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The Haunting of Thomas Brewster
(Jonathan Morris) |
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 Name: Thomas Brewster
Format:
Audio.
Time of Origin: Late nineteenth century
Time Span: "The
Haunting of Thomas Brewster", "Time
Reef" and "A
Perfect World".
Doctor: Fifth
Doctor
Fellow
Companions: Nyssa; had a brief meeting - of sorts - with Adric
History: Thomas Brewster is one of those relatively
few companions whom The Doctor never asked to accompany him on his
travels; indeed, at the conclusion of his first encounter with The
Doctor Thomas actually stole the TARDIS itself, forcing The Doctor
to resort to very unorthodox measures in order to get it back. Despite
the circumstances of his arrival, and the relative brevity of his
time in the ship, The Doctor and Nyssa nevertheless grew rather fond
of Thomas after they got to know him better, both of them clearly
missing him after his departure.
Originally an orphan from the Victorian age, Thomas’s
earliest memory was seeing his mother’s funeral when he was
about four or five years old - being blamed at the time for her suicide
- subsequently being sent to a workhouse as they felt it was no more
than he deserved. As he grew up, Brewster regularly witnessed the
Fifth
Doctor and Nyssa attempting to visit him and ask him about
a recurring dream he had - featuring his mother singing ‘Oranges
and Lemons’, but the three were never able to meet until after
Thomas left the workhouse and fell in with a gang of thieves. Based
on instructions he received in dreams, Thomas began to steal various
items from around London to create a machine that would apparently
restore his mother to him, unaware what the final result would be.
However, the rift that the creatures’ attempts
to communicate with Thomas created resulted in the Fifth Doctor and
Nyssa being drawn to London during this time frame, The Doctor and
Nyssa subsequently learning about Thomas’s visions. The Doctor
deduced that the creatures that had contacted Thomas were actually
from a possible version of the year 2008, attempting to use Thomas
to influence the past to make their future more likely and thus increase
its chances of coming to pass, appearing to him as his mother as
they were unable to gather enough energy to manifest directly. Despite
the creatures’ attempts to ‘guarantee’ their existence
by encouraging Thomas to smash The Doctor’s equipment and take
the TARDIS into their future, The Doctor managed to follow them-
thanks to a slight time paradox, in that he salvaged a future version
of the TARDIS that would be sent back into the past after he followed
the present TARDIS in its future self - collapsing the time rift
that had allowed the creatures to communicate with him, the paradox
subsequently being averted by The Doctor taking Thomas back in time
to warn his past self not to listen to his mother’s ghost.
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Time Reef and A Perfect World
(Marc Platt & Jonathan Morris) |
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Despite the resolution of this crisis, Thomas, unwilling
to return to his old life, attempted to escape it by stealing
the TARDIS once again, only for his lack of knowledge of
TARDIS control - having previously been guided by the creatures
- to prove a significant disadvantage. Even when attempting
something as simple as landing he ended up unintentionally
creating a dimensional rift when he failed to materialise
completely during a brief trip to the ‘true’ 2008,
creating a temporal rift that allowed existential maintenance
workers called Phil and Trev to gain access to this universe,
subsequently latching on to the wish of a young woman called
Connie Winter that Thomas was talking with to remake Earth
into a ‘perfect’ world. On another occasion,
Brewster tried to earn some means of getting by in the universe
by selling some components of the TARDIS to another group
of time travellers he discovered on a temporal reef that
he crash-landed on during his travels - having been created
due to the TARDIS’s conceptual geometer latching on
to a piece of space coral - not realising until after he’d
sold the components that they couldn’t work in anything
other than another TARDIS.
Eventually,
however, the TARDIS was returned to its rightful owner, albeit in
a roundabout manner. While trying to track down the TARDIS using
Block Transfer Computations - the computations being chanted in the
form of a séance with ten other people due to the lack of
any more sophisticated technology - The Doctor and Nyssa briefly
experienced a very personal crisis when The Doctor’s own guilt
caused his subconscious mind to send the computations to the Cybermen
freighter where his former companion Adric had died, transferring
Adric to a newly-created alternate reality. Although driven insane
by centuries of isolation and bitterness, Adric eventually agreed
to help The Doctor and Nyssa escape his world. Once back on Earth,
Adric subsequently sacrificed himself to send a message to Thomas
and divert the TARDIS back to Earth with one final block transfer
computation, suggesting to Thomas that he remain with The Doctor
if didn’t feel he belonged in any specific place or time.
However, his time with The Doctor was destined
to be brief, primarily consisting of him helping The Doctor and Nyssa
cleaning up the mistakes he had made during his brief time in the
TARDIS. On only his first actual trip with The Doctor, the TARDIS
crash-landed on the temporal reef where Brewster had sold components
of the ship during his time away, leaving The Doctor, Nyssa and Brewster
forced to deal with the enraged crew of the ship as The Doctor raced
against time to recover the missing components before his ship was
lost for good. Despite the fact that his incompetence had been the
cause of the problem, Brewster redeemed himself by risking his life
to repair the damaged TARDIS, leaping into the ship to return the
geometer to the interior dimensions despite the risk to himself.
On their subsequent trip to the twenty-first century, The Doctor
quickly discovered the alterations that had occurred as a result
of Brewster’s creation of a quantum fissure on his last visit,
subsequently tracking down Connie, who served as the focal point
of the quantum fissure Brewster’s actions had created. Bringing
her into the TARDIS, where Phil and Trev appeared to answer the group’s
questions, The Doctor and Connie subsequently convincing them that
perfection could only happen if people made themselves better rather
than others doing it for them.
With the
world restored, and with Brewster having developed feelings for Connie,
he decided to remain where he was, feeling that remaining with The
Doctor and Nyssa would be like running away from real life, and wanting
to stay in one place and see what happened. Although Nyssa was surprised
that Brewster didn’t want to stay with them for longer, The
Doctor - while insulted at how quickly he jumped ship - recognised
that Brewster had found what he’d wanted; someone to be with
and a place to belong. Wishing Brewster well, The Doctor left Brewster
with the deeds to a house in Baker Street that The Doctor had lived
in during his attempts to reacquire the TARDIS, for him to do with
as he wished, confident that Thomas would do well for himself. |
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