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.)

Doctor Who: "The Abominable Snowmen"

When I did my Classic Who countdown in the summer of 2017, I noted that many of my favorite stories remain missing. And I quoted a Whovian who had recently dismissed the lost serials by insisting, "There's no way of knowing what they're really like." Of course there is, I argued. If the surviving audio is engrossing, if the telesnaps and production photographs reveal a credible design, if the director's talents are well-established or the dialogue feels well-played and well-paced (suggesting he had a good grip on the material), then the reconstructions tell you most of what you need to know. Since I started watching Doctor Who, quite a few missing episodes have been unearthed, and not once has a discovery made me radically rethink my impression of a serial. My favorite Cybermen story, my two favorite Dalek stories, and my four favorite historicals are partially or fully missing. Let's pray they're someday recovered, but in the meantime, the lack of video footage doesn't impair my enjoyment. So in that spirit, I thought I’d delve into three of my favorite “lost serials” (three that, to my mind, don’t get the attention that they deserve), starting here.

Classic Doctor Who countdown (#10 - #1)

Completing my Classic Who countdown. (For the previous ten, click here; to start from the top, all the way back at #158, with the serials I find most resistible, click here. Or if you're looking for a particular serial, you can jump right to the index.) The serials below are my ten favorites. They include the best performances by the two greatest actors to play the Doctor in the classic series. Coincidence? Certainly not. Four of the ten are written by original script editor David Whitaker, who taught everyone else how to write Doctor Who, then showed them that he could do it better. Classic Who's best writer? Certainly. The serials below have moved me and inspired me; they're miraculous creations, and I have returned to each a dozen times or more. I suspect if Classic Who had turned out only these ten serials, I'd be no less a fan.

10. The Abominable Snowmen (Second Doctor, 1967)
written by Mervyn Haisman & Henry Lincoln
directed by Gerald Blake