Vicki

Doctor Who character
Vicki
Affiliated with	First Doctor
Race	Human
Home planet	Earth
Home era	25th century
First appearance	The Rescue
Last appearance	The Myth Makers
Portrayed by	Maureen O'Brien

Vicki is a fictional character played by Maureen O'Brien in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. An orphan from the 25th century, she was a companion of the First Doctor and a regular in the programme in Seasons 2 and 3 in 1965. Her last name was never revealed during the series.

Character history

Vicki first appears in the serial The Rescue, a survivor of a spaceship crash on the planet Dido and menaced by the monstrous Koquillion when she meets the Doctor and his companions Ian and Barbara. Still coping with his recent parting from his granddaughter Susan at the end of The Dalek Invasion of Earth, the Doctor invites the teenage girl to join the TARDIS crew.

Vicki is in many respects an ordinary teenage girl. She is a surrogate granddaughter to the Doctor and takes care of him like her own grandfather. She rarely takes the initiative, relying instead first on Ian and Barbara and then Steven Taylor, whom she treats like an older brother. Like many, however, her travels with the Doctor change and mature her. She is the one who persuades the Doctor to let Ian and Barbara use a Dalek time machine to return to their own time in The Chase.

Vicki eventually falls in love with the warrior Troilus when the TARDIS landed during the siege of Troy (The Myth Makers). After making sure that Steven and the Doctor will be all right without her, she decides to remain with Troilus, eventually passing into legend as Cressida, the name given to her by King Priam.

Other appearances

Vicki appears in the spin-off short story Apocrypha Bipedium by Ian Potter, where the Eighth Doctor- having convinced her that he is a later Doctor rather than a younger one as Vicki first believed due to her ignorance of Regeneration- advises her and Troilus to move to Cornwall to avoid the tragic conclusion to their story as related by William Shakespeare.

The audio story Frostfire is told by an older Vicki living in Carthage, where she and Troilus traveled with Aeneas, had children and settled, although it is shown that she now regrets her decision to stay in Troy. Frostfire portrays Vicki as somewhat lonely and isolated, conversing with a somewhat malevolent living cinder (a spark of the phoenix) because it is the only being with whom she can discuss her travels with the Doctor.

The novel The Eleventh Tiger by David A. McIntee (set during Vicki's time with the First Doctor, Ian and Barbara) reveals that her full name is Vicki Pallister. Like all spin-off media, the canonicity of these stories is unclear.

Other mentions

Vicki is mentioned by the 5th Doctor in Castrovalva, by the 7th Doctor in The Curse of Fenric and a vision of Vicki is seen along with every other companion aside from Leela on the scanner screen in Resurrection of the Daleks.

List of appearances

Television

Season 2

• The Rescue
• The Romans
• The Web Planet
• The Crusade
• The Space Museum
• The Chase
• The Time Meddler

Season 3

• Galaxy 4
• The Myth Makers

Audio drama

• Frostfire
• The Suffering

Novels

Virgin Missing Adventures

• The Plotters by Gareth Roberts
• The Empire of Glass by Andy Lane

Past Doctor Adventures

• Byzantium! by Keith Topping
• The Eleventh Tiger by David A. McIntee

Short stories

• "Romans Cutaway" by David A. McIntee (More Short Trips)
• "Planet of the Bunnoids" by Harriet Green (Short Trips and Sidesteps)
• "Apocrypha Bipedium" by Ian Potter (Short Trips: Companions)
• "Corridors of Power" by Matthew Griffiths (Short Trips: Steel Skies)
• "The Schoolboy's Story" by Trey Korte (Short Trips: Repercussions)
• "Every Day" by Stephen Fewell (Short Trips: A Christmas Treasury)
• "Mars" by Trevor Baxendale (Short Trips: The Solar System)
• "Snowman in Manhattan" by John Binns (Short Trips: The Ghosts of Christmas)

Comics

• "Are You Listening?" by Warwick Gray and Colin Andrew (Doctor Who Summer Special 1994)

External links

• Vicki on TARDIS Index File, an external wiki
• Vicki on the BBC's Doctor Who website