Mel Bush

Doctor Who character
Mel
Affiliated	Sixth Doctor Seventh Doctor
Species	Human
Home planet	Earth
Home era	20th century
First appearance	The Trial of a Time Lord: Terror of the Vervoids
Last appearance	Dragonfire

Mel and Seventh Doctor in episode Delta and the Bannermen.

Mel, also sometimes referred to as Melanie, is a fictional character in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. A computer programmer from the 20th Century who is a companion of the Sixth and Seventh Doctors, she was a regular in the programme from 1986 to 1987. Her family name was never revealed on-screen, but production notes and promotional literature refer to her as Melanie Bush. She was portrayed by Bonnie Langford.

Character biography

Mel first appears in the serial Terror of the Vervoids, part of the 14-part story The Trial of a Time Lord. At this point, she and the Sixth Doctor have been travelling together for some time. The events of Vervoids are shown as part of a Matrix projection of future events being shown by the Sixth Doctor to the court, so from his point of view, he is seeing an adventure he will have with Mel even before he meets her in his own timeline. At the end of Trial, the Sixth Doctor leaves with this future Mel, presumably to drop her off somewhere, meet her past self for the first time (from her point of view), and then carry on from there. (This scenario is portrayed by The Trial of a Time Lord screenwriters Pip and Jane Baker in their novelisationThe Ultimate Foe.)

Mel is at present the only one of the Doctor's companions (not counting his granddaughter, Susan)never to have her actual first adventure with the Doctor chronicled on screen. Series producer John Nathan-Turner indicated his intent to chronicle this adventure in Season 24, which would have followed Trial of a Time Lord. However, the subsequent departure of lead actor Colin Baker prior to production of the new season made this impossible.^[1]

Mel is a computer programmer from the 20th century who comes from the village of Pease Pottage in West Sussex, England. She has an eidetic memory, and a cheery, almost perky personality. She greets most situations with a warm smile and good humour, and is an optimist whose views extend to believing the best of people's natures, but can also scream with the best of them. She is a health enthusiast and a vegetarian, often encouraging the slightly portly Sixth Doctor to exercise more. She is present (albeit unconscious at the time) when the Sixth Doctor regenerates into his seventh incarnation, and continues to travel with him.

In the serial Dragonfire, she decides to travel on the Nosfaratu II with the galactic confidence trickster, Sabalom Glitz, leaving the Seventh Doctor to travel on with his new companion, Ace.

Appearances in other media

The novelisation of The Ultimate Foe includes a scene in which the Sixth Doctor returns Mel to his future self at the point she was taken from, with the Virgin Missing Adventures novel Time of Your Life stating this was during an adventure on the planet Oxyveguramosa. The Past Doctor Adventures Business Unusual, by Gary Russell, covers the first meeting between Mel and the Sixth Doctor and establishes that she comes from 1989. The novel Spiral Scratch, also by Russell, reveals that Mel's middle name is Jane and that she was born on 22 July 1964 (Langford's actual birthday).

Mel's history after she leaves the Seventh Doctor is not explored in the series. However, some of the spin-off novels and short stories add to her history. In the Virgin New Adventures novel Head Games by Steve Lyons, it is revealed that Glitz tired of Mel and left her on the decrepit leisure world Avalone. Mel was left here for months until she was finally saved by Jason and the fictional Dr Who. It is revealed that her decision to leave the Doctor was actually due to psychic persuasion on the Doctor's part, so he can go on to become the darker and more manipulative Time's Champion. Mel confronts the Seventh Doctor over this, and at the end of the novel he returns her to 20th century Earth and Pease Pottage (the short story Business as Usual by Gary Russell, published in the anthology More Short Trips).

In Heritage by Dale Smith, it is revealed that at some point Mel travels in time and space again, ending up on the planet Heritage, where she dies in the 61st century. However, this story takes place during a story arc in which enemies of the Doctor are attempting to eliminate his companions from the timeline, so Mel's fate in Heritage may be part of an alternate destiny that vanishes once those enemies are defeated.

The unofficial novel Time's Champion provides more details on how the Doctor became Time's Champion and Mel's involvement. However, this book was published unofficially (after being rejected), and its canonical status is thus even more unclear than for official spin-off material. This book also offers a different explanation for the Sixth Doctor's regeneration than both the televised series of events in "Time and the Rani" and the official novel Spiral Scratch.

Bonnie Langford played Mel once again in the 1993 charity special, Dimensions in Time, and has voiced the character in a series of audio plays from Big Finish Productions, alongside Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy as the Sixth and Seventh Doctors. Langford has also voiced an alternative, more cynical version of Mel in the Doctor Who Unbound play He Jests at Scars....

The canonicity of non-television stories is unclear.

List of appearances

Television

Season 23

• Terror of the Vervoids
• The Ultimate Foe

Season 24

• Time and the Rani
• Paradise Towers
• Delta and the Bannermen
• Dragonfire

30th anniversary special

• Dimensions in Time

Audio dramas

‘Sixth Doctor’

• The One Doctor
• The Juggernauts
• Catch-1782
• Thicker than Water
• The Wishing Beast & The Vanity Box

′Seventh Doctor′

• Unregenerate!
• Bang-Bang-a-Boom!
• Flip-Flop
• Red
• The Fires of Vulcan

'Alternative'

• He Jests at Scars... (Doctor Who Unbound series, outside of regular Doctor Who continuity; interacts mainly with the Valeyard)

Novels

Virgin New Adventures

• Head Games by Steve Lyons
• Just War by Lance Parkin (Appears primarily in flashback)

Virgin Missing Adventures

• Millennial Rites by Craig Hinton

Past Doctor Adventures

• Business Unusual by Gary Russell
• The Quantum Archangel by Craig Hinton (Spends some time in an alternate timeline where she interacts with the Third Doctor)
• Instruments of Darkness by Gary Russell
• Heritage by Dale Smith (Primarily in flashbacks as the Doctor investigates her death)
• Spiral Scratch by Gary Russell (Interacts with multiple alternate versions of herself)

Short stories

• "Brief Encounter: A Wee Deoch an..?" by Colin Baker (Doctor Who Magazine Winter Special 1991)
• "Fegovy" by Gareth Roberts (Decalog 3: Consequences)
• "The Man Who Wouldn’t Give Up" by Nev Fountain (Short Trips: Past Tense)
• "Mortal Thoughts" by Trevor Baxendale (Short Trips: Life Science)
• "Sold Out" by Danny Oz (Short Trips: A Day in the Life)
• "The Invertebrates of Doom" by Andrew Collins (Short Trips: Zodiac)
• "Daisy Chain" by Xanna Eve Chown (Short Trips: 2040)
• "Uranus" by Craig Hinton (Short Trips: The Solar System)
• "Special Weapons" by Paul Leonard (More Short Trips)
• "The Eyes Have It" by Colin Harvey (Short Trips: Snapshots)
• "24 Crawford Street" by Ian Farrington (Short Trips: The Ghosts of Christmas)
• "Dr Cadabra" by Trevor Baxendale (Short Trips: The Ghosts of Christmas)
• "Driftwood" by Dale Smith (Short Trips: Transmissions)
• "The Jumping of the Shark" by Steve Graeme and Adrian Middleton (Shelf Life)
• "The Finest Restaurant Known to Man" by Jon Arnold (Shelf Life)

Comics

• "Plastic Millennium" by Gareth Roberts and Martin Geraghty (Doctor Who Winter Special 1994)

References

1. ^ John Nathan-Turner , Doctor Who: The Companions, Piccadilly Press (1986).

External links

• Melanie Bush on TARDIS Index File, an external wiki
• Melanie Bush on the BBC's Doctor Who website