# Which NuWho Companion was most screwed by her or his association with the Doctor?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-nuwho-companion-was-most-screwed-by-her-or-his-association-with-the-doctor/727751>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [August 13, 2015, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-nuwho-companion-was-most-screwed-by-her-or-his-association-with-the-doctor/727751 "2015-08-13T16:44:29Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\
**Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-nuwho-companion-was-most-screwed-by-her-or-his-association-with-the-doctor/727751/1 "2015-08-13T16:44:29Z")

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In which we discuss, well, exactly what the thread title says, actually.

A couple of rules, though. Just sharing an adventure with the Doctor doesn’t make one Companion; one must have appeared in more than one episode, and ppeared in only one episode, or who never rode in the TARDIS, do not count as Companions for this dicussion. Why? Partly because I said so, and partly to keep everyone from mentioning the Kylie Minogue character from the Titanic episode, or Osgood. Poor, sweet, Osgood. Deserved better. Damn you Twelve, she died because of you, you Gallifreyan bastich!

Wait, what was I talking about?

Right, who counts as a Companion. I was going to restrict it to the primary Companions – that is, Rose, Martha, Donna, and Amy – but somebody was gonna bring up Jack and River and Rory and Mickey so I decided to roll with it. I’m leaving out Clara, even though she’s tied for the hottest of the group, because her story isn’t over yet so we don’t know how she’ll ultimately get hosed. (I think we can all agree she’ll ultimately get hosed.) I’m leaving out Rose’s mother because I felt like it; I’m leaving out Sarah Jane because technically her story hasn’t ended (and never will; curse you, Thanatos!), and I’m leaving out the OldWho Companions because I don’t remember their names off the top of my head and refuse to look them. Like it matters; you guys will do whatever you want anyway.

Poll in a moment, but don’t let that slow you down.

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**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\
**Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-nuwho-companion-was-most-screwed-by-her-or-his-association-with-the-doctor/727751/2 "2015-08-13T16:48:42Z")

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> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#):
>
> In which we discuss, well, exactly what the thread title says, actually.
> 
> A couple of rules, though. Just sharing an adventure with the Doctor doesn’t make one Companion; one must have appeared in more than one episode, and ppeared in only one episode, or who never rode in the TARDIS, do not count as Companions for this dicussion. Why? Partly because I said so, and partly to keep everyone from mentioning the Kylie Minogue character from the Titanic episode, or Osgood. Poor, sweet, Osgood. Deserved better. Damn you Twelve, she died because of you, you Gallifreyan bastich!
> 
> Wait, what was I talking about?
> 
> Right, who counts as a Companion. I was going to restrict it to the primary Companions – that is, Rose, Martha, Donna, and Amy – but somebody was gonna bring up Jack and River and Rory and Mickey so I decided to roll with it. I’m leaving out Clara, even though she’s tied for the hottest of the group, because her story isn’t over yet so we don’t know how she’ll ultimately get hosed. (I think we can all agree she’ll ultimately get hosed.) I’m leaving out Rose’s mother because I felt like it; I’m leaving out Sarah Jane because technically her story hasn’t ended (and never will; curse you, Thanatos!), and I’m leaving out the OldWho Companions because I don’t remember their names off the top of my head and refuse to look them. Like it matters; you guys will do whatever you want anyway.
> 
> Poll in a moment, but don’t let that slow you down.

Don’t forgot Adam, who first appeared in “Dalek” and traveled in the Tardis with the Doctor and Rose in “The Long Game” before being dropped off on present-day Earth with a finger-snap activated forehead hole…

P.S. It’s Donna.

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**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\
**Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-nuwho-companion-was-most-screwed-by-her-or-his-association-with-the-doctor/727751/3 "2015-08-13T16:50:05Z")

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Well, Donna ended up married and rich, but obviously died within a week when someone near her casually mentioned that they had seen THE DOCTOR. Meaning their own GP of course, but WHAM, there goes Donna’s brain.

Sarah Jane ended mostly well, but through no credit to the Doctor, who basically turned his back on her. Couldn’t even be arsed to explain himself later.

Rose ended up in an alternate Universe even scarier than our own, with a more limited version of the Doctor.

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**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\
**Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-nuwho-companion-was-most-screwed-by-her-or-his-association-with-the-doctor/727751/4 "2015-08-13T16:57:32Z")

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> [@Andy\_L](#):
>
> Don’t forgot Adam, who first appeared in “Dalek” and traveled in the Tardis with the Doctor and Rose in “The Long Game” before being dropped off on present-day Earth with a finger-snap activated forehead hole…
> 
> P.S. It’s Donna.

[ol]  
[li]I did not forget Adam. I IGNORED HIM IN CONTEMPT. [/li][li]Read the poll![/li][/ol]

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**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\
**Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-nuwho-companion-was-most-screwed-by-her-or-his-association-with-the-doctor/727751/5 "2015-08-13T17:03:54Z")

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> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#):
>
> [ol]  
> [li]I did not forget Adam. I IGNORED HIM IN CONTEMPT. [/li][li]Read the poll![/li][/ol]

1. Understandable
2. Have now voted.

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**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\
**Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-nuwho-companion-was-most-screwed-by-her-or-his-association-with-the-doctor/727751/6 "2015-08-13T17:16:39Z")

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Donna.  
Yep, Donna.  
Definitely Donna.

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**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\
**Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-nuwho-companion-was-most-screwed-by-her-or-his-association-with-the-doctor/727751/7 "2015-08-13T17:19:23Z")

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> [@Czarcasm](#):
>
> Donna.  
> Yep, Donna.  
> Definitely Donna.

[big fat liar]  
I’m gonna need you to defend your choice, dude. We all know Donna loved him, but I don’t see how he done her wrong.  
[/big fat liar]

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**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\
**Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-nuwho-companion-was-most-screwed-by-her-or-his-association-with-the-doctor/727751/8 "2015-08-13T17:38:02Z")

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Adam, you dingbat.

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**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\
**Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-nuwho-companion-was-most-screwed-by-her-or-his-association-with-the-doctor/727751/9 "2015-08-13T17:40:04Z")

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> [@foolsguinea](#):
>
> Adam, you dingbat.

Adam deserved everything he got and more, and I am going to report you to the mods for hate speech, you filthy Pompeian.

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**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\
**Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-nuwho-companion-was-most-screwed-by-her-or-his-association-with-the-doctor/727751/10 "2015-08-13T17:45:22Z")

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Oh, do I need to defend this? Adam had _one_ adventure, precious little guidance, and got dumped before he could drag ΘΣ down any further, with a hole in his head, and who knows what maintenance that would need that he couldn’t [del]afford[/del] find?

I could respect saying Amy and Rory, but they kind of managed in the end. Weeping Angels are still a stupid concept though. I could give it to them, and it probably should be them of the ones you have listed.

I…I think Rose had a hard time, too, but she kind of Rosed her way out of it, so…never mind. And River is the Moffat Rose, you know I am right.

Donna at least got to go home.

Martha came out amazing, dare I say fantastic. And if Mickey Smith is with her, he’s probably fantastic too.

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**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\
**Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-nuwho-companion-was-most-screwed-by-her-or-his-association-with-the-doctor/727751/11 "2015-08-13T17:51:15Z")

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> [@foolsguinea](#):
>
> Oh, do I need to defend this? Adam had _one_ adventure, precious little guidance, and got dumped before he could drag ΘΣ down any further, with a hole in his head, and who knows what maintenance that would need that he couldn’t [del]afford[/del] find?
> 
> I could respect saying Amy and Rory, but they kind of managed in the end. Weeping Angels are still a stupid concept though. I could give it to them, and it probably should be them of the ones you have listed.
> 
> I…I think Rose had a hard time, too, but she kind of Rosed her way out of it, so…never mind. And River is the Moffat Rose, you know I am right.
> 
> Donna at least got to go home.
> 
> Martha came out amazing, dare I say fantastic. And if Mickey Smith is with her, he’s probably fantastic too.

River was INTRODUCED in the Davies era. I don’t care that Moffat wrote the episodes in which she was introduced. Anyway, NuWho is obviously the Davies era plus the Moffat era plus whoever Athena sends to replace the latter hack when She decides we have suffered enough under the dark and terrible reign of Twelve, who in a just world would be beaten with a club until he regenerates into someone placed by Emma Thomson.

And Martha never, to my knowledge, drowned even a single kitten, let alone the 1456 necessary to merit ending up with Miickey.

Did I remember to slander you yet?

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**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\
**Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-nuwho-companion-was-most-screwed-by-her-or-his-association-with-the-doctor/727751/12 "2015-08-13T18:24:50Z")

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Amy. She had her baby stolen from her and missed her entire childhood and only got to see her again when the child was an obnoxious middle aged woman. And she gets stranded in 1930’s New York.

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**Author:** ![RandMcnally](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b782af/32.png) [@RandMcnally](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RandMcnally)\
**Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-nuwho-companion-was-most-screwed-by-her-or-his-association-with-the-doctor/727751/13 "2015-08-13T18:32:11Z")

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I’m going to say Donna, even though she’s my least favorite companion. Her tour ended with amazing personal growth then it was all taken away.

My favorite companion, Martha, kinda got the short end of the stick. She’s not worse off than when she met the Doctor, but didn’t really improve. She was on track to be a doctor and then ended up being on the front lines to fight an alien. I thought they shoe-horned her and Mickey’s romance in.

Mickey and Rose each ended up better off. Mickey stopped being a slacker and got to see his grandmother again, while Rose got her entire family and became wealthy (via her alt-dad).

One thing I wish they would do is stop being so predictable with female deaths. If the Doctor invites an attractive woman to join him and she’s not announced as a Companion you know she’s going to die before the episode is finished.

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**Author:** ![Kobalt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/41988e/32.png) [@Kobalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobalt)\
**Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-nuwho-companion-was-most-screwed-by-her-or-his-association-with-the-doctor/727751/14 "2015-08-13T18:58:27Z")

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I’m going to go old school and say Susan, the Doctor’s granddaughter. She leaves the technologicly advance Gallifrey with her grandfather, winds up in London in the 1960’s where she has to attend a school where she obviously knows more than all the faculty combined, and where the Doctor tries to keep her socially isolated. When she does leave Earth, she’s subjected to a series of life threatening “adventures” that culminates in her being abandoned on a post-apocalyptic Earth in the care of a man she barely knows. The rest of the Doctor’s companions made out like royalty, by comparison.

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**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\
**Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-nuwho-companion-was-most-screwed-by-her-or-his-association-with-the-doctor/727751/15 "2015-08-13T19:16:00Z")

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> [@Kobalt](#):
>
> I’m going to go old school and say Susan, the Doctor’s granddaughter.

Things that happened in the 60s don’t count.

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**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\
**Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-nuwho-companion-was-most-screwed-by-her-or-his-association-with-the-doctor/727751/16 "2015-08-13T19:21:14Z")

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> [@RandMcnally](#):
>
> My favorite companion, Martha, kinda got the short end of the stick. She’s not worse off than when she met the Doctor, but didn’t really improve. She was on track to be a doctor and then ended up being on the front lines to fight an alien. I thought they shoe-horned her and Mickey’s romance in.
> 
> Mickey and Rose each ended up better off. Mickey stopped being a slacker and got to see his grandmother again, while Rose got her entire family and became wealthy (via her alt-dad).

Martha’s not my favorite Companion, nor Ten my favorite doctor, but they share my favorite scene: it’s at the end of, um, the five-billion-years-in-the-future episode, with the human-cat hybrids, when she calls the Doctor on being so closed off and makes him tell her about the fall of Gailifrey. If I had a heart it would break at Tennant’s work in that scene.

Oh, and no one cares what happens to Mickey.

> [@](#):
>
> One thing I wish they would do is stop being so predictable with female deaths. If the Doctor invites an attractive woman to join him and she’s not announced as a Companion you know she’s going to die before the episode is finished.

[autowisecracker off]

Other than Kylie Minogue and Osgood, when has that happened? I ask because I had the same thought, but upon trying to list the others I couldn’t name any.

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**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\
**Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-nuwho-companion-was-most-screwed-by-her-or-his-association-with-the-doctor/727751/17 "2015-08-13T19:28:30Z")

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Not only did Donna have the experience of being a Companion taken away from her, but she had the experience of being _DoctorDonna_ taken away also-surely an even greater loss.

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**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\
**Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-nuwho-companion-was-most-screwed-by-her-or-his-association-with-the-doctor/727751/18 "2015-08-13T19:38:17Z")

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> [@Czarcasm](#):
>
> Not only did Donna have the experience of being a Companion taken away from her, but she had the experience of being _DoctorDonna_ taken away also-surely an even greater loss.

Not to mention that she was, in a way, sitting in the sweet spot as a companion. She was fond of Ten, even loved him in a sense, but she was no more in love with him than he with her. The relationship was never going to crash & burn the way the relationship with Martha was doomed too, and was not going to have the tensions present with Rose and Amy.

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**Author:** ![RandMcnally](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b782af/32.png) [@RandMcnally](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RandMcnally)\
**Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-nuwho-companion-was-most-screwed-by-her-or-his-association-with-the-doctor/727751/19 "2015-08-13T19:48:16Z")

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> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#):
>
> [autowisecracker off]
> 
> Other than Kylie Minogue and Osgood, when has that happened? I ask because I had the same thought, but upon trying to list the others I couldn’t name any.

Off the top of my head that really cute Muslim girl in the “The God Complex” and the Doctor’s daughter (although she comes back at the end, but he doesn’t know that).

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**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\
**Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-nuwho-companion-was-most-screwed-by-her-or-his-association-with-the-doctor/727751/20 "2015-08-13T20:11:08Z")

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Surely The Doctor, as an immortal alien HAS to take the blame for these doomed romance relationships, he generates into the form of a cute 20-30 something human and then is SHOCKED, SHOCKED that the 20 something female companions he sweeps into the often crappy lives of and sweeps away on a whirlwind of adventure fall in love with him and want to hump on the TARDIS console.:rolleyes:

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