With a penchant for homemade explosives, an iconic bomber jacket and slang suitable for a 7pm time slot, she afforded Doctor Who some much needed street cred. A conscious attempt by the show’s writers to move on from the screamer trope which had plagued Bonnie Langford’s Mel, Ace appears as a fully formed, well-crafted and believable teenage character from the very beginning. If Tegan’s presence gave the TARDIS crew a much needed kick up the backside, Ace (aka Dorothy McShane) literally blew the bloody doors off with her appearance heralding the arrival of something even rarer in classic Doctor Who – a working class character.
Labelled stubborn, loud, and difficult for simply daring to have an opinion – she was brilliant. Here to remind the main characters of how ridiculous and downright dangerous their lives were, if a Doctor Who multiverse had existed in the 1980s – Tegan would have been breaking the fourth wall with expletives and all. After leaving the beloved investigative journalist behind, the Doctor travelled with aliens, robots, and fellow Time Lords… until Tegan crash-landed her way into the TARDIS in 1981.Ĭarrying a viewpoint which had been sorely lacking, and never afraid to call out the Doctor’s pomposity, Tegan was a whirlwind of fresh air. Given how integral a companion’s home life is to the modern era of Doctor Who, it’s of note that Tegan was the first companion to hail from contemporary Earth since Sarah Jane Smith departed the TARDIS in 1976. Shaking Up the TARDIS Status QuoĪs if she had been plucked from an entirely different genre of television, much like Donna Noble would many years later, Australian flight attendant Tegan Jovanka shook up the TARDIS status quo like never before. So with that in mind, here’s a handy guide to what makes Janet Fielding and Sophie Aldred’s characters such icons of the show. Newer viewers less familiar with 1980s Doctor Who however, could be forgiven for feeling slightly mystified by this mass hysteria. When the return of companions Tegan Jovanka and Ace to Doctor Who was confirmed in the trailer at the end of ‘ Legend of the Sea Devils’, a certain section of the show’s fandom – for want of a better term – lost its nut.
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