear Steven Taylor say, except Purves would have said it with a slight air of superiority: a seasoned traveler given to expect a certain level of decorum. Craze just sounds, well, crazed; when he asks Polly if she’s gone mad, the rest of the sentence — implied — is “Or have I?” Craze has a desperate, sweaty intensity that gives “War Machines” its kick; Purves will be missed, but Craze will do quite nicely. As noted, Craze finds his character in his first scene, and never wavers, and I can only point to one serial where the scripting trips him up: “The Moonbase.” It’s a script written by Kit Pedler, the scientist who should never have been let near a typewriter. (Occasionally, he’s joined by Gerry Davis, the story editor who should never have been let near a typewriter.) Pedler was most comfortable scripting scientists, and so in “Moonbase,” Ben and Polly instantly get a mental upgrade. It’s not so bad on Anneke Wills, as Polly’s upbringing has been left ambiguous; for Ben, who’s very much defined as coming from a blue-collar background, his transformation into a brainiac is preposterous. In “The Moonbase,” Ben inexplicably knows that the Gravitron uses thermonuclear power, that interferon is a viral antibody, and that acetone is present in nail polish remover. Pedler (or Davis, script editing) tries to sprinkle Ben’s lines with his familiar cockney slang (every sentence seems to contain a “Duchess” or “blimey” or “mate”), but the incongruity of his scientific knowledge and the working-class way he imparts it (“Well because, Duchess, the temperature inside is about four million degrees, that's all”) only makes it more absurd. (And things gets even more ludicrous when, in the midst of devising “a right old cocktail” to take out the Cybermen, alpha-male Ben provokes a pointless fight with Jamie over which of them Polly likes better.) It’s the kind of wackadoodle assignment almost designed to defeat Craze, who had forged such a linear and consistent character. I can’t say it’s “bad,” but it’s unfortunate: one of the rare companion performances that’s unintentionally comical.

Arthur Darvill (Rory Williams): Arthur Darvill had one of the hardest assignments in the history of Doctor Who: he had to not be Mickey. No offense to Noel Clarke, but Mickey was created to be the guy that Rose didn’t choose — over and over. By Series 5, that was the only format we knew for “the boyfriend of the companion” — the guy the heroine doesn’t pick — so Arthur Darvill, when he was introduced as Amy’s fiancé, had to convince us he wasn’t designed to be expendable. And I mean, he had to, because Season 5 was fashioned as a season about both Amy and Rory — about how Amy, who has wings, learns the importance of roots, and how Rory, who has roots, learns the importance of wings. And Darvill didn’t just have to see to his own transformation; he had to look after Karen Gillan’s as well, because she could only take us partway: she could convince us that her feelings for Rory trumped her thirst for adventure (or at the very least, that the two could exist side by side), but Darvill had to show us that Rory was worthy of Amy, who had been anointed to travel with the Doctor. Darvill gets basically one episode to do that, and that’s “The Pandorica Opens.” The assignment is so specific — and so crucial to the fate of the season — and Darvill nails it: his sad naïveté when he asks the Doctor if Amy has missed him; his anger (verging on — but never giving into — self-pity) when he realizes that no, she didn’t; his sweet joy as she starts to remember him; and his mounting terror as his Auton side starts to emerge. Darvill’s challenge in this episode is to convince us that the personal story-line — the reunion of Rory and Amy — is every bit as important as the time-altering events occurring elsewhere: the new alliance of the Doctor’s oldest foes, the Doctor imprisoned in the Pandorica, River trapped in an exploding TARDIS, and ultimately, the world ending. And he does, in a deeply moving performance. (He’s just as winning in “The Big Bang,” but the things he does there — e.g., guarding Amy for two centuries — are the stuff of fairy-tale and legend; it’s “The Pandorica Opens” that paints a human face on it all.) Darvill was one of the more consistent actors to appear on Doctor Who, and pretty much the only time I don’t buy him is in “A Good Man Goes to War,” masquerading as the Roman Centurion. It’s unclear, when the Roman Rory bursts onto the Cyber ship and parades around, why the Cybermen don’t just blast him into oblivion. Darvill is good at a lot of things; bold authority is not one of them. (It’s one of the reasons Legends of Tomorrow didn’t start to click till Sara replaced Rip as team leader.) And his delivery doesn’t make sense: Darvill seems so focused on being tough, we don’t see the fear and anger that must be simmering beneath the surface. In the following scene — still in centurion garb — he appeals to River for help, and once again he’s so determinedly stern, the acting beats seem compromised. Darvill, I should mention, returns to form within one line of reuniting with Amy (“Oh, God, I was gonna be cool. I wanted to be cool,” as he starts to sob), and you understand instantly that until now, he’s been desperately, frantically playing a part. But he never seemed desperate or frantic. He just seemed like an unconvincing warrior. Darvill may well have been giving Moffat the performance he envisioned when he wrote it; I just don’t think it’s good. The pay-off works, but the set-up doesn’t. Was the need for the former worth sacrificing the latter?

Janet Fielding (Tegan Jovanka): Well, there's nothing in her Doctor Who repertoire remotely like her performance in "Snakedance," but I'm disqualifying it, because — as with Patrick Troughton in "Enemy of the World" — it's a showcase that lets her play more than one role. (That said, even if we eliminated the Mara bits from “Snakedance,” it might still be her best work. My God, she’s good.) So let’s go back and study the rest of her time on Who. Fielding's first full season is a mixed bag. She's a clever gamine in "Castrovalva," an earthy flapper in "Black Orchid," a lost waif for most of "Kinda": those are the good performances. The rest are pretty awful, and nothing's as bad as her work in her first filmed Davison story, “Four to Doomsday.” Tegan is alternately hostile and hysterical throughout — and yes, it’s there in the lines, but it didn’t have to be so pronounced in the performance. But that’s not the worst of it — it’s where the serial takes her in Part 3: aboard the TARDIS, trying to fly solo. It’s an embarrassment of overemoting that goes on for two episodes, and it’s hard to say what’s worse: her frenzy as she tries to get the TARDIS to dematerialize, or her weepy sobs of relief when it does. It’s her weakest performance in what is, for Fielding, an uneven season. When she returns for a second full season, her acting skills have grown by leaps and bounds — and her character gets a smart makeover. At Davison's insistence, Tegan is softened somewhat; it times nicely with Fielding learning to vary her delivery, and to suggest a little zest for life, some thirst for adventure. I’d like to put forth Season 20’s “Enlightenment” as Fielding’s best, because it’s so good — but for my money, as splendid as she is, she’s a touch too muted, as if she’s working so hard to show a more subdued Tegan, she’s abandoned some traits that might have come in handy. For me, Fielding comes into her own in Season 21, and it’s in one of her shortest, sweetest serials, “The Awakening,” that she most effortlessly blends Tegan's tetchier side — she's still quite willing to give the Doctor hell, as in Season 19 — with the loyal side, the loving side and the brave side. Tegan, who once considered her TARDIS adventures a detour until she could return home, has grown so committed to her travels with the Doctor that a family visit is now the detour. Fielding is vibrant throughout, and her performance carefully considered: she makes it clear how well Tegan balances the Doctor (and isn’t that the true function of any good Doctor Who companion?). When the pair are held for questioning at Sir George’s manor house, and the Doctor attempts a methodical approach, Tegan rails against their captivity, but without undermining the Doctor’s efforts — as in, say, “Four to Doomsday.” (When she escapes, no one goes after her, because when Tegan’s on the warpath, even foot soldiers jump out of the way.) And through the course of the serial, elements of discomfort and fear creep into Fielding’s performance, as Tegan realizes that the town is being ruled by demons and madmen, and that she can’t combat them alone — and she unhesitatingly assumes her role as the Doctor's assistant. At the end, as the Doctor prepares to leave Little Hodcombe, Tegan is — as ever — quick to counter: “Haven’t you forgotten something? We came here to visit my grandfather.” But there's a smile on her face, and the tone is perfectly judged: gently admonishing, firm but affectionate, determined but disciplined. Tegan and Fielding have come a long way.

Carole Ann Ford (Susan Foreman): Let’s not mince words: Susan is a dreadfully written role. (Ford knew it: it’s why she left.) With the Doctor a man of science and a man of the universe, and Ian and Barbara a couple of responsible schoolteachers, it meant that — after “The Daleks,” in which the Doctor himself gets the travelers into trouble — every “family crisis” had to originate with Susan. She had to be petulant, or terrified, or too sick to go on. Or twist an ankle. It couldn’t have been an easy role to play, and I think that Ford acquits herself admirably. Except in “The Reign of Terror.” It’s a problematic script in which Dennis Spooner stretches his story to six installments by having the TARDIS travelers continually derail their own progress. Spooner’s way of sabotaging Barbara and Susan’s plot is by recharacterizing Susan as a defeatist. "We'll never get out of here," she moans, mere minutes after she and Barbara have been imprisoned — and when Barbara reminds her that they've gotten themselves out of worse scrapes, Susan interjects: "We've been lucky. We can't go on being lucky." It’s only in this serial that I question Ford’s approach, which is glum and resigned. Surely there was a way to temper those remarks: the first could have been impatient but determined, the second, ironic and self-aware. But Ford keeps making the weak choice. When Barbara and Susan are being carted to their execution, there's a prime opportunity to escape, but Susan whines, "I don't think I can — I don't feel very well," and it’s said without energy or impulse, leaving Barbara to coddle her: "All right, Susan, it's all right." (We'll just go to our deaths, it's fine.) It’s the kind of thing Pertwee would do when he was bored — look for the easy solution — and maybe, after a long year of filming and mounting dissatisfaction with her role, Ford’s unease started to bleed through onto the screen. Aside from “Reign,” I find Ford typically solid, and sometimes — when she engages with a like mind (as with David in “The Dalek Invasion of Earth”) — she can be luminous. “Marco Polo” in particular does her a world of good by giving her an acting companion roughly her own age: Ping-Cho, a Chinese girl. At last Susan has someone to gossip with, to scheme with, and to fret about — and Ford has a strong script that’s respectful of her backstory and fascinated by her character. “Marco Polo” is the serial that best captures Susan as both worldly traveler and impressionable schoolgirl, and Ford makes the most of it. When Susan whines in this one, it’s because she’s fallen prey to a familiar feeling of wanderlust, yet Ford is careful to show us that there’s still a sweet innocence to Susan; even a girl who’s witnessed “the metal seas of Venus” can still get giddy about spending a moonlit night in the desert. (Clever Susan is also the first to realize that the warlord Tegana has ulterior motives; she has clarity that her elders lack, because she’s not ensnared in their machinations.) As a postscript, after rewatching the Hartnell era and deeming this Ford’s finest hour, I saw online that she herself named it her favorite serial. I’m not surprised. It does wonderful things for Susan; Ford knew it, and responded with a radiant performance.

Karen Gillan (Amy Pond): Gillan is never better than in “The Girl Who Waited,” but not (merely) because she’s playing two characters. It’s easy to forget that “older Amy” doesn’t appear until fifteen minutes in. The first part is Amy entering a different time stream from the Doctor and Rory and being left to fend for herself. (“Rory, I love you,” she announces once they’re separated, then immediately adds: “Now save me.” It’s not said as two different thoughts, as most actors would perform it. Gillan’s intonation remains steady. It perfectly captures the beauty of Amy Pond, who can be loving and demanding in the same breath.) As Amy gets her bearings on Apalapuchia, as she’s relentlessly pursued by robots offering her “a kindness,” Gillan draws upon her character's backstory; she's simultaneously Amelia, once again abandoned in a space too big for one person, and Amy, who’s gained cunning and initiative since that first meeting with her Raggedy Doctor. And once we meet older Amy, what's impressive isn't just how Gillan ages herself; any solid actor can do that (though not necessarily with the finesse that Gillan manages here). What distinguishes Gillan’s performance is that, despite the script’s insistence that time has hardened Amy, you're most aware of the hurt that she’s hiding. You see much more than how the years have aged her — you see the pain. To her great credit, Gillan doesn't stress how different her two Amy’s are, but how similar — and as a result, the moment when the two bond across time makes perfect sense. It feels all but inevitable. (It’s as if Gillan, in imagining where her character would go in 36 years, worked backwards from that point.) It makes for an interesting segue into her worst turn, in “Asylum of the Daleks,” the one time when Gillan doesn't manage to justify an ending. It's the odd episode where Gillan can’t seem to tap into the complexities of her character. (The episode comes after a hiatus; you get the feeling she couldn’t easily find Amy again.) The script swirls in part around the sudden dissolution of Amy and Rory’s marriage, and the mystery of “what happened.” Ultimately we learn that Amy sent Rory away in an act of self-sacrifice, because she can no longer bear children. But the pain of that sacrifice never emerges until her final confessional; till then, she parcels out emotions — anger, giddiness, hostility: roughly at the rate of one per scene — but none of them seem consistent with the denouement. It’s like Gillan hasn’t read to the end of the script. Amy insists that, since she and Rory separated, she’s the one who’s been suffering — but we haven’t seen any suffering, and as a result, her big speech lays an egg, despite all the tears Gillan manages to shed. “Asylum” is a weak Moffat effort, trying to create drama within the Williams marriage with an artificial conflict. But if that’s the assignment — Amy is tormented by her self-sacrifice — all the more important that we see that torment on her face prior to her confessional. In “The Girl Who Waited,” Gillan pulls together all the forces that have shaped Amy; in “Asylum,” she keeps her emotions strangely compartmentalized, and the episode suffers.

Jacqueline Hill (Barbara Wright): Hill gets a showier role in "The Aztecs," but “Planet of Giants” boasts her greatest acting turn — in fact, it’s one of the greatest acting turns in Doctor Who history. It’s an expansion of what she did so memorably in episode 2 of “The Daleks” — show the emotional strength of someone physically failing, but determined to carry on. Barbara’s story-line comes as a wicked surprise. Up to that point, the cast has been at its most ingratiating and resourceful: navigating giant briefcases and matchboxes and sinks, and Dudley Simpson’s score has made it all rather whimsical, like Alice down the rabbit hole. Then comes the startling scene in which Barbara comes face to face with a giant fly, succumbs to its poison and faints — set to a percussive accompaniment that turns the serial on its ear. And once Barbara awakens and realizes that her time is running out, Hill lets loose with a tour-de-force: conveying at once courage and terror, hope and resignation, recognition and denial. Because Barbara chooses to keep her predicament a secret, we have to read much of her performance on her face: her struggle to keep Ian from learning the truth even as she succumbs to the effects of the poison; her determination to fight alongside her colleagues, while realizing that every second spent doing so makes it less likely that she’ll survive. In the end, "Planet of Giants" turns something light and fanciful into something troubling and uncompromising: it's everything you want Doctor Who to be, in microcosm — and much of that is due to the quiet power of Hill’s performance. Hill’s Coal Hill schoolteacher was one of the series’ most magnificent creations, and she rarely hit a false note. Oh, she seems a little tired at the top of “Space Museum,” but she quickly recovers. It’s really only in “The Keys of Marinus” that Hill truly suffers, and there’s one caveat to that, as she’s marvelous in episode 2, as the only sane inhabitant of a hallucinatory pleasure palace. But in early installments, she struggles to reconcile her studied schoolteacher persona with the puerile lines Terry Nation hands her. (It starts with Barbara seeing a large body of water on the TARDIS scanner and exclaiming, "That's the sea, isn't it?" And it continues in episode 3, when Ian tries to explain the uncomplicated premise to her: "Oh, Barbara, don't you see? It would normally take fifty or a hundred years for a jungle to overrun this place. Now the whole process has been accelerated" — and she responds wide-eyed, "You mean the jungle is attacking us?") And by the end, when the serial devolves into two episodes of Law for Dummies, the entire cast is reduced to rushing frantically from one set to the next, barely arriving in time for their next entrance — with no idea how to play the material. (Is it melodrama? Is it light comedy? Satire? Even the accomplished Hill seems uncertain.) The cast members do some of their clumsiest work, and that includes Hill, who at one point rushes into a room and muffs the entrance, and her eyes widen with horror, as if to say, "Am I even on the right scene?" Across two seasons of glorious performances, “Keys” is the only serial that defeats her.

Frazer Hines (Jamie McCrimmon): Jamie is never better showcased than in “The Abominable Snowmen,” and Hines makes the most of it. Jamie’s bravery is put to good use, of course, as are his fighting skills — but that’s pretty much true of his entire run on Doctor Who: Jamie is always up for a scuffle. “Abominable Snowmen” takes care to also play up his intelligence and his compassion. And it’s intelligence of a certain kind — the kind that seems consistent with an 18th-century lad who’s spent much of his life in battle. Jamie has “street smarts,” for want of a better phrase. Jamie is astute, and he strategizes well. Sometimes his strategies are so risky that they send the Doctor and Victoria fleeing in the opposite direction — as they do here at one point — but it’s Jamie who knows how to stop an advancing Yeti in episode 1, and how to capture one in episode 2, precisely because Jamie would know how to subdue and ensnare an enemy. Jamie’s transformation from a boy to a man — which had begun two stories earlier, in “Evil of the Daleks” — seems complete in “Snowmen,” and a lot of it has to do with the addition of Deborah Watling to the cast. Victoria brings out Jamie’s protective nature; he gains a new kind of compassion — and a new kind of strength. He’s forever looking out for her; she means a lot to him. When Padmasambhava hypnotizes Victoria, and the Doctor is too busy figuring out how to battle the Great Intelligence to tend to his new charge, it’s Jamie — in a show of moral strength — who has to put his foot down and get the Doctor focused. And when Victoria does emerge from her trance and turns to Jamie and asks, “What are you grinning at?”, you can imagine — even without accompanying telesnaps — Hines beaming with joy and relief. (Even without the visuals, it tugs at your heartstrings.) Hines’s worst serial? Well, you might expect him to falter in Season 6, when the addition of Zoe to the cast — and more specifically the reduction of her character to “the smart one” — too often relegates Jamie to being the “brawn” of the group (sometimes it feels like his IQ is diminishing with each passing episode), but Hines’s assurance never wavers. The only place his confidence seems to take a hit is in Season 4's “The Faceless Ones,” his last story with Michael Craze and Anneke Wills. As charming and useful as Hines had been throughout his first season, he’d always had to take a back seat to Craze; sailor Ben, from his first appearance, was defined as an alpha male, and Jamie had to fit into that dynamic. Now, with Ben and Polly removed from much of the proceedings, you see Jamie struggle to assert himself, and Hines seems a bit lost, hard-pressed to define his new role. (He’s not helped by the young woman conceived as a replacement for Ben and Polly. It’s Pauline Collins, who'd go on to become an award-winning actress, but here — with an animated delivery, and a seeming inability to modulate her performance — she doesn’t so much complement Hines as diminish him.) “Faceless Ones” proves a blip in Jamie’s forward trajectory; in the following serial, David Whitaker addresses the Jamie problem head on, turning over much of the story to his transformation from a spirited juvenile into a leading man — and the Doctor’s dominant companion. And what results is a partnership that rivals any in Who history.

Next up: continuing our alphabetical look at the companions’ best and worst performances, from Louise Jameson and Caroline John to Wendy Padbury and Billie Piper.

Want more Doctor Who? My recent (loving) look back at the Second Doctor’s missing serial “The Abominable Snowmen” quickly rose to become one of my most popular essays ever. Elsewhere, I look at the eleven actors who've played the Doctor for more than one full-length story, and assess their best and worst performances. In a 16-part series, I rank and review all 158 Classic Who serials, starting here. I also take an affectionate look at the William Hartnell era; do an overview of the Jon Pertwee era; and take an expansive look at the Peter Davison years. And finally, I offer up reviews of seven Classic Who stories that I consider unfairly neglected or maligned, one for each Doctor: "Terminus," "The Ark," "Delta and the Bannermen," "The Wheel in Space," "Attack of the Cybermen," "Death to the Daleks and "The Leisure Hive."