Melanie Bush

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Doctor Who character

Melanie "Mel" Bush
Mel
Affiliated with Sixth Doctor
Seventh Doctor
Race Human
Home planet Earth
Home era 20th century
First appearance The Trial of a Time Lord: Terror of the Vervoids
Last appearance Dragonfire
Portrayed by Bonnie Langford

Melanie Bush, or simply Mel, is a fictional character played by Bonnie Langford in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. A computer programmer from the 20th Century who was a companion of the Sixth and Seventh Doctors, she was a regular in the programme from 1986 to 1987. Her last name of Bush was never mentioned on screen, but was stated in the promotional and production literature.

Mel first appeared in the serial Terror of the Vervoids, part of the 14-part story The Trial of a Time Lord. At that point, she and the Sixth Doctor had been travelling together for some time. The events of Vervoids were shown as part of a Matrix projection of future events being shown to the Sixth Doctor, so from his point of view, he was seeing an adventure he would have with Mel even before he met her in his own timeline. At the end of Trial, the Sixth Doctor went off 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.

Mel is at present the only one of the Doctor's companions (not counting the special case of his grandaughter, Susan) never to have her actual first adventure with the Doctor chronicled on screen.

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


Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

In the serial Dragonfire, she decided to stay on Iceworld with the galactic confidence trickster, Sabalom Glitz, leaving the Seventh Doctor to travel on with his new companion, Ace.

Contents

[edit] Other appearances

The Virgin Missing Adventures novel Time of Your Life states that the Sixth Doctor returned Mel to his future self at the point the Time Lords took her from, during an adventure on the planet Oxyveguramosa. The actual story in which the Sixth Doctor met Mel for the first time was never shown in the programme, although the Past Doctor Adventures Business Unusual, by Gary Russell, covered this, and established that she came 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.

Mel's history after she left the Seventh Doctor was not explored in the series. The spin-off novels and short stories, however, reveal that her decision to leave the Doctor was actually due to psychic persuasion on the Doctor's part, so he could go on to become the darker and more manipulative Time's Champion. In the Virgin New Adventures novel Head Games by Steve Lyons, 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 travelled 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 where 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 vanished once those enemies were defeated.

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 alternate, more cynical version of Mel in the Doctor Who Unbound play He Jests at Scars....

The canonicity of non-television stories is unclear.

[edit] List of appearances

[edit] Television

Season 23
Season 24
30th anniversary special

[edit] Audio dramas

[edit] Novels

Virgin New Adventures
Virgin Missing Adventures
Past Doctor Adventures

[edit] Short stories

[edit] Comics

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