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Katarina
(1965) |
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Adrienne
Hill |
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| Born in
Plymouth Adrienne Hill trained to become an actress
at the Bristol Old Vic. After spending 8 years in
repertory theatre she auditioned to play the part
of Princess Joanna in the 1965 Doctor Who story "The
Crusade" which she was unable to secure. However,
she was remembered when the part of Katarina in "The
Myth Makers" was cast. In the late sixties various
television work followed including a regular role
in the radio play Waggoner's Walk. After
spending time abroad she returned to the UK in the
late seventies and became a drama teacher. |
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 Katarina was a Trojan handmaiden who lived
through the events surrounding the siege of Troy by the Greeks.
She finds herself, like many of The Doctor's companions, on
board the TARDIS completely
by accident. However, unlike the other companions Katarina was
the most who was entirely unprepared for her time in the TARDIS.
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| The Myth Makers |
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When
the TARDIS lands outside the besieged city of Troy, and Vicki decides
to leave the TARDIS to start a new life using the name Cressida,
the Trojan Prophetess Cassandra, fearing that Cressida is a Greek
spy, sends her young handmaiden Katarina to spy on her. It is when
Steven becomes badly wounded by a sword that Katarina is ordered
by Cressida to help The Doctor get Steven back to the TARDIS. When inside The Doctor dematerialises the TARDIS - Vicki having decided to stay behind after falling in love with the Trojan warrior Troilus -, only realising to late that Katarina is still on board due to the distraction caused by Odysseus’s
attempts to claim the ship ("The
Myth Makers").
Katarina's background as a slave meant that she was
very loyal to her new ‘master’ and keeper, and
she carried out his instructions as best as she could in
this new and strange world that she found herself in. She
was very much in awe of The Doctor, referring him to as
'Lord' and her relative simplicity meant that she saw the
TARDIS as his temple. Katarina took everything in her stride
and felt that she was on a divine journey to 'her place
of perfection'. Katarina truly believed that she was on
a journey that was pre-destined for her and that it would
ultimately lead to her death. But this did not distress
her at all. In fact it enabled her, with the help of her
non-aggressive nature, to accept to a certain degree all
the wonders and miracles she found herself involved with.
Even though
she found herself moving further and further away from the
world she was familiar with as the TARDIS took her to futuristic
worlds and locations- including a dying industrialised world
that had been reshaped by living machines centuries ago
("Scribbles in the Chalk"), although the need
to treat Steven’s injuries prevented The Doctor taking
action at this time-, she understood that The Doctor was
essentially a good person. Despite being very much dependent
on The Doctor, and occasionally too trusting, such as when
she automatically assumed that new arrival Bret Vyon had
been sent by The Doctor to help Steven when in reality he
had stolen the TARDIS key, Katarina was far from stupid,
as demonstrated when she swiftly saw through Vyon’s
lie. She was all too aware of what was going on around her,
simply translating it into terms that she could understand,
such as referring to the Daleks as the ‘evil ones’.
She was also more than capable of acting to right a wrong,
even though this would ultimately be at the expense of her
own life.
However,
as had prophesied by Cassandra, her life was to be very
short lived and this became true when in the very next story
after she joined her time aboard the TARDIS came to a very
abrupt and premature end. While fleeing from the Daleks she
is taken hostage in the airlock of a spaceship by an escaped
convict who threatens The Doctor with her death if he does
not take him to the Daleks. Knowing the predicament The
Doctor is in and how important it is for him to reach Earth
and defeat the Daleks she manages to open the outer door
and is ejected, along with the convict into the vacuum of
space ("The
Daleks' Master Plan").
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| The Daleks' Master Plan |
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Katarina became the first companion to be killed and
of the human companions she spent the least amount of time
with The Doctor appearing in only 5 episodes. The aftermath
of her death was briefly seen in the short story "Katarina
in the Underworld", where Katarina was aided in her
attempt to appeal to the Greek god Hades to enter the Elysian
Fields by The Doctor- who apparently entered the Underworld
in a dream, although he may equally have been nothing more
than a ‘dream’ of Katarina’s imagination-,
who argued that the nobility of Katarina’s sacrifice
to save those who would have been doomed by the Daleks should
guarantee her a place in Paradise. As The Doctor vanished,
Katarina entered Elysia, grateful that, whether The Doctor
who had been present was the real Doctor or only her ‘memory’ of
him, he had given her the strength to fulfil her destiny
and save lives.
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Ravenous 3: Companion Piece
(John Dorney) |
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In a fascinating twist, Katarina would go on to save the lives of more of her fellow companions after her death. At some point, River Song, a time-travelling archaeologist who saw herself as The Doctor's wife ("A Good Man Goes to War" and "The Wedding of River Song"), set out to retrieve Katarina's corpse after her death, feeling that Katarina deserved better than to be left like that even as she recognised that The Doctor had been genuinely unable to rescue her at the time ("Ravenous 3: Companion Piece"). After she retrieved Katarina's body, River was attacked by the Nine, an incarnation of the insane Time Lord known to some as The Collective, who now sought to 'collect' all of The Doctor's companions using information from a future version of River, but the Nine soon realised that the future River had directed him to retrieve Katarina at this time to distract him from his other prisoners. He returned to the space station he had used as his headquarters to find that the older River was about to escape with the aid of the Eighth Doctor's companions Charley Pollard ("Storm Warning"), Liv Chenka ("Robophobia"), Helen Sinclair ("Doom Coalition 1: The Red Lady") and Bliss ("Time War 1: The Starship of Theseus"). The Nine was able to subdue them with his station's weaponry, but when he began to telepathically scan Katarina's corpse to determine her identity, he was unexpectedly attacked by Katarina herself. As the artron energy her body had absorbed during her time in the TARDIS meant that her mind was still active on some level, Katarina was still 'alive' enough to attack the Nine when he set up the telepathic link, with the distraction she created giving her fellow companions the chance to overpower the Nine and trap him in one of his own cells before River took them home.
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Daughter of the Gods
(David K Barnes) |
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Despite the brevity of his time with Katarina, The Doctor
continues to remember her all the way into his eighth incarnation,
with such diverse enemies as the Quantum Archangel ("The
Quantum Archangel"), the Timewyrm ("Timewyrm:
Revelation"), the Kro’Ka ("The
Last") and Faction
Paradox ("The
Ancestor Cell") attempting to use The Doctor's guilt over Katarina's death to put him emotionally off-balance and force him to do their bidding, The Doctor always regretting that he was unable to save her. This grief became particularly significant when an accident resulted in the Second Doctor's companions Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe Heriot unintentionally changing history by redirecting their TARDIS to crash into the First Doctor's ship before it could reach Kembel ("Daughter of the Gods"). As a result, Katarina was spared from her original death, but this created a new timeline where she, The Doctor and Steven were never present to stop the Daleks developing the Time Destructor, the three of them spending six months on the planet Urbinia as Steven worked at the spaceport while The Doctor lectured at a university and tried to repair the TARDIS, as well as giving Katarina a few lessons as he discussed to continue their lessons once they could travel again. When the Daleks came to Urbinia, the Doctor and Steven tried to organise a defence, but found themselves facing a new complication when the Second Doctor and his companions arrived on the planet as well, the Second Doctor aware that this timeline wasn't meant to be while the First had grown closer to Katarina and was thus reluctant to accept that history basically demanded her death. Despite the conflict between the two Doctors, once the Second Doctor had time to explain things to Katarina, she accepted that she had to die for the greater good, the First Doctor giving his rebuilt dematerialisation circuit to the Second Doctor so that the Second Doctor, Katarina, Jamie and Zoe could depart in their ship while the First and Steven distracted the Daleks. The Second Doctor was able to use his restored ship to divert his past self's TARDIS so that the original near-collision never happened, thus erasing the First Doctor's time on Urbinia, and leaving only the Second Doctor with any apparent memory of these events. However, as he recalled the events, the Second Doctor privately reflected that he would always remember Katarina, acknowledging the importance of her sacrifice and promising that he would honour her memory despite the brevity of their association.
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