Home era 20th century | ||
 | ||
Similar Victoria Waterfield, Dodo Chaplet, Ace, Peri Brown, Grace Holloway | ||
Doctor who 50th anniversary 1 min companion guide mel bush
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. Mel appeared in six stories (20 episodes) and is the penultimate companion of the classic series.
Contents
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 novelisation The Ultimate Foe.)
Mel is at present the only one of the Doctor's companions 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. Aside from the continuity issues arising from The Three Doctors and "The Five Doctors" that are never addressed nor apparently acknowledged, Mel is the first companion who had already met the Doctor before he met her and vice versa, and the only such companion in the classic era, setting a precedent for numerous companions and other characters in the revived era, most notably River Song.
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 reunites with the galactic confidence trickster, Sabalom Glitz, whom she met in The Trial of a Time Lord and decides to travel with him aboard the Nosferatu II, leaving the Seventh Doctor with new companion Ace who (according to the later Virgin New Adventures novels) was, conversely, Glitz's former lover.
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). The 2013 Big Finish audio The Wrong Doctors depicts Mel's first adventure (from her perspective) with the Doctor, an apparent contradiction of Business Unusual.
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.