Look at that! I'm actually sticking to my intentions and moving on to the second part of my latest topic. For once, I actually appear to have some degree of legitimate focus!
Part One of this essay looked at a three-companion dynamic that, without a doubt, worked enormously well. I tried to pick out a few important elements in that chemistry and highlight their importance.
As we embark upon Part Two, we're going to look at other periods where three companions travelled with the Doctor. We'll see how well they incorporated those core ingredients that I explored in Part One.
Just in case you missed Part One, you should take a look at it. Much of what I say, here, won't make a lot of sense if you don't. And, really, have you got anything better to do?!
Here's a link:
https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2020/04/analytical-threes-company-what-makes.html
Before we go too far into these later iterations of three companions and a Doctor, we do need to actually point out a few scenarios that we won't bother to examine. These periods, by technical definition, do have three companions participating in the adventure. Nonetheless, I still feel they don't properly qualify for any substantial dissection.
1) Extremely short periods
Some feel a character doesn't truly become a companion until after they've taken their first proper trip in the TARDIS. While they are still in their introductory story, they're just someone the Doctor has met. It's when the Time Lord invites them aboard at the end of that first story that the transformation into a "proper companion" begins.
I'm more of the persuasion that if we've been told that a character is going to be a new companion in the series, then they are that the moment we see them for the first time. But, if I adhere to that idea, then that means that a story like The War Machines is a three-companion era. Ben, Polly and Dodo are all having an adventure with the Doctor. Dodo does get written out of the story fairly early on, but there is just the briefest of time where all three characters are in the plot together.
The other period where we see "a short burst" like this is with the Fifth Doctor in Season 20. Turlough first gets introduced in Mawdryn Undead when Tegan and Nyssa are already aboard. Nyssa leaves the TARDIS a story later at the end of Terminus. But that does still mean we had three companions for two whole stories (or eight entire episodes if you really want to break it down).
To me, both of these instances are just too short for us to really take all that seriously. So I won't try to analyze the chemistry that was going on during those periods.
2) Robot companions
For the entirety of The E-Space Trilogy of Season Eighteen, the Doctor is travelling with Romana, Adric and K9. This should be considered a three-companion era. It's still pretty short, yes. But not that short.
We also see Kamelion joining the TARDIS near the end of Season Twenty during The King's Demons. He is meant to be wandering around in the time vessel during the better part of Season Twenty-One. We don't actually see him - but he's still about (sure wish they'd kept in that scene that they shot in The Awakening!). He has a presence again during Planet of Fire. But, at the end of the tale, the Doctor is forced to destroy him. While the shapeshifter is not onscreen during The Five Doctors and most of Season Twenty One, this should still all be a three companion era.
Whether a robot is a legitimate companion or not may become a POINT OF DEBATE essay for some time down the road. But, for now, I will just go on record saying that they are more a prop than an actual character. Which means that, for me, they don't qualify as a companion. So these would not be "true" instances of three companions travelling with the Doctor.
With that out of the way, we can now look at eras that do legitimately represent a three companion period. Sadly, this next case is one that I can't heap too much praise on.
BEN, POLLY AND JAMIE - THE WEAKEST LINK
I find it strange that fans will complain about Tegan, Nyssa and Adric or Ryan, Yaz and Graham but don't really go on that much about Ben, Polly and Jamie. More than likely, it's the fact that it's quite hard to actually get any kind of a genuine perspective of their era. There's only a handful of existing episodes that feature them. After that, it's novelisations, telesnaps and animation. All forms of entertainment that only so many fans are interested in indulging in.
But if you do bother to take a solid look at the stories of this period, you will find that most of the conventions that I enumerated in Part One of this essay are barely used. The TARDIS crew being broken up and working in smaller teams, for example, happens much less frequently. If you give a proper look at a lost story like The Macra Terror you'll see the three companions together for the better part of the first two episodes. Then, finally, they start splitting. Not only does such a writing decision rob us of an easier way to explore plot strands, but group scenes with a full three-person TARDIS crew become a struggle for dialogue distribution. Everyone just ends up getting a line here and there and conversations with the Doctor and his companions can become almost disjointed. Inevitably, you get a lot of actors standing around with nothing to say. Which can make for some very weak scenes. Whereas if the team divides quickly, everyone gets much juicier dialogue.
This era also seems to do almost the opposite of giving the Doctor a back seat. Here, the Doctor frequently abandons the rest of his team to work alone. Highlanders, Underwater Menace and Macra Terror all log in quite a bit of time where the Doctor has no companions with him. Instead, he's interacting a lot with supporting characters that only exist in those particular stories.These are, pretty much, the first steps that the show takes in really emphasising the Doctor as the protagonist of the series. Even when the First Doctor was travelling with just Steven and a female companion, he is only put so much to the forefront. But as Troughton takes the reigns, it really does feel like the show is about the Doctor, now.
Focusing more on the Doctor when you've still got three other leads that need attention was probably not the best of choices, though. Ben, Polly and Jamie become almost useless for a large period of time. If you really pay attention, you'll notice that the only real contribution Polly makes to any story occurs in The Moonbase when she comes up with a combination of chemicals that can injure a Cyberman's chestplate. The only time Ben helps to propel the plot in any serious way is at the end of Macra Terror. He diverts a crucial gas flow and blows up the Macra (but is only capable of doing it because the Doctor is shouting instructions to him through a door). Poor 'ole Jamie doesn't really get much of anything to do in most of these episodes. When things get whittled down to just two companions in Seasons Five and Six, placing the Doctor center stage really starts to work well . But Season Four should have adhered to a flatter team structure (see what I did, there?!).
No one tends to disappear for an episode much, either. Even when opportunities for an actor to get written out present themselves. During the early episodes of The Moonbase, for instance, Jamie gets injured whilst playing around in zero gravity. This could have easily worked in a similar manner to the Doctor's injury in Seeds of Death. Throw him on a gurney with his face concealed for an episode and let Frazer Hines visit the tropics for a week. But, instead, we do regular check-ins with him where he's sure an approaching Cybermen is the Phantom Piper. These sequences even become a bit tedious. Over and over, a Cybermen starts heading towards Jamie but then decides to snatch away another patient in the sick bay. The sense of repetition that's created just so Jamie is used enough in the episode feels almost silly. It would have been far better to just write him out for Part Two and give Ben and Polly a bit more to do.
Perhaps the biggest crime of all, though, is the lack of character arcs. There's a bit of an effort here and there to point out that Jamie comes from a very primitive culture and has a harder time understanding the things around him (ie: he calls a jet in Faceless Ones "a flying beastie"). But, otherwise, the companions come across as being fairly generic. Nothing about their past ever seems to really get brought up. Nor do we see them mature much in any kind of way. Every adventure Polly falls into danger.while Jamie and Ben handle a bit of action. Something that's been going on with male and female companions since the show's earliest days. Even though "earliest days" was only three seasons ago, the formula is starting to wear thin. Unless, of course, you "dress up" the characters a bit and make them seem like more than just a plot function. But this cast comes across as somewhat bland because the writers don't seem to be putting much effort into the finer details of any of these individuals. Even references to Ben being a sailor have all but disappeared.
All these devices that we brought up in Part One are not completely chucked to the curb, however. They do get employed from time-to-time. Sadly, though, they often get misused when they are. Jamie and Polly, for instance, do get separated and form a mini-team for a bit during the latter part of Underwater Menace. But all they end up doing is crawling along a ledge together as they try to escape the rising waters of Atlantis. For an entire episode, we just check back with them every few minutes to see them a bit further along in a tunnel as they flee in terror at the approaching flood. Like Jamie in Episode Two of Moonbase, the whole thing just starts feeling really redundant.
SOME BEHIND-THE-SCENES INFLUENCES
Fans like myself who have developed a keen analytical eye for Doctor Who because we have endlessly re-watched it will point out that the show does definitely have some weaker seasons. Many are quick to site Season Twenty-Four as one of them. But, if you really do your homework, Season Four is just as bad (possibly worse!). Again, it's a bit more difficult to examine the evidence - but it's there. Its poor handling of the three-companion dynamic is just one of many sins that the overall season commits.
I mention Season Twenty-Four, however, because much of its onscreen failings were the results of behind-the-scenes problems. First off, Colin Baker was fired and needed to be somewhat-hastily re-cast. This became particularly troublesome since he opted not to come back for a proper "swansong story" that would see him regenerate in the final episode.
But there were more problems than that. The script editor had quit in a huff towards the end of Season Twenty-Three and also needed quick replacing. When a new script editor is hired, the producer tries to get their predecessor to lead them by the hand for a bit. Andrew Cartmel, the man who got the job, was not afforded that grace. Essentially, two people in key positions had to hit the ground, running. And that only went so well.
In a similar fashion, problems with production seem to haunt Season Four. In this case, these issues relate directly to the companions.
It seems that Ben and Polly were created by an outbound production team. The new people filling their posts felt lumbered with these two and were interested in getting rid of Anneke Wills and Michael Craze as quickly as possible. When their contracts expired, they would be written out. This meant, of course, that not a whole lot of focus was put into the development of their characters. Which would account for a lot of their "uselessness" that I mention in the previous section. If the creators of a program have zero interest in their leads, the roles they're portraying probably won't be particularly stimulating. Ben and Polly can feel quite flat in places because of this.
The introduction of Jamie also represented some problems. It seems that he was originally meant to just be in one story. In the first version of the final scene of The Highlanders, he gets the Doctor, Ben and Polly back to the TARDIS and bids them farewell. More than likely, he was going to do that famous "look of bewilderment" that so many stories close on as the Police Box fades away before the eyes of a supporting character. It was decided, somewhat last-minute, that the scene would get re-written and Jamie would join them, after all.
Suddenly including Jamie like this would definitely create consequences for future scripts that weren't expecting him. He would now need to get shoe-horned into the plot. Existing dialogue that may have been meant for Ben and Polly would need to be, at least, partially re-allocated to him. This is why we have those "disjointed moments" I described where the entire TARDIS team is trying to have a discussion together. Quite likely, a lot of writers probably weren't even sure what to do with Jamie. Which is why he really doesn't seem to accomplish much in his first few stories. He tends to tag along with Ben a lot and offers some extra brute force where it might be needed. Otherwise, he does seem fairly superfluous.
Now, don't get me wrong, I do think Jamie is one of the best companions, ever. But a lot of the things that get us to fall in love with him only start happening when he's in the two-companion dynamic with either Victoria or Zoe. It probably would have been better for the production team to place Highlanders later in the season. Maybe just before The Faceless Ones. The lack of interest they were showing Ben and Polly would have still done some damage. But a lot less than what we got because Jamie almost seems to pop up out of nowhere several stories before Ben and Polly are meant to leave.
STARTING TO GET THINGS RIGHT
You may have noticed in my analysis that I haven't given much mention to The Faceless Ones. That's because I wanted to give it its own special section. I do think this adventure is a very nice turning point for this particular TARDIS team. Finally, we start seeing some of those elements I discussed in Part One of this essay being used in earnest.
Within the first few seconds of Episode One, the leads are split up. The Doctor and Jamie become a very definite team throughout the better part of the story. Ben and Polly get a fairly extended period of time off as both have disappeared by the end of Part Two and only really return at the end of the final episode. The Doctor even takes a bit of a back seat as quite a bit of time is devoted to Jamie and his new-found friend, Samantha. All those conventions that I think make a good three-companion dynamic work well are not only on display in this tale, they are well-crafted, too. This isn't Jamie and Polly crawling through water-filling tunnels again. Things are finally starting to look up...
Unfortunately, it's too little, too late. By the end of the adventure, this latest iteration of three companions get split up. Quite cleverly, Ben and Polly have returned to the exact same day that they left with the First Doctor in The War Machines. So they decide to return home and get on with their lives. It's a farewell that's only mildly better than the one Dodo got last season. Which really shows just how little they were cared about by key members of the production team.
Just as things were getting good, this particular three-companion combination is brought to a harsh end.
FINAL ANALYSIS
I've not said a lot of good things about this era. So, before I wrap this up, let me just add that it's not without its charms. Michael Craze and Anneke Wills really do try their best with what they've been served. Of particular note is Ben's struggle with the brainwashing he received during The Macra Terror. Even with the limited visuals that we have of that whole sequence, we get a sense that Craze is really going for it.
There was definitely a potential for this to be another great three companion era.While they are still just a twosome, Ben and Polly do seem quite interesting. Had concentration on their development continued as Jamie was brought in, we could have become very fond of them. If the characters had been better respected,.their departure during Faceless Ones might have packed the same emotional punch as Barbara and Ian leaving at the end of The Chase. And we certainly saw Jamie go on to bigger and better things. If only he'd been introduced at a better point in the season.
This really could have been a great time for the show. Sadly, some poor decisions were made. And several of those bad choices had a very strong bearing on the crafting of all three of these companions.
That's a fair amount of analysis, for now. I had really expected to cover all three periods where we had three companions. But it looks like I had a lot more to say about Ben, Polly and Jamie than I expected. So we'll take another break here and tackle those other two eras soon.
We might be able to look at both of them in just one more entry. Or I might blather on too much again and need to do this in four parts!
We'll see...
Here be a few more ANALYTICAL essays from Days Gone By....
Regeneration Recovery: Common Symptoms
https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2019/01/analytical-regeneration-recovery-part-1.html
Crossing Time Streams - Part 1: Basic Rules
https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2018/11/analytical-crossing-time-streams-part-1.html
Crossing Time Streams - Part 2
https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2018/11/analytical-crossing-time-streams-part-2.html
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