Jamie McCrimmon

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Doctor Who character

James Robert "Jamie" McCrimmon
Jamie
Affiliated with Second Doctor
Race Human
Home planet Earth
Home era 1746
First appearance The Highlanders
Last appearance The War Games (regular)
The Two Doctors (guest appearance)
Portrayed by Frazer Hines
Hamish Wilson (The Mind Robber)

James Robert McCrimmon, or simply Jamie, is a fictional character played by Frazer Hines in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. A piper of the Clan McLaren who lived in 18th century Scotland, he was a companion of the Second Doctor and a regular in the programme from 1966 to 1969. (The spelling of the surname varies throughout the scripts. Other spellings include Macrimmon and McCrimmond.)

(The MacCrimmons were a genuine piping family, supposedly founded by Iain Odhar MacCrimmon, however they were pipers to the Clan MacLeod. The MacCrimmons' own tartan is actually yellow, although Jamie always wears a red kilt in the series.)

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[edit] Character history

Jamie first appeared in The Highlanders, encountering the Doctor, Ben and Polly in the aftermath of the Battle of Culloden in 1746. At the end of the story, Polly suggested that the Doctor take Jamie along with them. Jamie continued to travel with the Doctor even after Ben and Polly left the TARDIS at the end of The Faceless Ones. He appeared in all but the very first Second Doctor serial, The Power of the Daleks, and in more episodes than any other companion, although Tegan Jovanka served with the Doctor for the longest in terms of years on the series.

Jamie shared a lively, bantering relationship with the Doctor, and during his time in the series saw the arrival and departure of first Victoria Waterfield and finally Zoe Heriot. Jamie, being a product of his time, was always solicitous and gentlemanly towards the women who travelled with him. Jamie did not have the background to always understand the situations his adventures with the Doctor took him into, but was quick enough to translate high technology and concepts into equivalents he could understand and deal with. His famous battlecry was, "Creag an tuire" which, in Scottish Gaelic, translates to "The Boar's Rock." It is the motto of the MacLaren Clan of Scotland.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Together with the Doctor, Jamie encountered Cybermen and Daleks, the Yeti in the London Underground, the Ice Warriors, and many other dangers. Jamie was particularly fond and protective of Victoria, due in part to her being an elegant Victorian lady. He was heartbroken when she decided to stay with the Harris family at the end of Fury from the Deep, to the point of even being briefly angry with the Doctor for allowing her to leave (The Wheel in Space).

Hamish Wilson as Jamie (from The Mind Robber)
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Hamish Wilson as Jamie (from The Mind Robber)

During the filming of The Mind Robber, Frazer Hines contracted chickenpox and was replaced for part of the serial by Hamish Wilson. This was written in as part of the story when Jamie was turned into a cardboard cut-out, had his face removed by the Master of the Land of Fiction and the Doctor's first attempt to reconstruct it was unsuccessful. Eventually Jamie's real face was restored when Hines recovered.

Jamie's travels with the Doctor came to an end on the battlefields of The War Games, when the Time Lords finally put the Doctor on trial for interfering with the universe. For his offences, the Doctor was forced to regenerate and exiled to Earth. Jamie and Zoe were then returned to their own time, their memories of the Doctor wiped, save for their first encounters with him. When last seen, Jamie was fighting with an English redcoat back on the fields of Scotland.

Frazer Hines reappeared as an illusory image of Jamie in the 20th anniversary special The Five Doctors. He also reprised the role in the 1985 serial The Two Doctors alongside Patrick Troughton and Colin Baker as the Second and Sixth Doctors respectively. Hines is the only still-living Second Doctor companion actor not to act in a Big Finish Productions audio play (the others have played characters other than their television roles).

[edit] Season 6B

Main article: Season 6B

The fact that the Second Doctor and Jamie are on an assignment for the Time Lords in The Two Doctors (whom they do not encounter until The War Games) and, to a lesser degree, their obviously aged appearance, has led to fan speculation about a possible "Season 6B". As we do not see Patrick Troughton regenerate directly into Jon Pertwee's Third Doctor, fans hypothesise that the Time Lords recruited the Second Doctor to do covert missions for them prior to his third incarnation, and that Jamie joined him in these untold adventures (Victoria's presence is also mentioned in The Two Doctors although she does not appear). There has been no confirmation of the "Season 6B" position in "official" continuity, although the spin-off media have incorporated it as an element of the series' backstory.

[edit] Other appearances

An elderly Jamie, who remembered his time with the Doctor (explaining that the Doctor had taught him tricks to ensure the Time Lords would not really wipe his memories), also appeared in the comic strip story "The World Shapers" with the Sixth Doctor, published in Doctor Who Magazine #127–#129. In this story, written by Grant Morrison, Jamie sacrificed himself at the conclusion of the story to stop the titular world shaper machine. In "Planet of the Dead" (DWM #141-#142), a race of shapeshifters known as the Ganzalum impersonate the Doctor's dead companions (although Peri and Frobisher are also impersonated), Jamie among them.

Jamie, however, does not appear among the Seventh Doctor's deceased companions in the Virgin New Adventures novel Timewyrm: Revelation by Paul Cornell, and it has been suggested in the various novels, audios and comic strips that all three media take place in different continuities from each other. More generally, the canonicity of the various Doctor Who spin-off media is unclear.

In the 2006 episode Tooth and Claw (set in Scotland), the Tenth Doctor identifies himself to a guard as "Doctor James McCrimmon".

[edit] List of appearances

[edit] Television

Season 4
Season 5
Season 6
20th anniversary special
Season 22

[edit] Novels

Virgin Missing Adventures
Past Doctor Adventures
Telos Doctor Who novellas

[edit] Short stories

[edit] Comics

  • "The World Shapers" by Grant Morrison, John Ridgway and Tim Perkins (Doctor Who Magazine 127–129)
  • "Bringer of Darkness" by Warwick Gray and Martin Geraghty (Doctor Who Magazine Summer Special 1993)
  • "Land of the Blind" by W. Scott Gray and Lee Sullivan (Doctor Who Magazine 224–226)
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