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Melanie "Mel" Bush is one of the deuteragonists of the Doctor Who franchise.
She debuts as a major protagonist in Season 23 and the main deuteragonist in Season 24 of the Classic series of Doctor Who. She returns in the revival series as a minor character in the 2022 Specials, apart of the Thirteenth Doctor Era, a major character in the 2023 60th Anniversary Specials, a part of the Fourteenth Doctor Era and a supporting character in Series 14, a part of the Fifteenth Doctor's Era.
She was portrayed by Bonnie Langford, who has reprised the role for Big Finish.
Biography[]
Mel was a computer programmer from Pease Pottage who began travelling with the Sixth Doctor at some point after his trial by the Time Lords. During this time, she helped him save the crew of the Hyperion III from being wiped out by Vervoids. She was brought back in time to the Doctor's trial by the Master where she helped him expose his prosecutor, the Valeyard, as an alternate version of the Doctor himself. Afterwards, she left with the Doctor. After being reunited with her Doctor, she continued travelling with him, as seen in Big Finish's audios. During these adventures, she had a somewhat brutal encounter with Davros and the Daleks, met Evelyn Smythe, helped free the tribes of Economy and Business from Tantane Spaceport, battled the Eminence, and travelled with fellow companion Hebe Harrison.
At some time afterwards, she was aboard the TARDIS when the Doctor regenerated into his seventh incarnation as a result of an attack by the Rani. She befriended the Lakertyan Ikona and helped the newly-regenerated Doctor recover his memory in time to defeat his old enemy. She also aided him in his adventures at Paradise Towers and in protecting the Chimeron Queen Delta from the Bannermen. During their journey to Iceworld, she befriended a teenager known as Ace and, after deciding to leave the Doctor's company in order to keep the roguish space traveller Glitz in line, recommended Ace replace her on the Doctor's travels.
The novel Head Games saw her abandoned by Glitz and abducted by "Dr. Who", a fictional version of the Doctor created by the Master of the Land of Fiction, becoming disgusted by how fond the real Doctor had become of violent solutions and choosing to remain in her own time. According to the later novel Heritage, she ended up in the far future married to a man named Ben Heyworth. A scientist they went to for fertility treatment instead made a clone of Mel without her consent and murdered her when she threatened to expose him. According to the Big Finish audios, Mel was later reunited with the Doctor and Ace and travelled with them again for a time.
Whatever the case, Mel did return to Earth, and made a cameo as part of a companion support group in The Power of the Doctor, meeting several others who travelled with the Doctor, such as Yaz, Ian, Graham, Dan, Jo and Tegan. Mel would be recruited by Kate Stewart and join UNIT, putting her computing skills to use. In The Giggle, when all of humanity began to be driven mad, Mel was immune due to her travels in time, but she still wore a suppressant armband just in case. Mel assisted the Fourteenth Doctor and Donna Noble in tracking the giggle down to Stooky Bill due to its arpeggio nature, and also safeguarded the Toymaker's toybox when the Doctor retrieved it from 1925 Soho. When the Toymaker attacked UNIT HQ, she survived being thrown across a room by him. Mel stood by the Doctor with Donna when the Toymaker triggered a regeneration, and then helped the Doctor complete a bi-generation by pulling the Fifteenth Doctor out of him. After the Doctors beat the Toymaker in a game of catch and exiled him from their existence, Mel presented the Toybox to which he was banished to. She later joined the Noble family and the retired Fourteenth Doctor for a dinner party where she became an honourary "Mad Auntie Mel".
She met the Fifteenth Doctor again the following year, still working for UNIT. She had been sent undercover as part of the media team for Susan Triad, a computer genius and philanthropist who UNIT suspected was using alien technology. In fact, Susan was an unwitting pawn of Sutekh, who transformed her into one of his Death Angels. Mel escaped with the Doctor and his companion Ruby Sunday in a remembered TARDIS created by UNIT's Time Window, and was one of the last survivors when Sutekh's Death Cloud wiped out all life in the universe, until Sutekh overcame and possessed her. She was restored when the Doctor cast Sutekh into the time vortex and reversed everything he had done.
Trivia[]
- Although included in contemporary behind-the-scenes documents and publicity material, Mel's surname was never mentioned on screen.
- Mel's introduction, in which she departs with a version of the Doctor who has yet to experience their first meeting, appears to be a time paradox. It is generally assumed he returned her to his future self, which is confirmed by the novelisation and various tie-in materials.
- Mel has been given several contradictory explanations for what happened after she left the TARDIS. In the TV series she mentions returning to Earth after Glitz's death.
- Mel's death in Heritage is part of a trend in several Past Doctor Adventure novels where a companion is depicted as getting killed off, such as Ace in Loving the Alien, Sarah Jane in Bullet Time, and Harry Sullivan in Wolfsbane. The range's sister series, the Eighth Doctor novels, indicated the overarching villains of the series were responsible for ensuring their deaths, with the Doctor's defeat of them in the novel Sometime Never... allowing them to live.
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