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Victoria
(1967 - 1968) |
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| Deborah
Watling |
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Deborah Watling was born in 1948
into a well established acting family. She appeared
in the 1957- 1958 television production of HG Wells' Invisible
Man and also as the title role in the 1965 BBC
Play Alice. She was offered the part of Victoria
when the then Doctor Who producer, Innes Lloyd,
had remembered a Radio Times cover which featured
her as Alice. After Doctor Who further television
work followed including The Newcomers in 1969
and Rising Damp in 1974. She also appeared
in a number of films including the 1973 Cliff Richard
film Take Me High and, also in 1973, That'll
be the Day with David Essex. During the Eighties
and Nineties she continued to work mainly in theatre.
In 1995 she returned to the role of Victoria in the
Reeltime Pictures video production Downtime.
Unfortunately Deborah Watling died on the 21st July 2017 at the
age of 69. |
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 A
modest, kindly young Victorian girl Victoria Waterfield, like
Vicki
before her, became an orphan during her first story. After being
held by the Daleks, who used her to ensure that Victoria's
father continued to work for them on his static electric time
travel experiments, she found herself on the Dalek's home planet
Skaro. She was eventually rescued by The Doctor and Jamie but
not before her father sacrificed his own life to help The Doctor
defeat the Daleks, the dying Edward Waterfield’s last
words being to ask The Doctor to serve as his daughter's guardian.
With nowhere for Victoria to go, The Doctor invited her to join
him and Jamie aboard the TARDIS ("The
Evil of the Daleks").
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| The Evil of the Daleks |
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Like
many of The Doctor's previous companions she is someone that
The Doctor can protect and care for. The Doctor becomes a surrogate
father figure to her and so to help her overcome the recent
loss of her father, and the cruelty that she has endured from
the Daleks, The Doctor he even shared with her his innermost
thoughts regarding his own family. She also instantly identifies
with Jamie and he takes on the role of a protective-but-teasing
older brother, once stabbing a creature simply because it made
her scream rather than because it was a genuine danger ("Heart
of TARDIS").
Victoria
and Jamie became a very successful team, and even though Victoria
was born over a century later than Jamie, because of her sheltered
Victorian life, as is fitting for a refined young lady of the
Victorian era, she shares some of his innocence and naiveté.
She was often teased by both The Doctor and Jamie about her
prim manner, but this innocence could be used to her advantage
on various occasions, most notably when she twice managed to
trick Kaftan - a member of the Brotherhood of Logicians seeking
to awaken a group of dormant Cybermen -
into releasing her friends from captivity, Kaftan not believing
that the naive Victoria
could really lie to her ("The
Tomb of the Cybermen").
Even so she relied heavily on the both of them to protect and
look out for her, although she sometimes wished that she could
get past her need for them and save herself instead of always
relying on them.
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| The Abominable Snowmen |
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Despite
being a little prim and proper, and lacking in knowledge of
things modern, she is very resourceful and independent. Being
a very sensitive girl Victoria gradually adapted to life aboard
the TARDIS and she adopted a more serviceable attire as her
19th century style of dresses gave way to styles more suited
to the sixties. At first she was rather uncomfortable with the
clothes, but despite The Doctor and Jamie’s initial teasing
comments ("The
Tomb of the Cybermen"), she eventually
came to find her new attire far more comfortable than her old
one, and decided to never go back to her original style ("Twilight
of the Gods").
Even
so, her sensitivity meant that she was virtually frightened
of everything that moved and would always end up screaming the
house down when faced with even the smallest of horrors; even
as she tried to overcome her old insecurities, old fears such
as rats and spiders - particularly when faced with a Gallifreyian
woprat, a creature that looked like a combination of both ("Heart
of TARDIS") - still inspired a scream from Victoria despite
her best intentions. However, it was during her final story
that her screaming was put to good use when it was found that
the intelligent seaweed creatures, which were menacing a gas
exploration rig, were vulnerable to her amplified high pitched
voice.
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| The Ice Warriors |
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Never
a wanderer by nature, the seemingly endless battle against hideous
creatures, vile alien monsters and cruel villains eventually
became too much for her. Despite her evident courage, such as
when she refused to hide in a monastery while her friends battled
the Yeti ("The Abominable Snowmen") -, her issues
with her travels came to a head when she briefly fell under
the influence of The Doctor’s old friend Koschei - later
to be known as The Master - when he manipulated her to grant
him access to the Darkheart, a time-manipulation device that
would have allowed him to impose his will on the universe ("The
Dark Path"). Growing tired of the violence and fear she
witnessed in her travels, when given the opportunity to stay
with the Harris family, in relative peace and safety, she agreed
to leave the TARDIS, despite knowing the distress it would cause
both The Doctor and Jamie ("Fury
From the Deep").
Her
life after leaving The Doctor was further explored in the novel "Downtime",
where she was subtly manipulated by The
Great Intelligence to
use her family fortune - acquired from her father’s lawyers
after a decade in the future - to establish the New World University,
educating students by computer while hiring Sarah
Jane Smith - apparently unaware of their
mutual friendship with The Doctor - to track down the ‘Locus’,
the central focus that the Intelligence required to restore
itself after the damage
done in its last fight with The Doctor. However, she rebelled
against the Intelligence’s manipulation of her when she
realised the truth of what she had done, working with The
Brigadier and Sarah to disable her university’s
computers after they realised that the Intelligence had downloaded
itself into
the computers. With the Intelligence defeated, Victoria was
briefly contacted by the Third
Doctor - although he never introduced himself directly - who apologised for his
lack of contact with her and left her a letter of recommendation
that cleared her name with UNIT. Now at peace with her past,
Victoria moved on and made a good life for herself, marrying
and having several children, one of whom was about to give birth
to her first grandchild in 2008 ("The Great Space Elevator"). She would later be reunited with The Doctor when she was participating in a protest against a nuclear power plant a few years later ("Power Play"), the Sixth Doctor and Peri materialising near the plant while fleeing the Playarec police force, the Playarec capturing Victoria and fellow protestor David by accident when they saw the two outside the TARDIS and assumed one of them was The Doctor. Although Victoria was briefly forced to act as their agent via a neural implant as she searched for The Doctor, the confusion caused by her meeting the Sixth Doctor while unaware of regeneration allowed The Doctor to help her break her conditioning. Learning that the nuclear plant was part of a complex scheme to destroy Earth for the Terrible Zodin, The Doctor was later able to use Victoria's implant to inform the Playarec of what had really happened, realising that one of the Playarec was actually working with Zodin's hired 'planetary assassin' to frame The Doctor for the assassin's crimes for a share of the money, as well as divert the missile the assassin tried to fire at the power plant into the distant past. Although Victoria declined the offer to return to the TARDIS, her wistful tone made it clear that she had fond memories of her time with The Doctor and Jamie, The Doctor in turn assuring her that the TARDIS doors would always be open to her if she wished to rejoin him.
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