Posted in: BBC, Disney+, Doctor Who, TV | Tagged: bbc, bonnie langford, chris chibnall, disney, doctor who, russell t davies

Doctor Who: RTD, Langford Gave Us Mel Bush's Long Overdue Redemption

The new era of Doctor Who gave classic companion Mel, played by Bonnie Langford, more to do in two episodes than in her entire original run.

The classic era of Doctor Who, which ran from 1963 to 1989, didn't always serve companions well, especially when they were female. Sure, Jo Grant (Katy Manning), Sarah Jane Smith (Elizabeth Sladen), Tegan Jovanka (Janet Fielding), and many of them were smart and capable and hugely popular, but more often than not, they were relegated to "Damsel in Distress" status. The new era has done its utmost to correct the wrongs the writers did to some companions from that era, most recently Melanie "Mel" Bush, played by Bonnie Langford.

Mel was a companion that was hastily thrown into the show in 1986 in what ended up as the Sixth Doctor's (Colin Baker) final season during the slapped-together "Trial of a Time Lord" season arc. She was introduced to replace Peri (Nicola Bryant), whose departure was also haphazardly thrown into the show. That was the series' lowest period as it fought cancellation threats that eventually came true in 1989. When she was introduced in Doctor Who, she didn't even get an origin story for how she met the Doctor. She was described as a computer programmer and expert, yet she was never written to go near a computer or even touch the TARDIS controls. She was there mostly as someone who asked, "What's going on, Doctor?" all the time. The writers did their best to make her a foil for the Doctor, like her being a bit of a health nut and constantly trying to get the Sixth Doctor to work out on the exercise bike and drink carrot juice. And she screamed when a monster attacked her. She screamed a lot, partly because Bonnie Langford, as a trained musical theatre actor since childhood, had a pitch-perfect scream. Female Doctor Who companions were Scream Queens long before slasher movies came along.

Until Russell T. Davies brought the series back in 2005, former cast members of Doctor Who seemed resigned to be series veterans contemplating the lost potential of their characters in the old days. Then Davies began bringing them back, starting with Sarah Jane. Then Chris Chibnall brought back Tegan and Ace (Sophie Aldred) and gave Langford a cameo in his finale story. Now Davies has brought back Mel in three episodes, and she got to do more proactively than Mel did in her whole two years on the show. Actors want to do more than look pretty and scream at a monster. Mel got to finally show her competence with computers, go undercover for UNIT, pull the Doctor out of an apocalypse, and have a heartbreaking death scene where she's taken over by Sutekh, the god of death, before becoming a Doctor Who monster, then brought back to life at the end. That's what actors want, really, to play emotions, not just stand around asking questions and then scream.

Doctor Who is now streaming globally outside the UK on Disney+.

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