The Doctor and the Ponds

Showrunner Steven Moffat announced on December 15 that the Ponds, Amy and Rory, will be leaving Doctor Who, well I can’t help wondering, what’s next? This is sad news but at the same time, you can appreciate that change means creativity so goodbye is inevitable.  It’s a bittersweet time.  We will miss the camaraderie and hope for occasional visits, but shaking things up a bit might be fun, too.

 So I am sure that everyone has their own theories about who should be the new companion, but here are three possibilities that I’ve come up with and I am sure that just as the universe is infinite so are the possible companions for the Doctor.  My imagination led me here.  It will be interesting to see if there are any similarities between Steven Moffat’s companions and a simple fan.  Who would you pick for the esteemed Doctor?

 Scenario One – Strange Puppy Love:  A middle-aged women from New York City and her pre-teenage daughter travel with the Doctor along with their Pomeranian.  However, the women thinks she is dreaming and that the Doctor is actually the Pomeranian transformed into a man, who’s name happens to be Doctor Sandy. Coincidentally, he is sometimes called the Doctor.

Foxy Lady as Doctor Sandy. Photo by Olivia McLernon

She become flirty with him and laughs at herself because she thinks she is only dreaming this and that she is flirting with her dog.  The daughter knows the truth but needs the doctor to show her and her mother around time and space because her mom is a historian and is trying to write a book.   With her daughter’s help the mom is getting over her writer’s block and has all kinds of interesting historical tidbits that never would have occurred to her before and comes in handy in the Doctor’s adventures through time. 

Some of these tidbits could include her helping the underground railroad during the Civil War. There she helps the Civil War Judge’s wife, Mrs. Piatt by giving her the idea to use a lawn jockey holding an American flag to signal her husband’s absence. Or aiding Sacagawea as she guided Lewis and Clark. At the same time, she is floored by Sacagawea’s hardships and begins to appreciate her own life and time. Then she could wind up in the early 1960s and meets Rachel Carson while she writes Silent Spring. The mom encourages her and helps her see her legacy as she will soon die of breast cancer.

Continuing the time journeys in the 1960s and ’70s she becomes part of the inspiration for songs like “Space Oddity” and” Go Ask Alice” much to the chagrin of the Doctor.

 Scenario Two – The Red Widow:  Every companion that the Doctor travelled with always was light and pretty much excited to be travelling, except for Donna in the beginning.  What if the Doctor gets roped into a support group that doesn’t really do much to support each other and have been stuck in a rut for a couple of decades? To shake things up a bit, these people come from Australia (or anywhere else but Europe).

Some members of the group are upset over a lack of interest, drive and desire, except for one fellow, let’s call him Mack.  He is the extreme opposite.  He’s a knife-wielding Crocodile Dundee type who has been down in the dumps about the environmental protection acts of every species in Australia that has forced him to become a semi-vegetarian, as he cannot hunt as often as he likes.  

In the course of time traveling with the Doctor, he happens upon a hybrid version of the red spider-like Racnoss (the Red Spider Empress that tried to turn Donna into spider food for her brood and killed her no-good fiancé in “The Runaway Bride”).  This chelicerata/humanoid is the result of a human-Racnoss union, that didn’t end so well for the human.  However, this new species aren’t quite as lethal and can pass for normal humans (except for their abdomens).  However, when they mate, the urge to kill their mate is still strong but this varies. 

The Racnoss

Some have been able to resist this primal urge, but it is difficult to tell who can control the urge and who can’t.  The safest course would be to avoid them, but it is difficult to tell if they are hybrids, unless they are undressed because their abdomen is the only difference.  All this uncertainty and violence has made Mack come alive again. He is thrilled to be part of a hunt again, even if he is the prey.  He has become buddies with the few male spiders left who chose not to mate for fear of death.  They run an underground railroad for males who wish to escape the Chelicerae (fang-like claws) of entrapment and ultimately death.  The Doctor ultimately leaves him on Chelicarae

 Scenario Three – Cool Hand Luca:  A young girl, Luca, gets into trouble one night by throwing rocks at some cars’ windows in the Brooklyn hood.  She is about to be arrested when the Doctor intervenes knowing that if she does get arrested, her life is over at this point and he because that she is the female equivalent of the story, Cool Hand Luke.  Like Luke, if she goes to jail, she will become influential to her jail mates, but she will create resentment from the prison guards who will ultimately cause her early demise. 

He tries to give her some hope for her future and show her that she could contribute to the wonders of the universe.  Along the way, he discovers that she does actually have some amazing talents.  She can talk to the TARDIS and can maintain and fix it better than he can.  Her tough exterior and manner can often distract enemies while he searches for their weaknesses and the TARDIS can see that underneath all that hard armor Luca has a soft side, not unlike the TARDIS itself.

Gwen McLernon