London: 1965 (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Vicki)

    Beginning this flight through eternity, some preamble is perhaps required. Vicki Pallister is - in my opinion - one of Doctor Who's greatest companions. Many fans will tell you all about how Patrick Troughton had the hardest job of any actor to take the leading role, having to bring a whole new audience aboard the TARDIS, while convincing old fans that the passing of the key was something to embrace rather than to reject. Yet strangely you never seem to hear the same said about Maureen O'Brien and the character of Vicki, despite doing the same thing for the assistant role nearly two years earlier.

    At the time of her introduction, viewers had just said farewell to Susan Foreman - the Doctor's granddaughter and a character present from the very beginning - with no precedent for what would come next, and introducing a new main character into an established series is often a controversial move, nevermind when it's been a weekly fixture for thirteen months. Big shoes were left to fill and Vicki succeeded.

    My love for Ian, Barbara and Susan will forever remain strong but in a sense Vicki feels like the first "true" Doctor Who companion, albiet in no small part due to her being the first willing participant in the Doctor's adventures, she introduces a whole new dynamic with the Doctor that would almost be the template for all to come, acting as an enthusiastic friend to travel with. The type of dynamic which could never have been provided by Susan with her familial connection - spending much of her time worried for her grandfather - or the two schoolteachers eager to stop travelling at the first opportunity. 

    Yet the relationship between the Doctor and Vicki has so much more to offer, doubling up on the partnel aspect that was present with Susan, as the Doctor becomes something of a surrogate grandfather to Vicki, providing her with a parental figure and filling the voids in each other's hearts created by what they've each only recently lost. The pairing always feels so warm, surely due to the behind the scenes rapport between William Hartnell and O'Brien.

 

Hartnell and O'Brien pictured on set during production of The Crusade, image courtesy of The Black Archive.

    Furthermore, 1965 was an amazing year for Doctor Who, not only does it contain Vicki's entire run on TV and indeed a bulk of what is arguably the best season of the show to date, this was also a time where the show was riding the waves of Dalekmania, becoming something of an unstoppable force and even recieving a feature film adaption.

    Despite what may be expected as a viewer with modern sensibilities this is a period of the show I look at with great fondness and passion, representing the height of the show in perhaps its most fascinating decade, with levels of ambition I'd argue haven't quite been reached again since and with the bravery to go all in despite a vicious production cycle and crippling budget. This is a period of Doctor Who's long history I will always be eager to return to.

♡

    As of its creation and the time of this post, the main purpose of this blog is to act as the host of my Vicki "timeline review", reviewing each story the character appears in across the mediums in as close to a chronological order as can be achieved. The chronology will be primarily guided by the TV series, with pieces of expanded media covered in the gaps between the TV stories they're set between. 

    Short Trips will be excluded, this rule is primarily in place to cover the prose short stories found in various compilation releases due to the scattered nature of them but for consistency will extend to the audio releases of the same name, they might be covered at a later date if interest strikes but they will not be part of the main journey.

    However, with this introduction over it's time to go back to where it all began, with a crash landing on the planet Dido...