Family and Loyalty in New Doctor Who

Companions from the Russell T. Davies years: Rose Tyler (Billie
Piper), Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman), and Donna Noble (Catherine Tate)

Who are Bill Potts’ parents? I asked myself that question while recently re-watching the tenth season of the revived Doctor Who. From the beginning of the series’ revival in 2005, family origins have mattered significantly in Doctor Who, with the Doctor’s companions making frequent return trips to their birth families. Yet this has diminished in importance, to the point where I can’t assert, with any degree of confidence, that Bill Potts even has a family.

Fans knew, when the series returned from a sixteen-year slumber, that it couldn’t resume exactly where it stopped. Audience tastes had evolved; where each Doctor Who story in the classic series was essentially independent and hermetically sealed, viewers today expect stories to build sequentially, for characters to have arcs, with a clearly defined beginning and a conclusion where we believe they’ve accomplished something. In the original series, only some companions had that, often only accidentally.

For every character like Ace, the Seventh Doctor’s companion, whose dark secrets came from time travel itself, and whose tragic consequences preceded her causes; or Turlough, the Fifth Doctor’s companion, whose entire life was a fiction manufactured to trap the Doctor, we had characters like Sarah Jane, literally the Doctor’s most popular companion ever, who literally got dropped off at the conclusion to a completely unrelated story, simply because actress Elisabeth Sladen’s contract was up.

When Russell T. Davies resurrected the title, he immediately established that his show differed by making the entire first episode center on Rose Tyler. She’s already encountered the monster and started fleeing for her life before the Doctor arrives, and when he does, she’s mostly chagrined. The Doctor’s backstory, and the changes he’s endured since the original series ended, emerge only by increments. For the first several episodes, it’s clearly Rose’s series, not the Doctor’s.

Most importantly, Rose returned home in only her fourth episode. After one visit to the future, and another to the past, she immediately revisits home, something most original-series companions never did even once. Importantly, she revisits her mother and her old boyfriend, This proves fraught, but that doesn’t matter right now: Rose returns to her mother twice, and her boyfriend three times, in just her first season. Doctor Who basically becomes an emotional domestic drama.

Companions from the Steven Moffat years: Amy and Rory (Karen Gillan and Arthur
Darvill), Clara Oswald (Jenna Coleman), and Bill Potts (Pearl Mackie)

This isn’t a complaint. Given the new-millenium audience’s interest in long-term consequences, it only makes sense to show how the Doctor’s seemingly carefree exploits create impacts on those left behind. But it also establishes a formula Davies found useful to repeat: all three companions from the Russell T. Davies years still lived with their parents, and all three returned home several times, including a visit that happened in episode four of every season but one.

The companions during Steven Moffat’s hitch had no such formula. From the beginning, we discover that Amy Pond still lives in the house where she grew up; but her parents are missing, something which becomes increasingly pointed as the series continues. The Doctor doesn’t even bring Amy home until episode six this time, and even then only long enough to collect Rory before popping off through time again. Home, this time, is a layover spot.

Eventually, through means too convoluted to explain again if you haven’t seen the episodes, that season ends with Amy heroically rescuing her parents from oblivion, celebrating her wedding at her father’s side. Yay for Amy, apparently. Except, after that episode, we never see her parents again. They’re scarcely mentioned. Rory’s father appears twice, once at some length, becoming one of Moffat’s more interesting characters, but doesn’t carry the same weight Rose’s or Martha’s parents do.

This pattern becomes exaggerated through Moffat’s run: we see Clara Oswald’s parents in one episode, but not with Clara. Clara has family she returns to, but the family for whom she nannies, not her own, and even they get written out after half a season. And Bill Potts? I only partially rewatched her season, so maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t recall her family mentioned, much less highlighted. Throughout Moffat’s run, families become increasingly unimportant.

Importantly, all three Davies companions ultimately return to their parents, and in codicils, eventually get married. Moffat’s companions don’t. Amy and Rory are trapped in the past, while Clara and Bill travel forever in some poorly defined afterlife. Moffat’s companions don’t come from anywhere, and they ride off over the horizon. Davies makes family both his characters’ origin, and their destination. Moffat makes characters exist entirely as they are.

And Chibnall? Too early to generalize.