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Peri
(1984 - 1986) |
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Nicola
Bryant |
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Nicola
Bryant was born in 1960 in Guildford, Surrey. She
began her training in dance and music at the age
of three, studying classical ballet, then jazz and
tap dance, the piano, flute and guitar, and finally
acting at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic
Art. It was during her time at drama school, that
she married the Broadway singer, Scott Kennedy,
although they later separated. It was at drama school
that she was spotted by an agent, Terry Carney (William
Hartnell's Grand-daughter's
husband), and asked to audition for the part of
Peri in Doctor
Who. She won the part thanks to her spending
a year in a US school and her ability to do a decent
American – thus accent making her a natural
for the part of American college student Perpugilliam
Brown.
Since leaving the show, she has spent most
of her time on stage, appearing in such productions
as Killing Jessica, Who's Afraid
of Virginia Woolf, Twelfth Night, Come on Jeeves, So
Long on Lonely Street, and The Great
Gatsby. While on television
she appeared in Blackadder's Christmas Carol (1988)
as well as returning to the role of Peri in the
Thirtieth-Anniversary Children In Need special "Dimensions
in Time", in 1993. She has also appeared
in three highly successful "Stranger" videos
and "The Airzone Solution" with Colin
Baker. She also has sung
with Colin Baker, Anthony
Ainley, Nicholas
Courtney and
a number of British pop stars on the "Doctor
in Distress" record.
In
1995, she appeared as Martine in the children's
series The Biz and in 2000 and 2005 she made a
guest appearance in an episode of Casualty. Other
guest appearances on television include medical
dramas: Holby City (2007 and 2010), Doctors (2000
and 2010) and the comedy My Family (2009 and 2010).
She
can also be heard playing Peri in a number of Doctor Who audio stories released by Big Finish
Productions – many again alongside Colin
Baker. |
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 Although the most obviously significant detail
about Peri is that she was The Doctor’s first American
companion (Although the actress who played her was British),
her time in the TARDIS made it clear that she deserved to be
recognised for far more than her background, Peri demonstrating
an exceptional strength of will on multiple occasions that made
her well-suited for the difficulties of travelling through time
and space.
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| Planet of Fire |
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Prior to her first trip in the
TARDIS, Peri was an American botany student accompanying her
step-father Howard
on an archaeological
survey trip as he attempted to excavate a wreck that had recently
been discovered off the coast of Spain. Although later sources
have implied that Howard had sexually abused Peri when she
was younger ("Shell Shock"), their relationship
by the time she became an adult was relatively stable, if
strained, Peri accompanying Howard on some of his trips. However,
Peri’s life was permanently altered when Howard attempted
to stop her joining a couple of boys she’d met in their
hotel the night before on a three-month trip around Europe
for the rest of the holidays by leaving her on his boat before
she could head to the airport to talk with them, prompting
Peri to try and swim for the shore with a mysterious cylinder
Howard had recently recovered from the bottom of the sea in
the hope that it would finance her trip; Peri nearly drowned
when she suffered a cramp part-way to the shore, and was only
saved by the intervention of the Fifth
Doctor’s companion
Turlough - the TARDIS had been tracking an alien signal that
was being broadcast by the cylinder she was carrying -, Turlough
taking her into the TARDIS to recover and forgetting to reveal
her presence to The Doctor before they left Earth ("Planet
of Fire"). Although the subsequent adventure resulted
in Peri being forced to confront The Master as he used the
body of The Doctor’s android companion Kamelion against
his fellow companions, culminating in The Doctor being forced
to destroy Kamelion to prevent The Master using him again,
Peri nevertheless decided to travel with The Doctor after
Turlough parted ways with the Time Lord to return to his people,
recognising that she could experience more adventure and see
more new places with The Doctor than she ever could experience
at home.
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| The Caves of Androzani |
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Initially, Peri’s time in the TARDIS, while
challenging, was nevertheless enjoyable; she was even responsible
for The
Doctor gaining another companion in the form of Erimem, a
would-be Egyptian Pharaoh who was deposed in favour of her
illegitimate brother before her official coronation, Peri
suggesting that Erimem join them in their travels so that
she could see the world without worrying about people recognising
her as a former pharaoh ("The
Eye of the Scorpion").
During their time together, Peri came to see Erimem as a sister
despite the occasional tension between them due to their different
backgrounds and perspectives, Peri even teaching Erimem learn
how to read English during their travels. While Peri sometimes
had trouble understanding how Erimem could respect some of
the more brutal cultures they encountered in their time with
The Doctor, such as witches who practised human sacrifice
("Nekromanteia")
later being shocked at Erimem’s
suggestion that they kill themselves when they were forced
to pose as the ‘Princes’ in the tower ("The
Kingmaker"), in general the two were always close,
Peri describing Erimem as the best friend she’d ever
had when the time came for her to leave the TARDIS ("The
Bride of Peladon"). However, she experienced a more
personal loss when her mother was killed by the remnants of
a Cyberman conversion
egg just when Peri was planning to return home, leaving Peri
with nothing to go back to on Earth and prompting
her to resume her travels with The Doctor, who at least partly
understood her sorrow even if he couldn’t completely
relate to it ("The
Reaping").
Although she didn’t always get the chance to explore
it, Peri’s interest in botany was also developed in
her time with The Doctor, The Doctor spending some time on
a deserted planet just to give Peri the chance to collect
some fossilised plant samples from it ("Exotron").
She also enjoyed the chance to explore the elaborate gardens
of the planet Esselven Minor - although she ran into trouble
when she incorrectly complimented a plant that was meant to
be displayed only as a sign of mourning - ("Palace
of the Red Sun"), as well as expressing an interest in a
planet with a nitrogen-based atmosphere because of the obvious
differences that would exist when compared to the plants of
her world ("Red Dawn"). Her botanical knowledge
also proved useful when competing in a ‘word game’ on
a planet where words were virtually currency, Peri’s
ability to come up with more words beginning with ‘peri’ allowing
her to triumph over her opponent in the brief contest ("...ish").
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| Attack of the Cybermen |
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Ironically,
the most difficult part of Peri’s time
in the TARDIS was in the form of her relationship with The
Doctor. Although she was forced to recognise his fundamentally
alien morality when he made a deal with the human-eating Valethske
("Superior
Beings"), they still enjoyed a good relationship
- Peri admitting at one point that she had a slight crush
on him at this point ("Blue
Box") - until The Doctor
sacrificed his fifth life to save her, the two having contracted
the lethal disease spectrox toximea and The Doctor only managing
to acquire enough of the antidote to save one of them ("The
Caves of Androzani"). Although regeneration has always
been a difficult experience for The Doctor, things were particularly
difficult on this occasion - speculated by fans to be the
result of spectrox toximea having a particularly violent effect
on Time Lords -, the Sixth Doctor actually attempting to strangle
Peri at one point when he briefly became convinced that she
was an alien who had infiltrated his ship, and subsequently ‘deciding’ to
exile the two of them to an isolated planet on little more
than a random impulse based on his sudden surge of guilt over
the attack ("The
Twin Dilemma"). Even after the
worst of The Doctor’s post-regenerative fits passed,
it took some time for the two companions to settle back into
a comfortable travelling relationship, their subsequent relationship
being based primarily on arguments with each other, such as
The Doctor travelling to locations simply because he wanted
to without consulting Peri, or making a variety of mistakes
while carrying out repairs to the TARDIS - including a brief
period where he partially repaired the chameleon circuit only
to find his ship turning into forms that not only refused
to blend in but made it hard to work out how he was meant
to enter the ship in the first place ("Attack
of the Cybermen") -, even if they still made it clear that they
cared about each other when it really counted. Their relationship
eventually began to improve when The Doctor realised that
he was pushing Peri away because he subconsciously blamed
her for his fifth self’s death, apologising to Peri
for his old treatment of her and admitting that he was glad
she was still alive ("Burning
Heart"), later taking
her on a prolonged trip to London in 1936 to both investigate
historical interference from the mysterious Players and give
Peri a chance to relax and experience high society ("Players").
While
Peri could come across as the stereotypical classic companion
at first glance, often screaming when confronted
with some of the dangers of TARDIS travel and preferring to
stay close to The Doctor, she demonstrated a greater strength
than might be expected on more than one occasion, generally
only hampered in physical confrontations by her reluctance
to actually do physical damage to her opponents ("Palace
of the Red Sun"). More than once, she showed a surprising
ability to take charge of a situation in The Doctor’s
absence, such as rallying a group of colonists who had lived
in almost total isolation all their lives to leave their comfort
zones and investigate the problems facing their colony ("Three’s
a Crowd"), or helping an alternate version of Ptolmey
Caesar - the son of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra - contact
his supporters after she and The Doctor found themselves trapped
on a duplicated Earth - later named Terra Nova - created by
The Doctor’s enemy The Rani with the aid of a matter-duplicating
entity ("State
of Change"). On another occasion,
she was able to convince Nerus, the ruler of a group of mer-people,
to save the crew of a recently destroyed ship even after their
actions lead to the death of his daughter Amy - although Peri
and The Doctor were able to save her daughter Galatea -, arguing
that the crew would be too disorientated from their near-death
experience to reveal the existence of mer-people ("Cryptobiosis")
Her bond with The Doctor was so great that Peri swiftly understood
The Doctor’s plan to defeat a sound-based entity by
creating a counter-frequency to disrupt its attempts to transmit
itself based on only a few casual comments that The Doctor
had made in a confrontation with their current enemy ("Whispers of Terror").
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| Vengeance on Varos |
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Even when she was abducted by the renegade Time
Lord Morbius to
serve as his ‘consort’, Peri not only managed
to trick him into letting her go, but went on to become the
leader of the resistance against Morbius’s occupation
on the planet Sylvana, keeping Morbius’s men occupied
for almost a year until The Doctor’s own army arrived
("Warmonger").
When she and The Doctor were later separated on the planet
Esselven Minor, Peri being taken hostage by the local gardening
robots while The Doctor managed to find a robot who had developed
sentience, Peri managed to escape captivity and make contact
with the planet’s human population, leading them to
the central Palace that apparently controlled the robots to
find out the truth about their past and end the oppression
that they had endured for decades ("Palace of the Red
Sun"). During their first encounter with The Rani, Peri
was able to successfully hold both her and The Master at gunpoint
for a time despite having only just escaped being turned into
a tree ("The
Mark of the Rani"). In her second confrontation with The Rani,
Peri had to confront a particularly difficult experience when
the unstable environment of the duplicate Earth created by
The Rani’s experiments caused her body to complete its
old transformation into a bird-creature from her experience
on Varos, Peri’s new form gaining the ability to fly
while also leaving her struggling with her more feral instincts,
although she eventually overcame them ("State of Change").
A more amusing encounter saw Peri being briefly stuck in The
Doctor’s body due to a malfunction in the TARDIS telepathic
circuits, Peri successfully bluffing through a confrontation
with the Javaman, the ruler of the local planet who wanted ‘The
Doctor’ to give him the secrets of time travel, while
The Doctor sabotaged his equipment ("Turnabout is Fair
Play").
Throughout the show’s history, Peri remains
the companion who attracted the most ‘romantic interest’ from
the individuals that she and The Doctor encountered, although
most of these men were only interested in her physically.
Aside from Morbius, she also had to deal with the attention
of The Borad,
a mutated scientist who sought to turn her into a creature
like himself in the belief that she had the strength of spirit
to serve as his mate ("Timelash"),
caught the lecherous eye of Chief Enbalmer Jobel on the mortuary
Tranquil Repose ("Revelation
of the Daleks"), and even the disfigured arms dealer
Sharaz
Jek was moved to rescue her and The Doctor from execution
due to his admiration for Peri’s beauty ("The Caves
of Androzani"). Even the interest she attracted from
her and The Doctor’s current allies could prove difficult,
Kel - a hunter from a primitive society - attempting to claim
her as his bride according to his people’s traditions
and forcing Peri to fight his friend Nerla ("Palace of
the Red Sun"). Despite this, she was still able to form
more platonic relationships with such people as the Governor
of the planet Varos ("Vengeance
on Varos"), or Ptolmey, Peri admitting later on that
she had actually been slightly attracted to Ptolmey even if
she couldn’t live in his society ("State of Change").
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| The Trial of a Time Lord: Mindwarp |
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Interestingly enough, the circumstances under which
Peri and The Doctor parted company are confusing, as The Doctor
did not leave Peri of his own free will; during their last
adventure together on the planet Thoros-Beta, The Doctor was
taken out of time by a renegade faction of the Gallifreyian
High Council and sentenced to a sham trial where the prosecutor
was The
Valeyard, his own dark future self. With his memories
of his activities prior to being brought before the court
hazy as a result of his removal from time, The Doctor was
initially uncertain where Peri was ("The Trial of a Time
Lord: The
Mysterious Planet"), only for The Valeyard’s
subsequent evidence of his recent activities - recorded through
the TARDIS’s connection to the Matrix - to reveal that,
after being exposed to technology belonging to his old enemy Sil, The
Doctor had apparently allowed Peri to be taken by Sil so that
she could provide a new body for Sil’s superior, Kiv,
to save himself from the same fate, Peri’s body subsequently
being killed by Yrcanos, a warrior king who had fallen in
love with her, out of rage at what had happened to her because
the Time Lords had summoned The Doctor before he could reach
Peri to help her ("The Trial of a Time Lord: Mindwarp").
However, it was later revealed that The Valeyard had been
manipulating evidence in order to turn the trial against The
Doctor by exploiting his own knowledge of The Doctor’s
affection for Peri to put him emotionally off-balance, The
Master - seeking The Valeyard’s elimination as he regarded
him as more dangerous than The Doctor - claiming that Peri
had actually survived and married Yrcanos ("The Trial
of a Time Lord: The
Ultimate Foe").
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| The Trial of a Time Lord: The
Ultimate Foe |
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Despite this tale of Peri’s survival, The
Doctor never actually returned to check on her himself; as
he later told subsequent companion Grant
Markham, he preferred
to imagine that Peri was fine rather than take the chance
of learning that she was actually dead ("Schroedinger’s
Botanist"). After their parting, The Doctor heard various
conflicting reports about what had happened to Peri, ranging
from Yrcanos becoming a professional wrestler to an encounter
with her grandchildren or a meeting with an old Peri who was
resigned to a loveless marriage. An explanation for some of
these conflicting reports was provided when it was revealed
that competing factions of Time Lords had re-written Peri’s
life in a variety of ways after The Doctor’s trial,
creating multiple versions of Peri. The Doctor and Peri actually
encountered one of these other selves while they travelled
together, this Peri having been sent back to Earth with her
memories of all but her first trip with The Doctor erased
(Much like what happened to the Second
Doctor’s companions Jamie and Zoe ("The
War Games")), going on to become a talk show host
in the 21st century ("Peri and the Piscon Paradox").
The Peri who appears to have been the ‘real’ Peri
was eventually reunited with the Seventh
Doctor when he and current companion Chris Cwej were investigating
the mysterious ‘Toys’, blank slates designed to
mimic the emotional states of others. Frustrated with life
on Kron’tep, Peri traced rumours of the last actions
of Moriah, a former King of Kron’tep who had fled his
people after his wife Petruska committed suicide, and discovered
a time tunnel leading to Earth in the late twentieth century.
With Peri’s help, The Doctor realised that the Toys
had been created by Moriah as part of an attempt to resurrect
Petruska, although his attempt to help Moriah create a new
Petruska failed because of Moriah’s own guilt and belief
that he deserved his punishment, culminating in him being
torn apart by his flawed creations. Despite her anger at The
Doctor for leaving her so abruptly, Peri accepted his apologetic
explanation that he had initially assumed she was happy and
then forgotten about her over time, The Doctor taking Peri
back to her own time so that she could travel around the world
at her leisure as the two old friends made their peace ("Bad
Therapy").
Despite the confusion of her departure, Peri was
nevertheless a close and dear companion to The Doctor, standing
by him through one of his most difficult regenerations and
demonstrating a strength of character that allowed her to
face even such dangerous foes as The Master, The Rani, The
Borad, and Davros when
the situation required her to.
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