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TeganJanet Fielding |
Real by Mike Morris 24/4/01
In 1963 a couple of teachers wandered into the TARDIS, and Doctor Who was born. It's interesting that unlike, say, the telemovie, An Unearthly Child is told from the point of view of two ordinary people. Ian and Barbara are there to be normal, and then to be astonished, and in that way astonish the viewers.
In 1981, Tegan Jovanka did more or less the same thing.
Of course, the parallels aren't wildly strong. By that stage we all knew what the TARDIS was; we weren't so easily shocked by the thing being bigger on the inside than on the outside, and Tegan made sense of it all a bit quicker than Ian and Barbara did. But as Tegan wanders into an empty control room, nervously says her name into the communicator, and then gets lost in a maze of corridors, the TARDIS became something it hadn't been since that first story; hostile. Tegan is scared. She sees a police box appear from nowhere (again, we're used to that), and she's terrified. By the time she blunders back to the console room and demands to speak to whoever's in charge, Tegan is a wreck who just about keeps her composure. And the viewer empathises with her.
In those first couple of episodes of Logopolis, Tegan is happy, sarcastic, brash, angry, scared, tired, frustrated, excited, and funny. And in that short time she became something that Doctor Who had rarely seen before; a completely believable human being. I'll go further; she was the most convincing character ever to appear in Doctor Who. Because of that, she was also the most interesting. And, combining those two factors, the conclusion is inescapable; Tegan Jovanka was the best, the greatest, the most fascinating companion ever to grace our little TV show. But, although she's generally popular, I haven't seen enough scribblings celebrating the sheer wonderfulness of Tegan. I'm not sure why. After all, in a run comparable to Jamie's or Sarah Jane's, she was around for almost all of the Davison era. She got some wonderful scenes, and Janet Fielding played them brilliantly. Tegan's leaving scene is frequently acknowledged as one of the best.
Anyway, I'm in a mood for redressing balances today. So, if I may, I would like to rave about how great Tegan was for a bit. And I won't even mention Janet Fielding's legs... oh, except I just did.
Too often I think she's oversimplifies as being "feisty" (horrible word) or "ballsy" (biologically tricky, I'd have thought). Well, she is, of course, but then again she isn't. Doctor Who has had many other feisty companions, Ace being the most prominent of them. But Ace's grinning with delight at every monster and endless pyromania can grow wearing after a while; and, while the Ace of Season Twenty Six showed some depth, the early Ace is one-dimensional in her, er, ballsiness. Tegan's a different proposition. She won't show weakness if she can help it, and likes to think of herself as independent, but most of the time she's actually scared, and that only makes her more believable. The best example of this is in Earthshock, when she insists on accompanying the troopers, she regrets her decision within minutes and admits that she's "just a mouth on legs". Later she shows herself to be far more than that when she grabs a gun from a Cyberman and blows it to pieces. Later still, she tries the same thing and can't fire the gun properly. Tegan's got a loud mouth, and (brilliantly) she knows it; she knows she's not as tough as she likes to appear, but she's actually braver than she thinks she is, and the fact that she's not wildly intelligent only makes her courage more admirable. Come on, could you figure out how to work a Cyber-gun in that situation?
So Tegan is impressive when she's trying to look tough because we know she's not, really; and we know because every now and then we see her other side. Tegan's friendship with Nyssa, and her friendship with the Doctor, show us a fiercely loyal woman who tied Season Nineteen's disjointed TARDIS team together - a factor specifically mentioned in Castrovalva, when the Doctor assigns her the role as the "co-ordinator"; and it's great to see Tegan pretending that she can cope, desperately not trying to let the Doctor know that the TARDIS is crashing, or that Adric is missing. In the early scenes of Castrovalva, Tegan always seems on the point of collapse, a moment away from running off into the TARDIS corridors shouting "I can't do this!"... I think it's her presence that gives the early TARDIS-based episodes their edge.
Tegan, of course, didn't like people. She didn't like Turlough, of course, and she didn't like Adric very much. It's hard to blame her, but that gave the TARDIS an interesting edge. I'm one of the few people who love that bit in Kinda where Tegan and Adric trade insults, and her scenes with Turlough in Terminus are a treat, particularly because Turlough gets the upper hand.
Somehow, though, Turlough and Adric were Tegan's friends nonetheless, as we saw when Adric died (how tragic) in Earthshock. Tegan steals that scene as she demands an explanation off the Doctor, and then when none comes she collapses into Nyssa's arms.
That happened again in Terminus when Nyssa left. The Nyssa - Tegan friendship is a wonderful part of the Davison era, and Nyssa's leaving scene is more about the breaking of that friendship than her leaving the Doctor (who accepts Nyssa's decision as the right one). It's also as much about Tegan as it is about Nyssa. When Nyssa says "like you I'm indestructible", Tegan proves her wrong by breaking down in tears; it's unbelievably poignant, and makes that scene the second-best companion departure ever.
The best, of course, is Tegan's. Yes, I've seen Sarah's and Jo's and Susan's, but this was so simple, so abrupt, that it pushes all of those off the scale. It takes the marvellous friendship that the Doctor and Tegan had built up (particularly after Nyssa left) and ends it all in a few moments of pain. Tegan's leaving hurt the Doctor in a way no-one else's did, because this was a companion who'd been with him since the start, and the effect of her storming out is to make him decide to change his ways. It's a great scene, great because of Tegan's refusal to blame her friend; great because, although apparently simple ("it's stopped being fun") there's a lot more to it than that. Surely it stopped being fun when Adric died? And, while Resurrection of the Daleks was a particularly bloody adventure, Tegan had seen plenty of death before. Tegan's reason are more complex, surely... the fact that the way out of this life was so easy, that she had seen a side of the Doctor that she didn't like, that realities of life with him finally hit home to her... or maybe... well...
The Doctor's relationship with Tegan is an interesting one, and it deserves a lot more analysis than I can give it here, but I think the reality of Tegan's leaving lies in her feelings about the Doctor. They're friends; but maybe more than that, at least on her side. They're more or less the same age, they get on well, and surely there's only so many times a guy can save your life before you become a bit interested. As for the Doctor, well he admits that sometimes Tegan "takes his breath away"... something to think about, that. A love affair, or at least a bit of a crush, explains a lot, though; Tegan left because the nice man whom she was developing feelings for suddenly became Davros's executioner, flippantly destroying the Daleks by releasing a virus, and she found that too much to take; it explains why the Doctor ran after her with a jilted cry of "don't leave, not like this"; it explains why Tegan came back almost immediately, and murmured "Doctor, I will miss you". Food for thought?
There are a lot of things about Tegan I can't go into in detail, or I'd be writing until next year. That's the beauty of her character. Tegan is a mass of contradictions; brave and frightened, determined and irresolute (in Snakedance she refuses to confront the Mara in her mind, regressing to a six year old in her garden instead), brash and self-doubting, angry and tender... the list goes on.
But the key lied in her plausibility (which is why it's not unthinkable that she had a crush on the Doctor, because she wasn't just another companion). Of all the scenes I've mentioned, I've omitted a personal favourite; when Tegan tries to force open a filing cabinet in Frontios, and mutters "rabbits" under her breath. Now that, to me, is brilliantly real.
Most companions have been revisited at some point. We've met up with Harry, Sarah, Liz, Mel, Peri, Susan, Jo... pretty much everyone, really. Me, I'm more interested in what happened what Tegan when she ran out into London, alone and without anything in the world.
Then again, maybe some questions are better left unanswered.
A Review (Or should I say, A Burial) by Mark Irvin 2/1/01
Was this companion some kind of a joke? Tegan never fitted into the TARDIS crew at all - always managing to seem completely out of place in nearly every adventure she appeared in. What was her purpose apart from saying the most incredibly stupid things, criticising the Doctor and basically being a complete pain in the butt?
Why was she so darn bitchy? Couldn't she just be nice sometimes rather than morose? And that bloody irritating voice! And no, speaking as an Australian it wasn't her accent, just the nagging style/tone of her speech in general.
We even get the impression that the Doctor didn't really appreciate Tegan's presence either. For example - take her apparent departure in Time-Flight; Does it really look like he even cares that she's gone? And does the Doctor strike you as being at all pleased when she regrettably reappears in the following season? Examine the slight grimace on his face as he makes this comment with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.
Tegan - "So you're stuck with me aren't you"
Doctor - ".....So it seems"
It has been commented that Tegan's strength lied in that she's a believably real human being. First of all, Doctor Who is obviously not an incredibly believable show - in fact it's complete and utter escapism. If I wanted observe an exceptionally poor interpretation of a stereotypical present-day woman from Earth - I wouldn't be watching science-fiction in the first place, I'd be watching some shoddy drama along the lines of Neighbours.
I know all this might sound harsh; yet this is my honest opinion and many fans make similar comments about Adric. Fair enough, Adric was a git for the most part (especially post regeneration - he was considerably better alongside Baker) but at least he did try to save others in the end with a respectable finale. And to criticise Mathew Waterhouse for his poor acting when Janet Fielding's is equally as bad - is really just a blatant crime. She never genuinely convinces as a character for even a second. Well actually no.... I should try to be fair; her performance as a Mara controlled Tegan in Snakedance wasn't too bad, although that's about it.
The one I feel sorry for in all this is Peter Davison. His Doctor was afflicted with this character for all bar two of his adventures and actually managed to detract from his overall performance in my book. An offsider like Ace did wonders for Sylvester McCoy and helped raise him to be a half decent Doctor. Picture him pairing up with a cretinous airhostess and you have a total disaster.
"Rabbits!" by Joe Ford 18/4/03
I am a hypocrite, I realise that. How I can claim Peri is an underrated companion and yet dismiss Tegan as a "moaning Australian bitch" (or something equally derogatory when their character bio is exactly the same (foreign, miserable, terrible dress sense). Tegan was an experimental companion that came along during an extremely experimental time for the show and at times it is a terrible shame that they wasted a lot of her potential in dull, plodding scripts.
Poor old Tegan, half the time she was used to throw up some drama when none is needed. Eric Saward went on records saying he much preferred Tegan over Adric and Nyssa and believed that friction in the TARDIS crew made the characters and the show far more interesting. Wrong. In season nineteen she has an excuse, she has been uprooted from her own time and goes from one death defying adventure to another with little choice but to just accept it (the Doctor's steering skills are at an all time low here). It's okay in the stories it's underplayed in like Castrovalva but stories like Four to Doomsday do the woman no favours when she is running about screaming her head, bashing her head against the console to make it work (women drivers!) and competing with the Doctor to see whose voice can get the shrillest in many arguments on the subject (my favourite is "Nononono! We've got to get to the TARDIS and GET out of here!").
But then in season twenty she VOLUNTARILY steps back on board the TARDIS and yet there is absolutely no change in her personality at all, if anything she has gotten worse. She's patronising and stubborn in Mawdryn Undead (especially towards The Brigadier and Turlough), she's horribly selfish in Terminus (especially those first few TARDIS scenes where she tries to justify why she's such a cow), she makes life hell for Marriner in Enlightenment and doesn't contribute anything to The King's Demons besides a few back stabbing comments. It seems at this point the writers have abandoned any sense of purpose for this woman being here and are just slotting in some backward, at times racist dialogue to shoe horn her into stories. The Five Doctors is Tegan at her all time low, so thick she screams out "Doctor look out Cybermen!" so everybody knows where she is (why don't they shoot her!) and then proceeds to the tower with the equally stubborn Richard Hurndall's Doctor in a number of stodgy, humourless scenes.
As if things couldn't get any worse season twenty-one abandons any sense of coherence or character for the TARDIS crew. They are just people who travel from one place to another to start a new story, they don't talk about anything but what is happening right now (so we know what is going on) so we don't think they have any pasts or interests or even relationships with each other. The Tegan of Warriors, The Awakening and Resurrection who just runs about flying off insults and barking at the Doctor is horrible. Janet Fielding was right to leave when she did, the character had not developed, it had regressed, at least at the beginning she was cross with a purpose, now she's just pissed because that is what we expect of her. It is lazy work from the script editor and makes for painful viewing in places.
However Janet Fielding isn't the culprit here, I'm certain of that now. She was just involved in the show at the wrong time, where the characters were sacrificed in favour of the more experimental type shows (such as Kinda, Black Orchid...). During the early eighties the plots were far more important than the characters and that's sad because they really could have made something out of Tegan. Look at the stories where she's not moaning her head off (Castrovalva, Black Orchid, Enlightenment, Frontios) and you see a sensible, mature woman who you would enjoy the company of. It is very telling that Fiona Cumming, a rare female director to the show had a hand in two of these shows. At her peak she could be a lot of fun (showing Nyssa the Charleston in Black Orchid, investigating Deaths Unaccountable in Frontios, bonding with Nyssa in Castrovalva). And let's not forget the amount of effort Mr Bidmead took to write her in, having what is the most natural reaction to walking into the TARDIS since Ian and Barbara, sheer disbelief and utter horror. Ms Fielding plays these scenes to the hilt.
It doesn't help that all the stories in season nineteen were made out of order as we are introduced to a calmer, more gentle Tegan in Castrovalva and then switch to the heroine addict of Four to Doomsday and then back to apparent calmness in Kinda, sulking kid in The Visitation and then nice Tegan again for Black Orchid. Very odd.
Kinda and Snakedance use Tegan so effectively you wonder why more writers didn't follow in Bailey's steps. The Mara infected Tegan was chilling through and through and proved just what a superb actress Janet Fielding really is. Just watch the scene where Mara-Tegan drops apples on Aris' head and tempts him with her power... Ms Fielding vamps it up in a really scary way. The scenes in Tegan's head whilst pointless are extremely effective and her fear is palpable. Wonderful stuff and a good example of Tegan used well.
There have been lots of stories and vomit inducing fan fictions about the apparent sex-ploits of The fifith Doctor and Tegan. Why? Beats me? If any Doctor and companion were shagging behind closed doors it wouldn't be these two! They travel together for three years and he can barely stand to speak to her in the end. He rushes off into his adventures hoping to forget about the company he keeps these days. The truth of the matter is no thought was put into this potentially interesting relationship and there was no development. In the end he just gets used to her whinging behaviour and remains resigned. Just look at how refreshed he looks wondering around Lanzarote in Planet of Fire, smiling and relaxed.... now put Tegan in those scenes and spot the difference.
I'm not saying Tegan ruined the Davison era, she really wasn't important enough for that. But she was another factor of a show that plummeted during those three years. People moan about the Colin Baker viewing figures... ahem... Davison was scoring near to ten million in his first year and plummeted to five to seven in his last. The nadir really was the 5th Doctor, Tegan and Turlough... why the hell did these people travel together? Somebody write a PDA and let me know.
What we're left with is an interesting experiment that was refined a little for when Peri arrived (the one companion, one Doctor situation works much better) but annoys for much of its duration. Tegan was a miserable bitch albeit one with much unused potential.
"I'm just a mouth on legs" by Terrence Keenan 28/11/03
Tegan was always the odd girl out during her time. The Doctor, Turlough, Adric and Nyssa were all brainiac aliens. Tegan was a flight attendant from Brisbane. The others were all enigmatic, locked-into-defined-roles characters. Tegan had a lot of range. She could be bitchy, confident, morose, a leader, a screamer, a hero and even a villain on a couple of occasions.
For what purpose? Well, I suppose it was to make Tegan a bigger focus during her run, possibly even make her THE primary character in the show. Unfortunately, there were too many other companions in the TARDIS with her. So, Tegan would end up being locked into a narrow sliver of character, instead of being able to show many sides within a story. If she started off bitchy at the beginning of a story, then bitchy she'd be till the end. Which is a shame.
Like in the books, there are writer proof companions and tricky ones during the course of the show. Leela was a writer proof companion. Tegan wasn't. For Tegan to work effectively, she needed to show a multitude of sides. For me, the two best Tegan stories are Kinda and Snakedance, because they do just that and take it further by including a very scary dark side to this very ordinary person. She also saw some development in the season 21 stories, but I always have the feeling of too little, too late.
If I sound like I'm bagging on the character, I'm not. In a weird way, I like Tegan, especially in concept. It's the execution that drives me nuts. The writers would force her into a one-dimensional box she was never designed to fit in.
On Janet Fielding: I find many of performances uneven. Again, I think it comes down to the scripts. When Janet got to show more sides of the character, she shines. Strip her of the gray levels and her performance falls apart.
Here's the kicker. Tegan was by far the best companion for the fifth Doctor. If they had gone to the one Doctor/one companion formula that had worked before, methinks Tegan would be thought about as possibly the best ever companion. But, with an overly packed TARDIS, Tegan Jovanka ended up average.
Such a shame.
No one of consequence by Robert Smith? 8/12/03
Most Doctors have a single companion who is identifiably "theirs". The second Doctor had Jamie, at his side for almost every story. The seventh had Ace (or Benny in the books), the sixth had Peri and the third was lumbered with Jo. These companions usually complement their Doctor (even Peri) and strengthen the impression that the current TARDIS crew is a tightly knit team, ready to fight evil as one. Or occasionally get strangled, when he's having an off day.
The fifth Doctor has Tegan Jovanka by his side for all bar two of his stories, yet they do anything but complement each other. Tegan is almost the exact opposite of the fifth doctor - headstrong, brash, outspoken. She's impertinent in a way that the fifth Doctor isn't... but it's the sort of impertinence that's usually a character trait of every other Doctor. She says what she thinks, even though it's frequently dangerous to do so. She's not up to the (other) Doctor's standard of actually taunting the villains, but she's definitely on the way.
There's something wonderfully real about Ms Jovanka. In Castrovalva she's chosen to be the coordinator over the more technically proficient Adric or Nyssa, despite the fact that the Doctor's barely met her. She's fulfills the leadership role in her own human way - but it's a way that none of the other companions of the fifth Doctor could possibly have hoped to fill. In fact, throughout the entire Davison tenure, she's a sort of human, ethical version of the Doctor himself. She feels things on a personal level: when the Cyberleader wants to observe fear in the humans left on board the freighter, the Doctor says nothing, but she condemns the idea with a heartfelt "That's sadistic!"
The Doctor might be playing bigger games, outwitting powerful enemies... but he also loses, of course. Again and again. So much so that his tactics get more morally ambiguous the more desperate he grows. Tegan doesn't see the bigger picture, but in some ways that frees her up to be outspoken where somebody needs to be - even if that somebody would otherwise be the Doctor himself. This is the real tragedy of the fifth Doctor: by trying to play games on the level of his enemies he's lost something of himself. What's especially tragic is that he's simply not that good at playing those games - the Cyberleader's plan only fails by accident, Davros mocks the Doctor's spinelessness, Rassilon deals with Borusa and the Doctor's grand plan for outwitting the Black Guardian involves saying nothing and hoping Turlough makes the right decision.
The two Mara stories show Tegan at her most effective. Janet Fielding's acting is nothing short of amazing. After a slightly wooden start, she rises to the fore with a breathtaking performance in Kinda and an utterly chilling turn as the villain in Snakedance. There are few companions developed enough to have two stories like this centered around their faults and insecurities and even fewer actresses who could have pulled it off as effectively as Janet does. If Kinda were a starring vehicle for Jo Grant you'd kill yourself laughing.
Episode 3 of The Visitation is astonishing. The Doctor and the Terrileptil talk, walk and argue as equals, but the Doctor loses every facet of the argument bar one (comparing the Terrileptils to humans via each species' love of war). The Doctor's compassionate arguments are met with the response "It's not supposed to be an argument, it's a statement!" which is actually shouted by the Terrileptil. We get the sense that the Doctor is simply playing on the wrong level. He's using compassion and reason in a universe where those things don't apply. He might be able to talk to his enemies as equals, but that's as far as it goes. He even suffers the loss of a companion, of sorts, in the form of the sonic screwdriver. It's a stunning, dangerous, manifesto of Eric Saward's view of the ethos of Doctor Who and one which would go on to shape the course of the series over the next four years.
Tegan is arrogant and brash and angry and a self-described mouth-on-legs in Earthshock, but she's everything the Doctor's trying to fight for. She's humanity incarnate. Even when the Doctor tries to save her life by saying she's "no one of consequence" she still answers back, saying "Thanks a lot!" The Doctor argues in the abstract with the Cyberleader ("For some people small, beautiful things are what life is all about"), but it's through his affection for Tegan that the Cyberleader demonstrates the Doctor's weakness. And of course, when Adric dies, the Doctor is frozen in shock, but it's Tegan who is at first angry and then sobs uncontrollably.
And finally, in Resurrection it's the sheer horror at what the Doctor has to do that finally proves too much for everyone's favourite airline hostess. She gets the single best leaving scene ever, condemning the person the Doctor is becoming and ultimately just walking away from it all. It's a powerful statement in a story where the Doctor stalks a warehouse with a loaded gun, decides to murder Davros in cold blood and ultimately releases a deadly virus to destroy his enemies. We can see that sometimes the Doctor has to do these things, but Tegan is less forgiving. She's the Doctor's ethical conscience and things have gone so badly for the fifth Doctor over the course of this regeneration and season 21 in particular that even his conscience has had enough. Little wonder that in the next story he murders a companion and stands by and simply lets the Master burn.
By the time we reach Caves of Androzani the Doctor isn't even interested in saving anyone other than his companion, let alone winning. The fifth Doctor suddenly sounds a lot more Doctorish than ever before, answering back, taunting villains and even endangering himself by making fun of potential allies like General Chellak. He's not playing the bigger games that have characterised his tenure, but he suddenly cares on a much more human level. The fourth Doctor saved the entire universe from destruction in Logopolis; the fifth crashes spaceships into planets and ultimately sacrifices himself just to save one person he hardly knows - but somehow the smaller, more human tragedy and ultimate triumph of self-sacrifice is even more worthwhile. He loses again, but finally, by embracing his humanity, he wins as well. Could this be the influence of our recently departed air hostess?
One can't help wishing that Tegan had been paired with the sixth Doctor. One suspects that Tegan would be more effective in standing up to him (and the villains) than Peri ever was. Just imagine an alternate season 22 with the Doctor manically out of control, but Tegan taking on a more Doctorish role. It might be an Eric Saward version of The Horns of Nimon, but it would be unmissable viewing.
The Doctor and Tegan had an unusual Doctor-companion relationship. They weren't best friends, they didn't function as a team and they were often at loggerheads. But Tegan filled a gap in the fifth Doctor's personality that showed the nature of his character as it changed over the three years of Davison's tenure. By contrasting the two, we got a team comprised of real people (a remarkable feat considering that one of them was an 800 year old Time Lord), having the sort of arguments any of us might have with our friends and not being afraid to tell the other when they'd overstepped the line. It's Tegan's humanity that keeps her free of the moral ambiguity that causes the fifth Doctor's downfall - yet by embracing that spark of humanity himself, the Doctor ultimately finds his own salvation.
And if that isn't a recipe for great drama, I don't know what is.
A Review by Stuart Gutteridge 8/3/04
Partly due to the length of time she spends aboard the TARDIS Tegan is one of the companions who undergoes a fair amount of character development. Initially she stumbles aboard by accident, following the death of her Aunt Vanessa and spends much of her time being homesick,and generally bickering. It is only when she comes back, after Arc Of Infinity that she changes; for starters she is suspicious of Turlough, (yet surprisingly her animosity towards the Master is less hostile) and she generally seems more willing and wants to see the universe; even being possessed by the Mara for a second time doesn`t change her mind and she does tend to accept the death and violence around her; ultimately the very thing that forces her to part company with the Doctor.
Generally Janet Fielding brings a strength to the part, (although she does overact somewhat in her first season) and she isn`t helped by the air hostess uniform foisted upon her; this aside Tegan is one of the more memorable companions.
GREATEST MOMENT: When she`s gun toting in Earthshock!
Tegan Jovanka - The Australian millstone by Steve Cassidy 3/4/04
One of the more enjoyable thing about early 2004 was the wonderful tabloid spat between Holly Vallance and the Daily Mirrors bitchy gossip columnists - the 3.00am girls.
What has this to do with Dr Who I hear you ask? Well, patience young Padawan, I will get to my point.
Holly Vallance, if people remember, was an exceptionally beautiful Australian soap star who decided to go for a pop career in the tough world of the UK music scene. There was no reason why she shouldn't - she was very photogenic, had been a successful character in a two-bit soap opera, could sing a little and they picked a catchy tune for her first song. But ultimately she failed magnificently and fled back to Melbourne with her beautiful tail tucked between her legs. Why?
Well possibly because the 3.00am girls summed her up with the moniker - 'Hollow Vallance'. There was just nothing there. Nothing to get hold off. She was caught by a journalist eventually complaining about the UK and made headlines. So she did have a persona eventually - as a whinger.
That was it. There was nothing else - and reading about her fall I couldn't help thinking of the 1981-84 companion air hostess Tegan Jovanka. Possibly rating with Mel and Adric as my least favourite companion - there was nothing there to grasp. With Romana I, Leela and Sarah Jane we got to see their backgrounds and see how they influenced their characters - the journalist, the Sevateem warrior, or the Gallifreyean patrician academic. But with Tegan there was just an air hostess from Brisbane who blundered into the TARDIS. Granted, this had worked before with plenty of the sixties companions. But we had moved on from that. The female (and male?) companions had to have that something special. We expected more from the people who joined the TARDIS. Whenever I looked at Nyssa I was reminded of her destroyed home world of Traken and the tragedy in her past. When Turlough appeared on screen I was reminded of his mission for the Black Guardian and his tortured soul trying to fight against his orders. But with Tegan? Sorry, but there was just nothing there.
And that is just fatal for the writers. Someone described Leela as being writer-proof and there is an element of truth with that. The character was set and the audience knew her parameters. With Tegan there isn't any parameters - there's nothing to grasp. I've heard her praised as 'real' - a bolshie Australian caught up in a situation she has no control off. But wasn't Peri in the same situation? Why do we praise Nicola Bryant to the skies while decrying the fact that Janet Fielding ever entered the TARDIS?
It is easy to blame the actress. But writers create characters - actors just read the words. And granted Janet Fielding would have had a lot of input - but the original idea for a character must come from the writers and ultimately the producer. JNT decided to make the character Australian, great idea after all the show was very popular with the people 'down under' but it is not enough to make her Australian she must be interesting in her own right. With no central character core she becomes just a cypher, worse then that she just becomes a reactor and Janet Fielding's delivery often meant she became a complainer. It's not the actress's fault - they just couldn't do anything else with the character.
Also, she was put against a Doctor not quite suited to her. This worked with Tom and Louise, because the characters were so well written. But not with Peter Davison and Janet Fielding - there was no chemistry there. And perhaps deep down they did like each other, personally I doubt it, because I think Tegan Jovanka thought the fifth Doctor to be rather pathetic. And she knew if she shouted loud enough he would eventually give in for a quiet life. We were lucky she was there for the TARDIS family to take the heat off. She got on with Nyssa (who wouldn't?) but snapped and bitched at the Doctor and Adric (who wouldn't with pyjama boy?). In The Visitation this almost reaches unbearable levels. And she could have done without Turlough. I always got the impression that the TARDIS was her domain and his presence was a real invasion.
Perhaps I am being too hard. It's nothing to do with Janet Fielding - she is a very good actress. But they gave her nothing solid to work with. The closest thing they did was pocession by the Mara in Kinda. They were so pleased with this that it was repeated next season in Snakedance. The highlight of Janet Fielding's time in the TARDIS was probably Kinda an extraordinary story that works on so many levels and her acting when in thrall to the alien menace was exemplary. I would also like to point out how good she was in Resurrection of the Daleks and Enlightenment. But for the most part her tenure was very pedestrian - she tottered around in early eighties bad fashion while wearing tight black mini-skirts with a face so screwed up she resembled a bulldog chewing a wasp. The writers made her a reactive character - and by Mawdryn Undead she was a neurotic snappish mess. Her initial suspicion of Turlough on his introduction was so unsympathetic that I actually found myself thinking "well, I certainly hope he murders you first love..."
Truth be told, she should have left after the ridiculous Time-Flight. Peter Davison could have quite happily carried on with Nyssa until the arrival of Turlough and Peri later in the season. I always thought Nyssa was more suited to his Doctor anyway. Tegan always felt abit of an odd woman out.
She was just an Aussie trolly-dolly who stayed in the TARDIS beyond the requisite retirement age.
"All she wants to be is a modern girl" by Thomas Cookson 26/5/21
As JNT approached the end of Tom Baker's run, he decided to introduce a new Australian companion, hoping to court Australian audiences and co-production deals. He also wanted a contrast to Romana, giving a more conflicted, combative Doctor-companion dynamic, recalling 1963's reluctant companion scenario.
Thus arrived Tegan. A flight attendant who unwittingly, on route to work, stumbles into the TARDIS on the motorway, becoming lost in-flight in its mazy innards. Thereon she sticks to the Doctor like glue as her ticket home and watches him fall from the Pharos telescope and regenerate.
Logopolis had to awkwardly juggle being both Tom's farewell and Tegan's introduction. Initially, Tegan seemed like the new Sarah Jane. Admirably gutsy, declaring of her alien abductor "Wait till I have a word with him!" But the more her shrillness continued, the more we lost heart we'd ever warm to her.
Tegan's sometimes praised as a companion who didn't revere the Doctor and talked back to him. But Sarah often did the same, a lot more sensibly. Tegan's meant to be our eyes for accepting a new Doctor who must impress us after Tom, not constantly knocking him down. Instead, we got a regressed Doctor who had no chance of impressing Tegan. He'd become his most accommodating incarnation, suffering the most irascible companion.
Tegan's temperament likely stemmed from Season 19 writers having no reference point for her but Logopolis' first-flight histrionics. Her impatience rather begs why she chose an air hostess job. The idea seemed she'd worked hard for that day and chance to impress, which was ruined by the Doctor's intrusion and upheaval of her life.
Except Tom did return her home in Logopolis (so her panicking like he can't lacks credibility). It's the Master who chased her off-world again, so it feels nasty that when the true, malicious source of her pain's absent, she takes it out on polite, long-suffering Davison instead.
Maybe Tegan had reason to be upset, but frankly her and Adric's bickering intensified them seeming bad as each other. JNT believed the bickering made audience-grabbing drama. When you care about characters and root for their happiness, you're saddened by seeing them arguing acrimoniously. When Tegan and Adric bickered, I just wanted them off my screen.
Despite Janet Fielding's feminist lobbying, Romana's run prior was arguably more progressive. Tegan's unreasonable tantrums enlightened nothing. Davison seemingly couldn't do right for being wrong. Even Fielding's smarter ideas seemingly got lost in Tegan's 'straw feminist' conception.
Ideally, Tegan should've possessed a modern, tough independence and shown she's no fool, but not so militantly that she's negative about everything onscreen. Bizarrely, Tegan managed to be both too negative and gullible. Season 19 isn't without its cheerful moments, but her tantrums really make it a bumpy ride.
Tegan took herself unbearably seriously (given JNT's humourless anti-Williams backlash). Much truth's often said in jest. But Tegan's single-issue concern of returning to her job gave her no other nuance or depth. Saward claimed he couldn't develop Tegan much from her air-hostess background. Which makes very little sense. What about utilizing Tegan's flight training on handling hostage/hijacking scenarios? Sometimes she was plain misused. In Earthshock, it'd surely make more sense having Tegan explain the Dinosaurs' extinction to Nyssa, than her being Davison's shockingly uneducated pupil.
In one sense, Tegan somewhat worked. She seemingly lived for stressful emotional extremes, making her dangerous actioneering plausible. She's an effective anchor to Earth, providing Season 19 with an emotional investment in and impetus for saving Earth in Four to Doomsday and The Visitation. She's the moral, emotional heart of the confrontation with Earthshock's Cyberleader. But it's Davison who becomes the champion and channel for Tegan's passion. Her power avatar even, as he blasts the Cyberleader to pieces to regain the TARDIS. Like her raging desperation became his.
There was talk of restoring stakes and suspense. Making audiences feel involved enough in the characters to feel empathy for their jeopardies like it's happening to them. In an odd, unfortunate way, stories did feel in empathy with Tegan's apathetic disdain.
Season 19's ethos leaned toward technophilia, often lacking genuine human, emotional connection. Particularly Time-Flight. Consider how The Long Good Friday shrewdly used Concorde to announce mob tycoon Bob Hoskins' arrival. Resembling his avatar: gargantuan, sharp, pioneering. Here Concorde conjures no feeling or analogue.
Time-Flight's a depersonalizing, soulless viewing. Tegan's reaction to Adric's death rings false. I'd buy her breaking into tears of shock distress like after a car crash. But her loud mawkish outpouring for someone she disliked feels like her making this a competition for who's crying and grieving hardest. She shrewdly suggests lifting Adric from the freighter, pre-crash, wouldn't change history. But for all her fury over Davison's inaction, nothing can change. This is an era where events seem to happen based purely on producer's stubbornness. So they instantly change subject.
JNT intended Tegan's strops to provide emotional impetus for moving the action outside the TARDIS. Strangely, Tegan's grief wasn't made the obvious impetus for Davison to return her home here.
The season's emphasis on block mathematics, regeneration and teamwork almost suggests a resilience theme in Logopolis' aftermath. Earthshock crystalized that resilience. Time-Flight denigrates it. It establishes that the Xeraphin are trapped in their vat, knowing that any who emerge will be shrunk-murdered. But it ends with Davison flippantly assuming they'll rise to health against Ainley anyway, regardless how many become cannon-fodder. A callousness borne of lazy writing.
It leaves a nasty aftertaste, and could've been easily solved by showing Ainley floored by the Time Ram, his weapon scattering, the nucleus towering over him, granting Tegan her unseen justice.
This neglect of the Xeraphin's humanity and emotional continuity, in favour of the Master's cartoon continuation, applies equally to Tegan. Bidmead's Tegan spat invective at Ainley "Not if you were the last man on Earth". Here she nonchalantly complies with being his ultimatum messenger.
This arbitrary dictate of JNT's to have the Master continually reappear never acknowledges any emotional impact on Tegan or Nyssa. They would've at least been allowed some emotional closure had he remained trapped in Castrovalva. The audience might've cared. JNT didn't.
Had Time-Flight ended the series, Season 19 would almost resemble some tacked-on, naff spin-off soap about overbearing Tegan's brief TARDIS journey, ending on her soap tears, like a jilted Bond girl. It resembles producer's fiat. Telling us to regret reaching the adventure's end.
That was probably Tegan's natural ending, her goal achieved. Yet she's carried on the next season as frustrating baggage. In fairness, she does substantially mellow, but she's still dourly negative, which in concert with Season 20's grey tone makes very unentertaining viewing.
Saward claimed that Ian Levine was the one calling the shots in Season 20. It's clear the season's continuity fixations stagnated Tegan's development. She seemed only there to be another nodding fan spectator or to learn more Levine-esque TARDIS facts to recount.
The idea that Tegan's our eyes for comprehending this show's universe from her experiences gets ridiculous come Mawdryn Undead. Should experiencing Logopolis mean she'll instantly believe anyone found injured in the TARDIS is a regenerated Doctor? Indeed, one almost pities Mawdryn being branded an imposter, when Tegan instantly assumed he's the Doctor, unprompted, barely giving him chance to deny it. Possibly it's script-to-screen issues. The implication is that we're actually seeing Mawdryn physically regenerating his scarred form before her, suggesting the Doctor's regeneration process.
The Five Doctors fortunately gives the bickering recriminations a respite. Emphasising the Doctor and companions' team-work and long friendships, contrasted against his backstabbing foes. Unfortunately, Season 21 asserts Saward's nastier resilience narrative, whereby humanity's only demonstrably reliable resilient qualities are spite, killer instincts and suicidal self-sabotage.
The Doctor's alien morality sometimes clashes with his companion's, which distinctively defines both, usually from writing which justifies why they're conflicted. Unfortunately, Warriors of the Deep offers no rationale for Davison's obstinance or Tegan's uncharacteristic passivity at his creepy, dogged protection of the genocidal Silurians.
I believe Mike Morris's argument in his Season 21 arc theory was that Davison couldn't just suddenly adopt the ruthlessness in Resurrection that alienated Tegan. Thus necessitating Warriors as the 'transition' story.
Terror of the Zygons and The Seeds of Death demonstrate the Doctor should've likewise destroyed Ictar's forces without qualms. However, those stories occurred outside living memory, unwitnessed by our audience surrogate, Tegan. Ideally you don't want audiences feeling they're suddenly watching a completely different show midway. Maybe such ruthlessness would've confounded 1984's viewers.
Fan defences of Warriors seem about desperately asserting that Pertwee's moralizing still retained relevance and hadn't become moribund. Tegan's irrelevant here because she's not Liz Shaw, so the Doctor's not obliged to acknowledge her. She's also dragged between rival human factions as hostage.
Tegan's supposedly the exceptional 'good' human, exonerated from Davison's misanthropic rant somehow. But why? By Warriors' ludicrous standards, shouldn't shooting Earthshock's Cybermen in self-defence disqualify her?
Tegan's politics likely favour anti-war, environmentalism, Amnesty International (Logopolis's 'sweat-shops'). Unimaginative fans believe she's therefore inclined towards Davison's side. I'd argue she'd instantly see gassing the un-retreating Silurians as the lesser evil against letting Earth's entire ecosystem be nuked. Tegan only takes Davison's lunacy seriously because this era takes itself ridiculously seriously. She can only soullessly side with a defective Doctor who's endangering her, because she's herself a defective character.
Earthshock's Tegan defied Davison's restraint, frantically rushing the console to stop the Cybermen. But she can't be shown caring so realistically about her species' fate here. Tegan should be unleashing the Hexacromite herself to save humanity. But that'd expose Warriors' vacuity, so it doesn't happen. Can't show Tegan outsmarting the Doctor, especially when he's this stupid.
Would fandom forgive Davison's appeasement if Tegan had to take a bullet for him instead of Preston?
Resurrection of the Daleks wasn't originally intended as Tegan's departure. Tellingly, she spends it sickbed-bound, reaffirming the Doctor doesn't take violent harm toward companions lightly. Many fans shared Tegan's horror at Davison's intent to execute Davros. But Davison's conviction sold me the mitigating urgency of future millions being at stake otherwise. Indeed, her objection's rather dubious. Could Davison plausibly arrest Davros from deep within an enemy warzone? Also, if I'd suffered a murdered relative to the Master, I'm not sure I would abhor capital punishment.
But eventually her revulsion to the killings becomes too default to seem cathartic. Her distraught departure feels tacked-on, revealing nothing unique about Tegan. Saward treats her and us as unimaginative philistines, unable to appreciate the horror unless shown every last death. Ultimately her repulsed departure feels underwhelmingly like what it is. A soap character realizing they'd wandered into the wrong series.
Ian and Barbara left admitting they'd recall their adventures with nostalgic excitement. Tegan leaves looking in need of a close friend to keep her on suicide watch. Tegan only conveyed that life with the Doctor is miserable, traumatizing and the worst travel decision you'll ever make. Whilst beguiling, inviting fantasy cinema was conquering 1984's zeitgeist, it's comparatively clear Saward's killed this show's wonder.