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Melanie
Bush
(1986 - 1987, 2023 & 2024) |
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Bonnie
Langford |
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Bonita Melody
Lysette Langford was born in 1964 in Hampton Court,
Surrey. By the age of six she had won Hughie Green's Opportunity Knocks television talent contest and
gained membership of Equity. She later trained at
the Arts
Educational and Italia Conti stage schools in London.
By
her early teens she had starred in Gypsy, on New
York's Broadway, and in Gone With the Wind,
in London's West End, as well as television shows
(including the Bonnie and Lena (Lena Zavaroni)
variety spectaculars).
Her biggest success of the
mid-1970's came when she played the part of Elizabeth
Bott in the 1976 children's drama series Just William. It was this that helped fix her
in the minds of the British public as a precocious
child star - an image she found it hard to shed
in later years, despite amassing an impressive
list of credits as a dancer, singer and actress
on stage: Peter Pan: The Musical; Cats and The
Pirates of Penzance, and on television: Saturday
Starship and The Hot Shoe Show (1983).
After her
short stint as Melanie Bush (‘Mel’ for
short) in Doctor Who she took almost
a year's break from her career. She returned to
the role
of Mel in the 1993 Children in Need charity
special "Dimensions in Time". She has
also continued to reprise the role in several
audio dramas produced by Big
Finish Productions alongside Colin
Baker and Sylvester
McCoy.
In 2006, she was a celebrity contestant
in the first series of ITV's Dancing on Ice, partnering
professional figure skater Matt Evers. Their
routines were characterised by the dramatic
lifts and tricks they performed and were amongst
the most ambitious in the competitions.
Bonnie
Langford is also a pantomime regular. Recent credits
include: Prince Charming in Cinderella at
the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford (2005/2006);
Peter in Peter Pan at the Richmond Theatre
in Surrey (2008/2009); and Fairy Fuchsia in Jack & the
Beanstalk at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in
Guildford (2011-2012). She was also cast as The
Lady of the Lake/Guinevre in 'Spamalot' while
it was
on
tour
in the UK during 2012. |
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 An interesting detail to note about Melanie
Bush’s time with The Doctor is that The Doctor actually
knew that she was going to travel with him long before he met
her. When he was put on trial on charges of meddling in the
affairs of the universe by a renegade High Council attempting
to conceal his discovery of their crimes, with the prosecutor
being none other than The
Valeyard, a dark future version of
himself, the Sixth Doctor attempted to use the Matrix to find
evidence from his own future to clear his name, resulting in
him learning that he would some day travel with Melanie Bush,
a young computer programmer from Pease Pottage ("Terror
of the Vervoids"). As the trial increasingly turned against
The Doctor, The Master, attempting to aid The Doctor due to
his concern at the implications of the Valeyard’s existence,
sent Mel to the station where the trial was taking place to
act as a witness in The Doctor’s defence. With the trial concluded, The Doctor decided to take Mel back to Pease Pottage- not wanting to know where she had parted ways with his future self and reasoning that he would remember where to find Mel in the future- only for matters to be further complicated when The Doctor actually took Mel to a copy of Pease Pottage in an area of cauterised time from a point a few months before she 'first' met him, resulting in them working with a copy of Mel's past self and a later version of the Sixth Doctor to stop a self-proclaimed 'time demon' causing a paradox by killing the younger Doctor ("The Wrong Doctors"). Fortunately, the crisis concluded with both Doctors safe and the demon trapped in a time loop, with the older Doctor returning the past Mel to the true universe before the younger Doctor took Mel back to her original departure point, each Doctor accepting that they would meet the younger Mel when the time was right.
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| Terror of the Vervoids |
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Despite his initial apparent acceptance of his 'destiny' to meet Mel, once she had been returned to his future self, the Doctor spent some time trying to avoid getting into a position where he would encounter the younger Mel for the first time, afraid that meeting her would mark the first step in his 'journey' to eventually become the Valeyard. Immediately after the trial, The Doctor actually tried to exile himself to a distant planet, but swiftly realised that he couldn't abandon his responsibilities to the rest of the universe and resumed his travels ("Time of Your Life"), joined during this time by such diverse companions as computer programmer Grant Markham ("Time of Your Life"), history lecturer Evelyn Smythe ("The Marian Conspiracy"), marooned adventuress Charley Pollard (A future companion of the Eighth Doctor ("Storm Warning", "The Girl Who Never Was", "The Condemned"), their travels concluding with the Sixth Doctor's memories of her being edited to preserve the timeline), shop girl Flip Jackson ("The Curse of Davros"), and a fictional duplicate of his old companion Jamie McCrimmon ("City of Spires"). Despite The Doctor's best efforts, however, he eventually met the younger Mel during a trip to 1989, when his old police contact Bob Lines called on Mel's computer programming skills - Mel currently working a summer job at Brighton Information Technologies in anticipation of a full-time job at ACL Systems Ltd. - when The Doctor required help after The Master and the Usurians had attempted to defraud the Dow Jones, The Doctor lacking experience in the more primitive computing technology used in this era while trying to track down any 'traps' The Master might have left in the systems. After aiding The Doctor and his old friend The Brigadier in defeating the latest attack on Earth by their old enemy the Nestene Consciousness, Mel tracked down the TARDIS, curious about the opportunity to travel in time despite The Doctor's attempts to put her off by acting distant during their earlier conversations, and The Doctor bowed to destiny and accepted her as his new companion ("Business Unusual").
From the beginning, Mel established herself
as another example of the strong-willed female companion
ready and willing to stand up to the equally strong personality
of the Sixth Doctor, pursuing her goal of joining The
Doctor’s travels despite the Time Lord’s
reluctance to allow her to join him. Possessing a keen
interest in science and discovery from a young age, Mel
had read the entire Sherlock Holmes series by the time
she was nine, and was noted by her uncle Doctor John
Hallam for being very gifted with computers. A strong
moral
personality, Mel was a strict vegetarian, who spent most
of her time in the TARDIS encouraging The Doctor to exercise
and remain in shape, to the point that an exercise bike
was added to the TARDIS control room and she occasionally
gave The Doctor carrot juice, although she was stilling
to ‘let’ him have the occasional ‘treat’ such
as a piece of chocolate cake during a visit to 1993 ("Instruments
of Darkness"). When she was younger, she had briefly
considered a career in politics due to her passion about
injustice and her desire for a career where she could
help people; although she decided to pursue her more
obvious talents in computers at the time, when facing
the Quantum Archangel - a being who sought to make reality
perfect for everyone -, Mel’s perfect alternate
world featured her as Prime Minister arranging a program
to help the homeless, although this timeline fell apart
when the Chronovores began to devour it ("The
Quantum Archangel").
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| The Ultimate Foe |
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On at
least two occasions, Mel was separated from The Doctor
for a period of several months from her perspective,
forcing her to adjust to the new time-frame she found
herself in without The Doctor, demonstrating the strength
of will that has always personified the best of The Doctor’s
companions. Although she was able to cope on her own,
both time periods had their problems; while trapped in
the past, Mel had to deal with the obvious complication
of her own ancestor having fallen in love with her while
treating her ‘insanity’ - she was sent back
to the past during a visit to 2003 due to a ‘kink’ in
time that affected her memory when the TARDIS tried to
warn her what was about to happen - ("Catch-1782"),
and her time working on a robotics project in the future
ended when Mel discovered that the project supervisor
was actually Davros, the creator of the Daleks, reprogramming
The
Mechanoids ("The
Chase") to serve as an
anti-Dalek weapon ("The
Juggernauts") while
secretly using human tissue to help complete the programming.
Although both crises were resolved with Mel understanding
that The Doctor had only left her alone for so long because
he had been unavailable to recover her earlier, her confrontation
with Davros was particularly significant as it forced
her to face her own dark side, to the point that Mel
ordered the reprogrammed Mechanoids to consider Davros
a threat simply to satisfy her own desire for revenge
even though he wasn’t actually threatening her
or The Doctor at that point.
Although moments like these left Mel with
some doubts about The Doctor’s mission ("Red")
- to the point where she once accused him of enjoying
the violence he encountered so that he had something
to ‘solve’ ("The Quantum Archangel")
-, in general the two got along well, Mel recognising
in her more rational moments that The Doctor only ever
did what he had to do, to the point that he once risked
his own life to sort out a problem caused by his old
friend Professor Rummas ("Spiral
Scratch").
She also formed a diverse range of friendships with the
people she encountered on her travels, particularly with
former companion Evelyn Smythe ("Instruments of
Darkness" and "Thicker
Than Water"), although
she also formed more casual friendships with the like
of future pop sensation Nicky Newman - Nicky particularly
enjoying meeting Mel as she was the first person he’d
met for years who literally had no idea who he was, even
if his frustration with his life got on Mel’s nerves
at times - ("Bang-Bang-A-Boom!"), and enjoyed
the chance to catch up with old friends like Angelique
Whitefriar and Paul Kairos from her university days ("The
Quantum Archangel"). To Mel’s credit, she
refused to allow those occasions when her new friends
were killed during her time with The Doctor to affect
her ability to form new friendships later, although she
still clearly mourned the loss of Geoff, a fellow programmer
she’d grown close to while working on the Juggernaut
program ("The Juggernauts"), and was horrified
when she learned during a visit to the early 1940s that
she’d actually been flirting with a Nazi scientist
(The same encounter resulting in The Doctor accidently
inspiring the scientist to develop a plane that could
evade radar) ("Just
War").
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| Time and the Rani |
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However, despite the relatively stable nature of
their relationship in The Doctor’s sixth incarnation,
their dynamic would significantly alter after The Doctor
regenerated into his seventh incarnation following a
confrontation with the pan-dimensional Lamprey and a
brief period as the pawn and prisoner of his old foe
The Rani ("Spiral Scratch" and "Time
and the Rani"). At first, the two TARDIS travellers
appeared to have a far more casual relationship than
they had enjoyed previously, Mel no longer trying to
make The Doctor lose weight and both content to travel
around on various holidays, such as taking a trip to
famous hotel Paradise Towers when the TARDIS swimming
pool was unavailable (Although matters became complicated
when the tower architect Kroagnon tried to kill the residents
for ‘polluting’ his work) ("Paradise
Towers"). She also served to help The Doctor cope
with some of the more difficult problems he faced at
this time, her encouragement and ability to rally The
Doctor during a trip to Pompeii when The Doctor was convinced
that he would lose the TARDIS in the eruption helping
the Time Lord to work out a way that he could retain
the TARDIS and fulfil the ‘prediction’ that
the TARDIS would be found buried in Pompeii (By remaining
inside the TARDIS until the lava hardened around the
ship, he and Mel were able to travel forward in time
1900 years without moving in space) ("The
Fires of Vulcan"). She also helped some renegade Time Lords devise a means for The Doctor to regain his mind
after a dangerous Time Lord experiment resulted in The
Doctor’s mind being temporarily overwritten by
the consciousness of a new-born TARDIS, despite the Time
Lords believing that The Doctor’s mind had been
destroyed by the process ("Unregenerate!").
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| Delta and the Bannermen |
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However, just as the circumstances of her meeting with the Sixth Doctor are temporally complex, Mel’s subsequent departure from the Seventh Doctor’s company are just as confusing. While it is certain that Mel left The Doctor on the Iceworld outpost as she decided to work on reforming criminal associate Sabalom Glitz while The Doctor took the time-displaced Ace as his new companion ("Dragonfire"), there are at least three conflicting reports about what happened to Mel after that, with one source even suggesting her reasons for leaving weren’t entirely conventional. According to one version of events, the Seventh Doctor had made a deal prior to his regeneration to become Time’s Champion in exchange for escaping his ‘destiny’ to become The Valeyard. Aware that Mel lacked the necessary ruthlessness to accept the actions that he would have to commit in this role, The Doctor deliberately compelled Mel to leave on Iceworld so that he could travel with Ace, as he recognised the circumstances that sent Ace to Iceworld were the machinations of the mysterious and powerful entity known as Fenric. This led to Mel being abandoned and trapped on a near-deserted barren human colony, only to be captured by ‘Dr Who’, a version of The Doctor from the Land of Fiction who had been released into the real universe. Dr. Who sought to capture The Doctor’s old companions as accomplices to his ‘crimes’, as Dr. Who operated on a rigid black-and-white view of reality, regarding The Doctor as evil for committing acts of mass murder such as destroying an alternate version of Earth where the Silurians had basically taken over ("Blood Heat"). Mel was disgusted to learn of The Doctor’s actions since they had parted company, but his other companions were more willing to accept that The Doctor only committed such actions due to his duty to the larger universe, such as the destruction of the Silurian Earth restoring the energy taken from the prime universe when it was created. This meeting ended with Mel denouncing The Doctor as a liar and a murderer, rejecting any thoughts of future association with him, although she did accept a lift home from Ace, now working as ‘Time’s Vigilante’, using a time-travelling motorbike to tackle problems in a smaller part of the universe while The Doctor focused on the big picture. This may tie in to another source that stated that Bob Lines remembered Mel returning to Pease Pottage in 1991 during a conversation with the Sixth Doctor in 1993 ("Instruments of Darkness").
Another trip featured the Seventh Doctor and Ace actually investigating Mel’s murder on the distant colony of Heritage in the 64th century ("Heritage"). During their investigation, they learned that Mel had married a man called Ben Heyworth, although her ‘daughter’ Sweetness was actually Mel’s clone; due to Mel suffering from menopause early, she and Ben had approached Wakeling, a scientist who had left Earth due to ethical issues with his work, for help conceiving. However, when Mel learned that Wakeling had simply cloned her to create Sweetness rather than combining Mel and Ben’s DNA, Wakeling killed her by accident during the subsequent argument, as he wanted to protect the secret of his achievement. Although it is possible that The Doctor had Ace take Mel to Heritage after "Head Games" so that his past would play out as it should, another explanation for her presence on Heritage can be found in the Eighth Doctor’s confrontation with the Council of Eight ("Sometime Never..."), a group of beings attempting to remove The Doctor and his companions from history due to their contact with The Doctor turning them into ‘rogue elements’ who disrupted the Council’s ability to predict the future events that would give them power. When taunting The Doctor about their elimination of his past companions, Octan, the head of the Council, made reference to a companion who was murdered on a dusty human colony, suggesting that they were responsible for Mel’s death on Heritage. However, the Council’s subsequent defeat apparently erased their abduction and murder of other companions, suggesting that Mel’s time on Heritage was relegated to a now-defunct timeline.
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| Dragonfire |
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Another source had Mel leave Glitz at some later stage when he basically made her the scapegoat for various moneys owed to a range of dangerous groups, forcing Mel to go on the run in the far future moving from planet to planet. In this timeline, Mel was eventually left in debt to the Speravores, a race who literally ate timelines and could predict futures, trapped on one of their primary planets. This led to Mel being reunited with The Doctor and Ace when a group of criminals found the three on the same planet, capturing The Doctor and faking his regeneration so that one of the gang could pose as the newly-regenerated Doctor to convince Mel to help them pilot the TARDIS to break into a crucial vault ("A Life of Crime").
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A Life of Crime
(Matt Fitton) |
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Once the deception was exposed and the Speravors apparently defeated, Mel resumed travelling with The Doctor, now with Ace as a fellow companion. While Mel was unaccustomed to the more manipulative man the Seventh Doctor had become since they parted company, with Ace openly speculating that The Doctor kept Mel around because he liked having someone who genuinely believed in him where Ace was more sceptical of his motives. Unfortunately, a later trip led to Mel discovering that her old debt to the Speravores had been claimed by Josiah W. Dogbolter, a ruthless crime boss with past history with The Doctor, who agreed to lift her debt only if she would help him acquire the TARDIS, even threatening The Doctor and Ace’s lives if Mel didn’t give him what he was after. Mel was forced to go along with this order, taking the TARDIS to Dogbolter’s personal space station, but she was able to sneak a computer virus into Dogbolter’s systems that allowed her to hack the station’s computers. The Time Lords revealed that Dogbolter had actually sent the TARDIS back to his own past self to reverse-engineer its systems to create a quantum possibility engine, allowing him to be elected President of the solar system by basically retroactively manipulating the election so that he never made any of the promises that got him voted into power in the first place. However, Mel was able to plant a virus in the system that allowed her to take control of parts of Dogbolter’s satellite, allowing her to keep track of The Doctor and Ace when Dogbolter tried to trap them in the solar system so he could control them. When Dogbolter’s efforts led to the Krasi trying to invade Earth, Mel managed to find and restore The Doctor and Ace’s memories in time for The Doctor to force the Krasi to retreat while Mel retrieved the TARDIS, Dogbolter having been forced to destroy the space station containing the Quantum Possibility Engine as he tried to escape the Krasi. At last report this version of Mel remained with The Doctor and Ace to continue their travels.
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| The Legend of Ruby Sunday/Empire of Death |
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More recently, when the Fourteenth Doctor was investigating worldwide riots in 2023 with UNIT, he was overjoyed to realise that Mel was now working for UNIT, giving his old companion an enthusiastic hug before looking over the available data ("The Giggle"). Mel explained that she had travelled with Glitz until he died at 101 from tripping over a whiskey bottle and had a Viking-style funeral. Mel returned to Earth by hitching a lift with a Zingo (which she described as just something that can give people lifts), but when she got back she found that everyone in her old life had either moved on or died, which led to her taking a job with UNIT. Mel assisted The Doctor and new companion Donna Noble in identifying the source of the riots as a subliminal signal broadcast across the world by The Doctor’s old enemy The Toymaker ("The Celestial Toymaker"). When The Doctor forced The Toymaker into a final game to make him leave, The Toymaker shot him to trigger another regeneration so that he could face a new Doctor, but this led to Mel and Donna assisting in a unique ‘bi-generation’ event where the new Doctor literally split away from the previous one rather than the Fourteenth regenerating into the Fifteenth. After the two Doctors defeated and banished The Toymaker, the Fifteenth Doctor departed to continue his travels while the Fourteenth went into semi-retirement with the Noble family, Mel joining them at family events and being jokingly referred to as ‘mad auntie Mel’ by the Fourteenth Doctor. The Fifteenth Doctor was reunited with Mel when investigating the mysterious Susan Triad, whose company ‘S Triad Technologies’ suggested some connection to The Doctor and the TARDIS ("The Legend of Ruby Sunday/Empire of Death"). Susan Triad turned out to be a manifestation of The Doctor’s old foe Sutekh ("Pyramids of Mars") who had managed to latch a part of himself onto the TARDIS, the restored Sutekh destroying all life in the universe where the TARDIS had previously visited; The Doctor, Mel and new companion Ruby Sunday only escaped for a time because they were able to create a ‘memory TARDIS’ based on a mix of other TARDISes they had known. Mel was briefly killed and taken over by Sutekh’s essence to draw The Doctor and Ruby to a final confrontation with Sutekh, but Sutekh’s destruction was ultimately undone when The Doctor banished him back to the Time Vortex, restoring Mel and the rest of the universe to life.
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