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Moonflesh
(Mark Morris) |
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 Name: Hannah Bartholomew
Format: Audio
Time of Origin: Met The Doctor on Earth in October 1911
Appearances: "Moonflesh", "Tomb Ship", "Masquerade"
Doctor: Fifth Doctor
Fellow
Companion: Nyssa
History: Although she was a companion for a short time, Hannah nevertheless quickly bonded with The Doctor and Nyssa when she travelled with them, demonstrating the strength of character and willingness to adapt that typifies the best of The Doctor’s companions.
When she met The Doctor, Bartholomew was a huntress and adventuress in the early 1900s, meeting The Doctor and Nyssa in Suffolk in October 1911 in the private hunting grounds of the famous explorer Nathaniel Whitlock ("Moonflesh"). A member of the Order of the Crescent Moon, Hannah and her Order believed that life was a brief period of light before they returned to the shadows to guide the living, and Hannah had come to Whitlock’s house to investigate the mysterious ‘Moonflesh’, a large red crystal that Whitlock’s manservant Silver Crow had apparently found during a vision quest some years ago, believing that the Moonflesh was a gift from the spirits. Hannah’s ‘official’ purpose was to take part in Nathaniel’s latest organised hunt of creatures he had brought back after his latest expedition, but her attempt to take a sample of the Moonflesh woke up Vatuus, the energy entity trapped within the Moonflesh. When industrialist Edwin Tremayne broke his leg during an initial attempt to hunt for Vatuus, he tried to bribe Hannah to take him to safety as he believed there was nothing that could be done about the current threat, but when Edwin mentioned that The Doctor had claimed to possess a time machine, Hannah was immediately fascinated at the idea. When an accident forced the car off the road, Hannah seemed to take this as a sign to return to help the others, leaving the injured Edwin behind as there was no way she could get him to safety in turn.
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Tomb Ship
(Gordon Rennie and Emma Beeby) |
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Rejoining the rest of the guests, Hannah was present when The Doctor and Silver Crow were able to exorcise Vatuus from Nathaniel Whitlock, but while The Doctor and Nyssa spoke with the other survivors, Hannah hurried to the TARDIS, managing to gain access to the ship as Vatuus had slightly damaged the lock during an early attempt to possess the telepathic circuits. Although naturally eager at the chance to travel through time and witness other worlds, Hannah was so awed at the ship’s interior dimensions that she became lost exploring its corridors. This led to Hannah missing the moment when The Doctor and Nyssa returned to the ship, only making her way back to the console room after the TARDIS had materialised on an Arrit tomb ship ("Tomb Ship"). Separated from The Doctor and Nyssa as the temple’s shifting walls had triggered the HADS while they had already left to explore the tomb, Hannah was forced to search for them in turn, armed only with a hunting rifle from the Whitlock house to protect herself from attacks from the Arrit-Ko slaves in the tomb. Eventually Hannah was able to track down Nyssa, who had been working with the sons of ruthless tomb-raider Virna to try and find her way through the temple.
As Nyssa and her new friends were attacked by the Arrit slaves, Hannah appeared to rescue her, using a hunting-rifle taken from the manor to hold off the Arrit-Ko while The Doctor reached the main chamber. Having arrived at the central tomb, The Doctor confirmed that the ‘treasure’ was basically a metaphor, as the Arrit-Ko believed that their dead god-kings would become stars upon death and their tombs were designed to create stars with a final explosion. Although Virna was left behind when she refused to abandon the idea that there was a literal treasure, The Doctor, Nyssa and Hannah were able to get to safety and evacuate Virna’s surviving children. With that resolved, Hannah wanted to join The Doctor on new adventures in time and space, but The Doctor set course to England in 1911. However, he immediately explained that wherever he set course to was usually the last place the TARDIS was likely to land, indirectly accepting Hannah’s request to become his new companion ("Tomb Ship").
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Masquerade
(Stephen Cole) |
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Unfortunately, Hannah’s time in the TARDIS was destined to be brief, as shortly after she joined The Doctor and Nysaa the TARDIS materialised on the SORDIDE Delta space station. Once there, they found that a group of aliens, angered at the human empire’s conquest of their homes, had attempted a complex plan to infect humanity with a virus that would compromise their psychological state ("Masquerade"). The humans had been able to cure themselves of the virus by placing themselves in ‘Shadow-space’, essentially a pocket dimension used in lieu of simple virtual reality during long space voyagers, but this cure required the humans to basically erase their own emotions to ensure they couldn’t succumb to the virus again. The procedure was compromised when the TARDIS materialised on SORDIDE and the three travellers were subsequently forced into the shadow-space virtual reality system (currently based on 18th-century France), as The Doctor and Nyssa’s alien physiology caused an anomaly in the system when it was programmed to focus on humans. Hannah did her best to help the other humans calm by discussing how Shadowspace could be seen as an example of her own beliefs, the humans there in shadow until they could return to guide the living, but this only helped before they learned that they were being subject to a deliberate attack rather than an accident.
Nyssa was eventually purged from the system by an internal defence system along with one of the humans, but this confirmed that the cure had left the other man without emotions; he still knew how he should have felt in certain situations, and could express some form of emotion in the right circumstances, but he knew that he couldn’t feel it himself. Back in Shadowspace, The Doctor confirmed that the aliens intended to reinfect the humans and then send them back into the empire to kill and infect others, but he was able to force the alien intruders out of the Shadowspace system before they coul reintroduce the virus. However, when Nyssa sent in a projected interface to confirm what was happening, Hannah used the resulting portal into Shadowspace to force The Doctor out after Nyssa, the strain of two incompatible aliens in the system causing it to collapse.
In her last words as herself, Hannah justified it as the universe needing The Doctor to help others more than it needed the rest of the people in the system, but she woke up with the rest of the previously-infected humans with her emotions purged by the system, the ‘cure’ treating her automatically even though she had never been infected by the original virus. Recognising that the humans would simply blame The Doctor and Nyssa for what had happened here, Hannah asked her companions to leave her before the others woke up, assuring The Doctor and Nyssa that she would do her best to help the humans adjust to what had happened to them. Although saddened at her departure, The Doctor and Nyssa accepted her decision and left, thanking Hannah for her company, Nyssa taking care to assure The Doctor that Hannah had made her choice when she sacrificed herself for The Doctor.
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