like Sarah Jane, and Amelia.

Just watching this on i player, and Sarah Jane just said I waited for you.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...chool_Reunion/

Lot's.

The Doctor picks up companions like "stray dogs" as Martha put it ans when times up, they have to go back to their regular lives. As regular as it gets in Doctor Who, anyway lol.

Donna waited and searched, for a year or two. And Tegan had a gap year, but I'm not sure I'm willing to sit through Arc of Infinity again to find out whether she waited. Conversely, I think Harry specifically didn't wait, going straight back to his old life in a jolly manner. And that's the complete list of companions I can think of that had proper adventures (ie, not some badly written cameo that appears to break all continuity in the Five Doctors) with the Doctor with a gap.

I think some of the radio dramas have resurrected classic companions with different doctors, so they possibly waited too?

Captain Jack waited for the Doctor... for a long time.

I should imagine most of them simply got on with their lives, since they weren't all sad losers. Sarah Jane certainly did, as K9 & Company, The Five Doctors, Downtime, the books, the audio adventures and even The Sarah Jane Adventures prove, despite the clingy, bitchy rubbish they came out with in School Reunion which was totally at odds with her character as developed over the past thirty years.

Nyssa didn't wait, she went out and found him!

And if you consider the Big Finish plays part of your personal canon, she can't get rid of him!

I'm guessing Sally Sparrow is still waiting

Jenny too, in a way....

no one can top Jack in this area for sure...


Sally quite clearly ISN'T still waiting for The Doctor, that is the whole point of the epilogue to Blink.

Actually I meant in a "the fanboys who wanted her as a companion and mentioned her name at every opportunity are still waiting" kinda way.

Should've made that clear, sorry

It is amazing how someone can assume that in reality, you could travel the Universe with the Dr for years, then suddenly (often in a matter of seconds) it's all over, and you'd just say "oh well, that was fun", and carry on your life as if nothing had happened. You wouldn't have to be a "sad loser" to feel devaststed and hurt by that. Even many of the astronauts who went to the Moon have alluded to the fact that everything else in their life became an anticlimax and made life very difficult.

As I've mentioned in the GITF thread, one of RTD's many strengths was that he treated companions past and present as real people, with real emotions in dealing with this most unreal of situations. It's something that the classic series never bothered with, simply because it was much more simplistic, child-friendly and didn't want to waste time with real characters that might get in the way of bringing on some more monsters. And I LOVE the classic series - but NuWho is infinitely superior in the portrayal of real characters and relationships in a very unreal environment.

I realise by now that you don't really care for this kind of character depth, I suspect you are the sort who just waits for this week's monsters to appear, and there's nothing wrong with that, but alot of people who watch the show in the 21st century want a little bit more depth in their TV viewing.

Just watched TGITF last night, and although not exactly a companion there were strong similarities with Reinette and Amy in that they both met The Doctor as little girls, and The Doctor next visited them many years later.
But sadly as an adult, unlike Amy, Reinette waited in hope for him until her dying day and he was just too late.

It wasn't at odds in any way. This was the first chance she had to ask these questions and she asked them. She had every right to be slightly angry or hurt. She quickly picked herself up again, but the way she acted was completely natural. I love the Sarah Jane audio from big finish, and I know your repeated opinions on Sarah Jane in this episode, everyone knows every opinion you have ever had, but whether you agree or not, it is very realistic and very normal to be living quite happily and normally and then somebody from your past appears. Emotions pour back and you suddenly act strangely and are back in time 5, 10 or even 30 years ago. You may be a Doctor Who expert but I question your judgement on human emotion.

Come to think of it The Doctor is a bit of a b*stard isn't he for keeping people hanging on.

Yeah I watched this on IPlayer the other day. I had forgotten how brilliant it was.

Perhaps Susan is waiting for the Doctor to return. Did'nt he promise to?

I believe he has in a novel or two, and in the Big finish play ' 'An Earthly Child'

He'd already met her again anyway, in The Five Doctors.

There's a big difference between your life forever having been changed by the Doctor, and actively waiting for him to come back.

Just because a companion goes back to their previous life, doesn't mean that their life hasn't changed as a result of the their experiences, but equally they're not necessarily expecting the Dr. to come back into it.

Some people get dumped and pick themselves up and move on, some people mope and pine for what they don't have anymore. Which companions got unexpected or unwanted drop-offs that didn't give them closure?

Oh yeah, that very realistic reunion episode thing for Children in Need.

What are you talking about? The Five Doctors was the 20th anniversary special, what has Children in Need got to do with it? And what was wrong with it? It was a good, solid, entertaining Doctor Who story not bogged down by maudlin sentimentality.

You're thinking of Dimensions in Time.

The five doctors wasn't my favourite, but God knows how anyone could get it confused with the Eastenders Children In Need episode. Poor Rani, she deserves a lot better than that.

Absolutely, some companions would have got on with their lives, but the attitude that none would ever expect the Dr to return to them is ludicrous. Whichever way, I'm sure very few really had closure, even those who chose to leave must have had many times when everything else in life seemed a little pointless and boring compared to the wonderment they had lived through. To assign some kind of "pathetic weakness" to these people is, well....pathetically weak!

Tegan's an interesting one:

The Doctor plops her off at the end of Time Flight. At the beginning of Arse of Infinity, she's arriving at Amsterdam airport in order to meet her cousin and her cousin's friend. But the cousin has been kidnapped by aliens.

The bit I LOVE is that Tegan and thingy (Colin?) then travel into the centre of Amsterdam by train. They go to a coffee shop (a proper one, not an Amsterdam specialist one), order coffee, sit down, and then Tegan says "So what happened to my cousin, then?".

I have been to Amsterdam: it takes about half an hour by train from Schipol to the centre.

What did Tegan and Colin talk about on that train journey, if they're only just getting round to the subject of alien abduction over a coffee in a cosy, if studio-bound, coffee shop?

Oh to have been a fly-on-the-wall, overhearing their half hour of smalltalk on the train ...

It makes me chuckle whenever I watch Arse of Infinity. (Which isn't often).

I don't think anyone's arguing that, though. No matter how much you remember how amazing your journeys were, and how big the universe is and miss that you're not part of that any more, you would probably still get on with your life instead of being a "sad loser". You can have both.

Again, agreed, but I don't think Sarah was portrayed as a "sad loser", she had got on with her life in many ways, but when confronted with the most important man in her life after so many years, the bitterness at the abrupt termination of their companionship came back. And obviously, there were ways in which her subsequent life had been compromised by her time with the Dr. Imagine, all those amazing things, and nobody to talk to about them, knowing that if you tried, you'd probably be carted off to the loony bin. No, I think RTD pitched Sarah's character perfectly in School Reunion, and anyone who thinks that she was a "sad loser" are not really thinking seriously enough about how screwed up many people who travelled with the Dr would end up.