Dodo Chaplet

Dorothea "Dodo" Chaplet is a fictional character played by Jackie Lane in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. An Earth teenager from the year 1966, she was a companion of the First Doctor and a regular in the programme in its third season, from February to July, 1966. Only three of the serials in which Dodo appeared as a regular are complete in the BBC archive (The Ark, The Gunfighters and The War Machines). Dodo's personality was an unsophisticated, bright and happy one.

Ultimately the character was not deemed a success by the programme's makers, and Lane's contract was not extended beyond episode two of The War Machines. To replace her, two new characters, Polly (Anneke Wills) and Ben (Michael Craze), thought to be more in tune with the "swinging sixties", became companions.^[1] Dodo appeared in 6 stories (19 episodes), of which 11 currently exist in the BBC Archives.

Appearances

Television

Dodo is introduced at the end of the serial The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve. In that story, the Doctor and Steven travel to 1572 Paris, where they witness the persecution of the city's Huguenot population. Despite befriending a young woman named Anne Chaplet, the Doctor knows he cannot prevent the coming massacre of 10,000 Huguenots, including Anne, by the Catholic French authorities. He therefore leaves in the TARDIS, taking Steven with him. When Steven finds out, he is furious and considers leaving the Doctor while the TARDIS is in 1960s ^[2] London.

Steven returns at the same time that a young woman wanders into the TARDIS thinking it was a real police box. The Doctor and Steven are taken aback when she introduces herself as Dodo Chaplet and reveals that her grandfather was French. The Doctor speculates that Dodo might be Anne's descendant.^[3] (As some have pointed out, this would mean Anne lived to have an illegitimate offspring unless she or a descendant married a man of the same name).^[4]

In her travels with the Doctor, Dodo travels to the far future, unfortunately bringing the common cold with her to infect humanity's descendants; faces the mad games of the Celestial Toymaker; witnesses the gunfight at the O.K. Corral; says good-bye to Steven in The Savages; and is hypnotised by the rogue artificial intelligence WOTAN in The War Machines.

Halfway through that last adventure, she abruptly departs for a rest in the country after being hypnotised, and never reappears. At the story's conclusion Polly (who, with Ben Jackson, took Dodo's place as a companion) explains to the departing Doctor that Dodo has decided to remain in the 20th Century.

Other media

Dodo's life prior to joining the Doctor and the circumstances under which she joined him in the TARDIS were elaborated on in the Past Doctor Adventures novel Salvation, where the TARDIS, departing after she has entered it, travels to New York in Dodo's present, resulting in Dodo working with the Doctor and Steven to investigate mysterious beings who appear to be gods. In the Virgin Missing Adventures novel The Man in the Velvet Mask, Dodo has sex and is infected with an alien virus which slowly corrupts her.^[5]

Dodo's life after she left the Doctor was not dealt with in the programme. The spin-off novel Who Killed Kennedy by David Bishop reveals that Dodo suffered a nervous breakdown and was unable to remember her adventures with the Doctor, drifting in and out of psychiatric institutions. Becoming involved with a journalist who was investigating the truth behind UNIT, Dodo is murdered by a pawn of the Master. Her funeral is attended only by her lover and an unidentified man who, based on the limited description provided, may be either the Second or Seventh Doctor. The canonicity of the novels in relation to the television series is open to question.

Dodo also appears in the Past Doctor Adventures novel Bunker Soldiers, four short stories in the Virgin Decalog and BBC Short Trips, and the Big Finish Productions audio dramas Mother Russia, Tales from the Vault, and Return of the Rocket Men.

Conception and casting

Dodo was originally intended to have a "common" accent, and is portrayed this way at the end of The Massacre. However, starting with the next story, The Ark, it was declared that Doctor Who regulars were required to speak in "BBC English", and so Dodo's accent was changed.^[6]

References

• James Chapman, "Inside the Tardis: the worlds of Doctor Who : a cultural history", I.B.Tauris, 2006, ISBN 1-84511-162-1
• R. H. Langley, "The Doctor Who error finder: plot, continuity, and production mistakes in the television series and films", McFarland & Co., 2005, ISBN 0-7864-1990-3
• John Kenneth Muir, "A critical history of Doctor Who on television", McFarland & Co., 1999, ISBN 0-7864-0442-6

External links

• Dodo Chaplet on TARDIS Data Core, an external wiki
• Dodo Chaplet on the BBC's Doctor Who website