Melanie Bush

Melanie Jane Bush BSc (Hons), also known as Mel, was a companion of the Sixth and Seventh Doctors.

She hailed from Pease Pottage, West Sussex. Although she was present for the Doctor's sixth regeneration, she did not witness it, as she was unconscious at the time after being exposed to a latent radiation which only knocked her out, but was fatal to Time Lords. As a result, the presence of a new incarnation of the Doctor confused her and made it hard to adjust to the differences in his appearance and personality.

She had a temporally complex relationship with the Sixth Doctor, as she met him in an order different than he met her, as Charley Pollard and River Song later would. Eventually, however, their timelines synchronised, and she had a more-or-less linear relationship to the Doctor, starting in the later period of his sixth incarnation. Her temporal relationship to the Seventh Doctor was considerably more straightforward and linear.

Childhood
Mel was born on 22 July (PROSE: Spiral Scratch) 1964 (PROSE: Just War, Spiral Scratch; AUDIO: The Wrong Doctors) to Alan and Christine Bush (PROSE: Business Unusual) eighteen months after the birth of their first daughter, Anabel. The family lived at 8 Gosling Street in Croxdale where, at the age of eighteen months, Mel accidentally caused the two-and-a-half Anabel to fatally fall down the stairs.

Alan and Christine kept Anabel's existence a secret from Mel, who repressed the memory of her death, and moved the family to 14 The Lawns, Ardingly six months after Anabel's death to move on. To cover up the existence of her sister, Alan and Christine never showed Mel any photographs from before they moved house and she grew up believing that she was an only child, had been born in Hove Hospital (PROSE: Spiral Scratch) and had never encountered death. (PROSE: Business Unusual)

When she was young, Mel would often fidget and complain about being sat on something that was hurting her. Her father would sarcastically tell her that she was sitting on a chair and her mother would liken her to the titular character of The Princess and the Pea. (AUDIO: The Devil's Footprints) She was scared after watching Babes in the Wood and once got a baby bat caught up in her hair after wandering away from her parents in Durham Cathedral. She had to have it cut free. At the age of five or six, her parents woke her up to watch one of the Moon landings and she decided that she wanted to see the Earth from outer space. (PROSE: Business Unusual)

At primary school, Mel played pat-a-cake, (PROSE: Paradise Towers) made a replica of Mount Vesuvius out of papier mâché (AUDIO: The Fires of Vulcan) and had a keen interest in science from a young age thanks to her uncle, John Hallam. (AUDIO: Catch-1782) She was talented at mathematics (PROSE: Business Unusual) and computers, becoming adept in the computer languages of BASIC, COBOL and FORTRAN. (AUDIO: The Juggernauts) She took dancing lessons from Miss Fairs (PROSE: Business Unusual) and did combat training in the Pease Pottage community hall. (AUDIO: Terror of the Sontarans)

At the age of eight, Mel committed the names of 150 different species of dinosaur to memory (AUDIO: The Wrong Doctors) and had read the entire canon of Sherlock Holmes by the age of nine. (AUDIO: Unregenerate!) She also read all of C. P. Snow's works. (TV: Time and the Rani) In 1973, 1974 and 1975, she played Gabriel in a nativity at the village hall and was afterwards more interested in reciting the periodic table, but she did take part in her mother's ABBA-themed fundraisers. (AUDIO: The Wrong Doctors) She was a Girl Guide and once, with her parents, walked through deep snow to their village hall whilst carrying all the props and costumes for a show for pensioners, though the pensioners did not show up on account of the weather. (AUDIO: The One Doctor)

After Mel finished primary school, the family moved a few miles away to 36 Downview Crescent, Pease Pottage, (PROSE: Spiral Scratch) a house with a large garden. (TV: Terror of the Vervoids) She regularly used her address as a backdoor when writing code. (AUDIO: The Juggernauts)

Teenage years
At secondary school, Mel discovered vegetarianism and stopped eating turkey at Christmas dinner as she always had done. She would often return from school to find Christine, who was eager to fit in with the women of Pease Pottage, frantically tidying the house in preparation for meetings of the women's guilds, friendships, leagues and the like. As a result, she spent most of her time in her bedroom doing homework aside from when she was having dinner or saying hello to Alan after work. (PROSE: Spiral Scratch)

For her school's performance of Macbeth, Mel played the role of the Third Witch. (PROSE: Time and the Rani) She once bumped into Mrs Finch whilst leaving the corner shop and, unsure as to whether to acknowledge her baby's Down's Syndrome, she mumbled and smiled. This embarrassed her and hurt Mrs Finch. (PROSE: Millennial Rites) She frequented a roller disco and once remarked that it was the last place that somebody felt threatened by her. (AUDIO: The Silurian Candidate)

Mel was bullied for her appearance, where she lived and who her parents were. She was unbothered, however, until Andy Ledger told her on her eleventh birthday that she did not have a sense of humour because she disliked the boys' jokes about car accidents and people from other countries. Because she reacted to this insult, Andy continued to bring it up even on the day they collected their A level results. (PROSE: The Best Joke I Ever Told) She left school with five A-levels and ten O-levels. (PROSE: Business Unusual)

Studies and career
Mel went to France to pick apples for a summer before travelling around Europe for eight months at her father's expense. Afterwards, she was employed by a nature reserve in Scotland and took to working exclusively in the office after an owl tried to attack her, leading her to discover her natural skill with computers. (PROSE: Business Unusual) She applied to study at the University of West London (PROSE: Millennial Rites; AUDIO: Time-Burst) or London University in 1986 (PROSE: Business Unusual) as she wanted to get away from her family (AUDIO: Time-Burst) and opened her acceptance letter with her mother. (AUDIO: The Wrong Doctors)

At university, Mel was frequently annoyed by her younger peers who were desperate for attention and befriended Trey Korte, whom she immediately realised was gay. She had difficulty keeping men around her for long, which she attributed to her strait-laced demeanour and her need to show off her intelligence, (PROSE: Business Unusual) but she did date Stuart Dale for more than two years. (AUDIO: The Blood Furnace) Philosophically opposed to armies, she joined marches led by CND and Troops Out of Northern Ireland. (PROSE: Business Unusual)

Mel returned home for the summer of 1987 and was kidnapped by Stapleton Petherbridge to be used as a memory buffer to allow him to control causality in cauterised time and escape. She forgot that she had been accepted to attend university and worked for Mr Petherbridge as a cleaner at the Pease Pottage Radar Station, also believing that Jedediah Thurwell was her boyfriend. She met two versions of the Sixth Doctor and an older version of herself and eventually forced Mr Petherbridge into a temporal cul-de-sac, after which she was removed from time until the Doctor pieced her back together, with no memory of recent events, using the TARDIS. (AUDIO: The Wrong Doctors)

During her final year, Mel shared a room in halls with Anjeliqua Whitefriar and often had cheap dinner parties with her and their best friends, Arlene Cole and Paul Kairos, at which they discussed how to put the world right. (PROSE: The Quantum Archangel) She was interviewed by IBM, I² and Ashley Chapel Logistics and was offered jobs by all three. (PROSE: Millennial Rites) She went with ACL despite her mother pointing out that I² offered a better financial package. However, part of the deal was that she would have to spend the summer at a smaller firm to get more experience of working in an office. (PROSE: Business Unusual)

Stuart planned to move to the Middle East after graduation, but Mel, focused on her career and wanting to stay in England, ended the relationship and kept in contact with him for some time afterwards. (AUDIO: The Blood Furnace) She would later say that she had never been in love. (AUDIO: Thicker Than Water) She credited her uncle John Hallam, (AUDIO: Catch-1782) with whom she used to visit museums, (AUDIO: The Wrong Doctors) for her accomplishments in further education. (AUDIO: Catch-1782)

Mel applied for a job in the troubleshooting department of Brighton Information Technologies for the summer following her graduation. Peter Lovelady offered her the job without an interview upon seeing her CV. She received a warm welcome from Luke Aspinall on her first day and went to the gym with him and a few other colleagues, but she was unable to convince him to go to aerobics. (PROSE: Business Unusual)

Joining the Doctor
Having forgotten her meeting with the Sixth Doctor in 1987, (AUDIO: The Wrong Doctors) Mel met him again in 1989 after he brought Trey Korte back to 36 Downview Crescent and helped him by programming a subroutine which removed all trace of the Master's attempt to defraud the Dow-Jones. She resigned from Brighton Information Technologies after its takeover by SenéNet and helped the Doctor investigate the company, in the course of which she met Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart and learnt about regeneration and the TARDIS.

Following the defeat of Martyn Townsend and the Nestene Consciousness, Mel created a virus to render the Maxx games console useless and keep them from being used to activate plastics and control children and asked the Doctor if she could join him on his adventures, feeling that she could no longer stay on Earth. The Doctor refused as he was hoping to avert the High Council's creation of the Valeyard, but she said goodbye to her parents and Trey, packed a bag and sneaked aboard the TARDIS, with the Doctor soon revealing that he knew that she was there. He agreed to let her stay and promised to show her the universe in the morning, starting with Herec. (PROSE: Business Unusual)

According to other accounts, Mel joined the Doctor in 1986 (PROSE: Terror of the Vervoids, Head Games; AUDIO: We Are The Daleks) rather than 1989. (PROSE: Millennial Rites, Business Unusual, Instruments of Darkness) One agreed that Mel met the Doctor in 1989 but also had the Doctor suggesting that 1986 was Mel's home period. (PROSE: The Quantum Archangel)

Early adventures
Mel was given a bedroom which she filled with souvenirs from her adventures. (PROSE: The Quantum Archangel) Despite telling the Doctor that she would not make him drink carrot juice nor exercise, (PROSE: Business Unusual) she did just that (TV: Terror of the Vervoids, etc.) for his own good. (PROSE: Business Unusual) She heard a lot about Evelyn Smythe and how big an impact she had had on the Doctor. (AUDIO: Thicker Than Water)

The Doctor took Mel to Vertipax to meet Mosca Ragazzo, for whom he had been covering by planting crop circles on Earth to convince the Vervaloochenen that he has been doing his job and checking the planet's pollution levels. His reason for doing so, he explained, was that the Vervaloochenen would otherwise deem humanity a threat to its planet. (PROSE: The Deal)

To celebrate turning 991, the Doctor took Mel to the Royal Albion Hotel in Brighton where he caused a scene and accidentally caused a waitress to drop cream cakes onto Doris Wilson, after which she was assisted by the Brigadier (PROSE: A Wee Deoch an ...?) whom she would go on to marry. (TV: Battlefield)

Mel and the Doctor visited Tribolyca and found that the Tribolycanna were being exploited by Sekachos Bdella Travel Inc. After the Doctor liberated them by planting a sulphur bomb which caused the humans to flee because of its smell, he and Mel visited the Eye of Orion. (PROSE: A Tourist Invasion)

Mel convinced the Doctor to help Simon, a Robohuman on 23rd century Andron who claimed that he could dream, but the Doctor found that Simon had killed Eryk Zang and utilised his brain as he always felt that he was missing something organic. Upon being found out, Simon tried to kill Mel, but the Doctor incapacitated him and they reported him to DI Naylar, from whom they learnt that Zang was a serial killer. (PROSE: Mortal Thoughts)

In 1975 Hong Kong, Mel was forced to play a computer game against the Rainbow cartel to keep them from taking the planet out of time and selling its technology. She succeeded with the Doctor's help and informed the authorities of the identities of the members of the Rainbow. (PROSE: Old Boys)

Mel, the Doctor and Lionel Tooley were locked in an attic with a giant insect which had stolen an old woman's eyes and promised to return them if she supplied it with younger ones. The Doctor was able to defeat the insect with the help of Lionel's ventriloquism skills and returned the woman's eyes. (PROSE: The Eyes Have It)

Months into their travels, Mel and the Doctor accidentally interrupted an illegal auction where Fegovy was selling the Face of Humanity to make money for a syndicate which no longer existed. Mel was kidnapped by Willchook, but freed when he found that his spaceship could not leave the space platform and reunited with her travelling companion who tricked Fegovy into letting everybody on the platform leave. (PROSE: Fegovy)

Mel made the Doctor attend an anger management class at Pease Pottage in 1986. They found that the organiser of the class, Louise Pranna, was a member of the Kin and was stealing anger to sell as a commodity. (AUDIO: Loud and Proud)

Mel and the Doctor learnt that Flux Control were feeding people to a supposed Flux Beast, which was actually the decay of tourist planets that the company had frozen in time. They travelled to FluxiCon IV and freed the beast with Mel's computer skills, inciting the company's workers to release the slaves and Pip Hexiflorn to take control. (PROSE: Change Management)

After receiving an alien signal from a swamp on Earth, Mel and the Doctor went to investigate and became part of Walter Fanik's Swamp of Horrors. They found that animals had been growing in size after eating food from inside the crashed spaceship and managed to restore them to normal using a device, but the army killed the animals and Adrian Cooper and wounded Sheena Sown. (PROSE: Swamp of Horrors (1957) - Viewing Notes)

The Doctor took Mel to Switzerland where she went skiing whilst he went against the diet that she had set for him by ordering a hot chocolate. When the Doctor told her about Ur, she correctly deduced that Ur's psychic powers, suppressed by an anti-sciatic atmosphere, had awoken after he left his planet and caused him to crash into Earth, creating the Alps and remarked that drinking carrot juice was safest upon learning that Ur's DNA had entered the water supply and given those who drank mineral water similar powers. (AUDIO: Intuition)

The TARDIS landed on the Abbey where Mel and the Doctor investigated rumours that Charge Tarrow had been taking children who never returned. In doing so, they learnt that Tarrow had been attempting to find a cure for the human allergy that some Catkind suffered from. (PROSE: Fairy Tale of New New York)

After unsuccessfully trying to get the Doctor to exercise, Mel wandered the TARDIS and came across the Time-Space Visualiser, inside of which she saw a Thrusk in the form of a dark reflection of her. The Doctor sent Mel into the Thrusk dimension disguised as the reflection to stop the Thrusk, who had infected Tamira, from using the TARDIS to destroy the universe. She managed to convince the Thrusk to turn against her double and returned to the TARDIS, where she and the Doctor were thanked by Tamira and Mel noticed that Tamira looked exactly like her. (AUDIO: Mel-evolent)

Mel was sometimes left in the TARDIS whilst the Doctor went on what she termed "mysterious missions", unaware that he was going against the diet she had set him and had been eating cakes and attending feasts. (PROSE: The Man Who Wouldn't Give Up)

The Doctor attempted to take Mel to New Year's Eve 1999, but they instead arrived at a Christmas party in the wrong year. Mel convinced the Doctor to perform as a magician at the party after a man mistook him for Dr Cadabra and they realised that the real Dr Cadabra had been trapped inside a mirror with an alien which stole Rachel's life energy. The man destroyed the mirror, restoring Rachel, and escorted Mel and the Doctor back to the TARDIS. (PROSE: Dr Cadabra)

They thwarted Ashley Chapel. By this time, Mel had received some TARDIS training. (PROSE: Millennial Rites)

After three months (PROSE: Terror of the Vervoids) or several years of adventures, (PROSE: Millennial Rites) Mel and the Doctor received an unsigned mayday call sent from the Hyperion III by Hallett and went to investigate, soon becoming aware of a series of murders. Doland attempted to have her ejected from the ship with the laundry when she asked him about the Vervoid pods in the hydroponics centre, but the Doctor saved her and the Vervoids were killed. (TV: Terror of the Vervoids)

In the Generios system, Mel and the Doctor met Banto Zame, whom they exposed and left with the Cylinder, and Sally-Anne Stubbins. (AUDIO: The One Doctor)

Thanks to the machinations of the Dalek Supreme, Mel was separated from the Doctor and spent three months working as a computer specialist for the Juggernaut programme on Lethe, growing close to her colleague Geoffrey Gatlin and being gifted a music box by him. When the Doctor returned for her, she learnt that she had been working for Davros and exploited a backdoor that she had included in the Juggernauts' programming to get them to attack her former boss, apparently leading to his death. She apologised to the Doctor for her actions and left the music box behind, Geoff having sacrificed his life to kill Davros's Daleks. (AUDIO: The Juggernauts)

Mel had a "terrifying run-in" with the Quarks and their Giant Wasps and held on to a disconnected Quark processor unit. She also kept a holoempathic image of Troy, a Dalek logic crystal and a stuffed owl that she was given as a present. (PROSE: The Quantum Archangel)

Taken out of time
Mel and the Doctor, who had lost several centimetres around his waist thanks to her regime, landed on Oxyveguramosa in the Apus Constellation where she promised to work on a programme which would enable them to leave and continue their adventures. Whilst the Doctor was in the TARDIS, (PROSE: The Ultimate Foe) Mel was captured by the Master and sent through time to Space Station Zenobia with Sabalom Glitz.

Mel spoke in defence of a younger version of the Doctor at his trial and watched his adventure in the Matrix from the trial room with Inquisitor Darkel, stealing the Keeper's key to go in and save him when he seemed willing to sacrifice himself. Upon learning that the Valeyard intended to assassinate those in the trial room, she returned to evacuate the Time Lords and later left with the Doctor, intending to get him back to drinking carrot juice and doing exercise. (TV: The Ultimate Foe)

The Doctor chose to leave Mel in Pease Pottage to be picked up by her own version of him, but she realised that things were amiss when she encountered a neighbour's cat which she knew to have died and learnt that a younger version of herself, working as a cleaner and in a relationship with Jedediah Thurwell, was around. She met a third version of the Doctor and took her younger self's role as a memory buffer in cauterised time to send Muriel Wilberforce to her own time, after which the Doctor and the younger Mel defeated Stapleton Petherbridge. Mel left with the younger Doctor to be returned to Oxyveguramosa. (AUDIO: The Wrong Doctors)

Mel asked to stay with the younger Doctor but had to be returned to Oxyveguramosa so that the Doctor could return to his own place in time. She said farewell to the younger Doctor and was reunited with her version, whom she ordered to move over so that she could complete her programme and they could resume their travels. (PROSE: The Ultimate Foe)

Continued adventures
On Maradnias, Mel and the Doctor intervened in a civil war and narrowly escaped nuclear devastation for which the pair both blamed themselves. Mel asked to be dropped home but was instead dropped off in 2003 where they thwarted the Master, after which Mel forgave the Doctor and returned to travelling with him. (PROSE: The Quantum Archangel)

Mel and the Doctor responded to an invitation from her uncle John Hallam to attend the National Foundation for Scientific Research's centenary celebrations in 2003, at which a canister made of an unstable alloy reacted to the TARDIS and sent Mel back in time to 1781. Disorientated and confused, Mel was taken in by Henry Hallam, who presumed that her name was Eleanor after mishearing her name as Nell and, still recovering from the death of his wife, became infatuated with her. The Doctor and John rescued her six months later and took her back to 2003 where she decided that she needed several weeks at the seaside to recover, although she had little memory of her time at Hallam Hall on account of her amnesia and having been treated with laudanum. (AUDIO: Catch-1782)

According to one account, Mel first met Evelyn some time after, in 1993, and fought the Cylox. Afterwards, she asked the Doctor to invite Evelyn aboard to take her home, with Evelyn adding that she wanted to return via the "scenic route". (PROSE: Instruments of Darkness)

According to another account, an off-hand comment by Mel after saving a colony's biodomes led the Doctor to take her to Világ to meet Evelyn. Mel and Evelyn were kidnapped by Sebastian Lawrence almost immediately after meeting to impress Sofia Rossiter, but they were saved by Sofia and Jenner and taken to the hospital where Evelyn received medical attention. There, Mel survived an attempt on her life by Andrew Szabó and helped save the Killorans that he had been experimenting on, after which she and the Doctor remained in Galen for several weeks and attended Evelyn and Justice Rossiter's renewal of their wedding vows. (AUDIO: Thicker Than Water)

Whilst the Doctor attended Diamond Sharp's virtual reality concert, Mel, more interested in the technology than the music, watched Alec and Carol at the controls. She connected herself to the virtual reality upon learning that Diamond's computer deck had once belonged to a serial killer and found that Diamond was intending to kill his audience and sell his story. After the Doctor thwarted Diamond, he suggested that he and Mel visit the Brigadier at UNIT. (PROSE: Sold Out)

Mel and the Doctor confronted Zeet Frenzy about his programmes in which he had Daleks making jokes and took him to Guria to show him that Daleks were not something to be laughed about. There, Mel was captured and taken to be interrogated before the Doctor managed to save her, after which she needed time to recover. Having been unable to make sense of Dalek technology, she decided to make sure to educate herself on future tech. (PROSE: The Best Joke I Ever Told)

The Doctor flew the TARDIS to an asteroid after receiving a transmission from Maria and Eliza Applewhite, who welcomed Mel as a hero in space and time and intended to take to the Wishing Beast, ostensibly to have her greatest wish granted. She and the Doctor learnt that she was going to be fed to a dragon-like creature created from the merging of the Wishing Beast and Daniel Applewhite and the Doctor offered himself in her place, giving him the opportunity to acquire the box containing the Wishing Beast and get rid of the monster as well as the Applewhite sisters and set Daniel free. (AUDIO: The Wishing Beast)

Although Mel was anticipating a visit to 1960s London, the Doctor instead took her to Salford where she visited Lily Cook's corner shop for something to eat and learnt about Monsieur Coiffure's age-reducing Vanity Box. She and the Doctor decided to investigate, with the Doctor getting Nesta Trubshaw to put him in drag to allow him to pose as a potential customer, and found that it was the Wishing Beast that was responsible. After the Doctor sent it through the Time Vortex to the asteroid in the distant past, they returned to Salford and Mel told him that her wish would have been for more time for their travels together. (AUDIO: The Vanity Box)

Mel and the Doctor visited Tantane Spaceport. (AUDIO: Spaceport Fear)

The two visited the tower of Kalsos, where Mel was almost killed when one of the floor's collapsed, as well as Ridius IV and future Earth. Remembering a poem, she helped Helgert Teveler remember the seed banks on Earth and helped fight the Eminence. (AUDIO: The Seeds of War)

On Peladon, Mel was separated from the Doctor by the activation of a thermal detonator and taken by the guard captain to the Citadel of Peladon where she convinced Queen Minaris to help at the disaster site. Princess Isabelda detained her and Alpha Centauri because of their attempts to influence her mother, but they managed to escape and help the Doctor expose Isabelda for being behind the explosion and having secret dealings with the Arcturans. (AUDIO: The Death of Peladon)

The Doctor took Mel to Kolpasha to get S. Holtons to repair his coat, but he lacked any money and Mel had to train and work as a janitor. Three months later, they took a Helios Fleet shuttle to Golm to retrieve the impounded TARDIS and Mel uncharacteristically told a lie to an otter businessman whose money she and the Doctor had accidentally stolen from his shop. They got the TARDIS and the Doctor's coat back and, after the Doctor returned the otter's money to his safe, Mel thought about the best way to get rid of the coat. (AUDIO: The Doctor and His Amazing Technicolour Nightmare Coat)

Joined by Hebe
Mel and the Doctor followed an SOS to 21st century Albatross Alpha where they met Hebe Harrison, who felt that Mel was patronising when she was angry on Hebe's behalf that the others on the rig did not help her, a wheelchair user, get around. They investigated the disappearances and Mel and Hebe escaped from aggressive gulls and sea creatures including a lion's mane which stung Mel. After learning that a compound in the water caused the aggression, Mel and the Doctor left with Hebe, whom they realised knew Evelyn Smythe. (AUDIO: The Rotting Deep)

Hebe saved Mel from drowning on the Moon circa 2,000,000,000 BC and, separated from the Doctor, they encountered the Gilleans and the Sheega. At Mel's suggestion, Hebe apologised to Wulk for touching his gills despite her not liking people touching her wheelchair. The three travellers were eventually reunited in Gillean City and were to be sacrificed by the Sheega, but the Doctor got them free and, after proving that the Sheega were the Gilleans affected by the gravity of Earth, they left. (AUDIO: The Tides of the Moon)

Mel went for a walk after the TARDIS landed on Zoda-Kappa in 3895 and was captured by soldiers who took her to Captain Koppenberg for questioning. Upon mentioning that she was a computer programmer, Mel was sent to assist Professor Charles Feige in awakening those who had entered the Dream, but Feige instead injected her with a fungal serum which did the same to her. Mel was able to dictate code for the Doctor to Hebe in order to help combat the Holomorph and awaken everybody. (AUDIO: The Dream Nexus)

On Veludia, Mel was kidnapped by Jom whilst fetching a medical kit for the Doctor to use on a manatee-like creature and possessed by Alef, who impersonated her for a time. Hebe eventually realised the deception and the Doctor managed to restore her from the Mindbank, after which Mel asked the Doctor that Jom and Alef be allowed to live out their last days in the planet's past. (AUDIO: Maelstrom)

Whilst Hebe met up with Elise, Mel and the Doctor followed a strange reading at Sheffield Hallam University to the Mindless Facility where they met Patricia McBride, who told Mel about how a student had changed after visiting the facility. Mel helped the Doctor destroy the Betterment Machine, which she incorrectly deduced was responsible for Elise's change in personality, and they got a takeaway in the TARDIS with Hebe. (AUDIO: The Mindless Ones)

Mel got a job as an analyst in the computer department at the Emit Institute after Patricia contacted the Doctor about having encountered Neanderthals there. She learnt that its profits were funding secret research which, by stealing Tarek Gamal's passcard, she discovered was the creation of a machine to reverse time. She and Hebe evacuated the Emit staff into the TARDIS after the machine was damaged and, following a visit to Stockholm to drop them off, they and the Doctor were joined by Patricia for a trip into the future. (AUDIO: Reverse Engineering)

Neither Mel nor Hebe initially understood why Patricia was horrified by the diverse population of Sheffield in 2569 and Mel later spoke with the Doctor about whether hatred like Patricia's was innate or developed over time. She joined the Doctor, Hebe, Elise and Tannus Vallon in thwarting Khavûl, who was assisted by an unwilling Patricia who took Vallon's suit after he was killed and changed time. Hebe disappeared and Mel and the Doctor discovered that, according to the TARDIS, she had never existed. (AUDIO: Chronomancer)

Fighting Purity
Mel and the Doctor searched for temporal distortion in the hopes of locating Hebe and, in New York City in the 1930s, found that a future Mel was starring in the fascist musical Behold America! at the Rivoli Theater. They went back in time five weeks so that Mel could take part in the show, using shoes with psionic relays to help her dance, and put an end to it due to the views it espoused, but they found that an alliance of the Doctor's opponents was behind it. Using her newfound dance abilities, Mel was able to reach one of the Doctor's cat badges so that he could cause a temporal blowback to force their enemies to leave. (AUDIO: Broadway Belongs to Me!)

Following chronomatic time signatures and making use of the Time-Space Visualiser, Mel and the Doctor learnt that Patricia was meddling with time using Tannus Vallon's suit to shape a future where the disabled did not exist. Mel kept Elizabeth Rodden busy for a time to keep her from being introduced to Jasper Woodward and was shocked to find that Patricia was responsible for Hebe's disappearance given that she believed the two of them to have been friends. After Patricia murdered Jasper and went to enact her backup plan, Mel and the Doctor followed her in the TARDIS and were sent off-course when Patricia escaped the Doctor's vortex tether. (AUDIO: Purification)

Mel and the Doctor arrived in Neepsend in 1864, the still point in a temporal anomaly, and began investigating how the anomaly could relate to Hebe's disappearance and whether Samuel Harrison was relevant. They confronted Patricia at the Patrician Works and, after she seemed to die in the Time Vortex and her alterations to the timeline undone, they saved Patrick and Mary McBride from dying in the Great Flood of Sheffield and returned to the 21st century to find Hebe. However, history had been changed by the McBrides and Hebe and Ron, never having met the Doctor or Mel, held them at the point of a blaster in the name of Purity. (AUDIO: Time-Burst)

The Doctor's regeneration
Mel was present during the Doctor's regeneration, although she was unconscious at the time and did not witness it. According to one account, he suffered a fatal head injury whilst Mel was knocked out. (PROSE: Time and the Rani)

Another said that the Doctor had been suffering from chronon energy starvation after a confrontation with the Lamprey. (PROSE: Spiral Scratch)

A third said that Mel was rendered unconscious by radiation which, whilst harmless to her, was deadly to Time Lords and caused the Doctor to regenerate. (AUDIO: The Brink of Death)

The new Doctor
Whilst took the Seventh Doctor from the TARDIS, Mel was left behind and, upon waking, was caught in one of the Rani's traps from which she was saved by Ikona. She was reunited with the Doctor, whom she did not recognise and did not believe was him until he mentioned carrot juice and other memories. With Mel's help, the Doctor overcame his amnesia and they thwarted the Rani, liberating the Lakertyans. Assured by the new Doctor that he would grow on her, they left for adventures new. (TV: Time and the Rani)

The Doctor left Mel in 2007 for a time until she found the empty TARDIS. Following a message to follow Louis, she located the Doctor inside of a CIA laboratory, with the help of a cabbie. She showed Louis the error of his ways and left with the Doctor after the Time Lords' operation was ended. (AUDIO: Unregenerate!)

At some point during her travels with the Seventh Doctor, they visited the planet Nocturne (AUDIO: Nocturne) and Ancient Greece, where Mel corrected Euclid's geometry, much to his annoyance. (AUDIO: Mask of Tragedy) He also took her to 2040 Earth to see how far human technology advanced after she offered to help with his TARDIS repairs (PROSE: Daisy Chain) and to 1999 where she destroyed a Nestene meteor at a Millennium Party. (COMIC: Plastic Millenium)

She and the Doctor become separated in the 20th century, with the Doctor in 1995 and Mel in 1935, where she met Michael Gregson. (PROSE: 24 Crawford Street)

Mel wanted to recuperate after several arduous adventures and learnt of Paradise Towers from a travel video-brochure she found in the TARDIS. (PROSE: Paradise Towers) There, Mel became separated from the Doctor and, heading for the swimming pool where they had agreed to rendezvous, she was saved from Tabby and Tilda by Pex, who joined her as her guide and sacrificed himself to kill Kroagnon. Mel was declared by Fire Escape to be a Kang on account of having destroyed a Cleaner and the Doctor was made an honorary one. (TV: Paradise Towers)

Pex's death remained on her mind, thinking about him when Oliver decided to join the British Army to kill Nazis. (PROSE: Special Weapons)

In 1978, she sent Ly aboard the Water Carrier to poison the Cnidarians' water with salt, causing them to flee. (PROSE: The Invertebrates of Doom)

Mel infiltrated the Zenos Corporation in 1987 to find out why its head office was shaped like a Dalek. She investigated Warfleet and was transported to Skaro. Once the Daleks were defeated, Brinsley Heaton asked her to stay and work on computer programming together, but she declined. (AUDIO: We Are The Daleks)

On the Warehouse she was tricked by the Supervisor into repairing the computer so that he could infect the population of the planet below. (AUDIO: The Warehouse)

She encountered Sontarans and the Bloom on ERM 4997 (AUDIO: Terror of the Sontarans) and helped broker a peace on Prosper. (AUDIO: Maker of Demons)

They also attended the Intergalactic Song Contest where she helped solve a serial killing. (AUDIO: Bang-Bang-a-Boom!)

In search of leptonite crystals, Mel and the Doctor travelled to Puxatornee where they interrogated by Professor Capra before being saved by Reed and Stuart. Their saviours made them go back in time to rewrite history. When their past selves arrived in the new timeline, Mel was surprised at how they were already known. They were saved from Potter by Reed and Stuart who wanted them to change time, eventually changed the timeline back to the original and leaving before their original selves arrived. (AUDIO: Flip-Flop)

After they landed at G715, Mel and the Doctor ended up going to Shangri-La and helped Delta. (TV: Delta and the Bannermen)

On a beach, Mel met Emily and wondered if her own children would be so beautiful and well-behaved, watching her and pretending that she was her daughter. (PROSE: Driftwood) She and the Doctor visited Harrow Green, (PROSE: Pulling Strings) 1936 Cairo, (PROSE: Just War) 1850 England, (AUDIO: The Devil's Footprints) Dido, Vyga 3 (AUDIO: Maker of Demons) and Llanfer Ceiriog. (PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Witch Mark)

Deciding to leave
In 4010 Cressida, Mel began to feel alienated by the Doctor. (PROSE: Uranus)

The TARDIS materialised in Pompeii in 79 AD, the day before Vesuvius erupted. She was determined to find a way to stop the TARDIS from being buried in the ash upon learning that it would be dug up in 1980, eventually locating it and allowing the Doctor to realise a way that they could both escape and be dug up in the future. (AUDIO: The Fires of Vulcan)

On Needle, she used her programming skills to reprogram Whitenoise and stop the Red infection. (AUDIO: Red)

In Brightedge, the Doctor pretended that he was a magician and Mel an entertainment journalist so that she would be at liberty to investigate Big Gerald's silver arms, leading her to find the cyber-converted Nelson in a cupboard. Polly Juno began converted everybody, so the Doctor told Mel and Mitzi Cinque to run and later had them send out electromagnetic radiation to repulse a Cyber-Warship, after which they saved the Doctor from falling from a height into a mineshaft. (AUDIO: Bad Day in Tinseltown)

Mel found the Doctor brooding in the Cloister Room and advised him to live in the moment rather than worry about who he might become in the future, after which he took her to Ribos and they found that it was Icetime when it ought to have been Suntime. She and Sandarr recovered the key to the weather machine keeping the planet in winter from the Duke of Hishtar, whose invasion of Shur they eventually stopped. Mel was disturbed by how the Doctor blackmailed Baladin Smith and wondered about how he would behave in the future. (AUDIO: The Ribos Inheritance)

Departure
Mel and the Doctor were reunited with Sabalom Glitz on Svartos, where they also met Ace. Following Kane's death, Mel decided to leave the Doctor and suggested that he invite Ace to join him. She chose to continue travelling the universe with Glitz aboard the Nosferatu II, (TV: Dragonfire) although, according to one account, she realised that she was not a traveller and needed somewhere that she could belong. (PROSE: Dragonfire) She intended to keep Glitz on the straight and narrow, keeping him from involving himself in "dodgy deals". (TV: Dragonfire)

During their travels together, Mel and Glitz encountered a Galactic Heritage fleet. The experience led Mel to describe the organisation as "a militarised, space-faring National Trust". (AUDIO: The High Price of Parking)

Return to the TARDIS
Mel's possible futures were sold by Glitz to Speravore Investment Holdings to pay off his debts, leaving Mel on Ricosta. She was reunited with the Doctor and Ace, whom she helped save the planet from the Speravores, after which she joined them in the TARDIS. (AUDIO: A Life of Crime) They accidentally landed in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, where Mel suffered the casual sexism of the time whilst Ace refused to. She became infected by God Seed. (AUDIO: Fiesta of the Damned) They returned to Prosper, where she helped identify and defeat Caliban. (AUDIO: Maker of Demons)

The Doctor and friends landed on Parking where they were arrested. Learning about the Free Parkers from Cowley, she realised that there must be someone inside the Warden's system that helped them. She tried the stop the Free Parker's virus from escaping and when the explosions started she worked a way to save casualties by sending the tourists to Dashrah. She worked a way to stop the infected spaceships from escaping the planet. (AUDIO: The High Price of Parking)

They landed in 1991 Liverpool where Mel was reunited with her former boyfriend of university, Stuart Dale. He asked her if she wanted a job creating an IT system from scratch which she accepted. When in the TARDIS something forced her hands to stay on the console when it blew up, and later she had the same effect o any piece of digital equipment she went near. The Doctor realised that she was infected by a virus. She later went through the supply gate with Stuart finding enough equipment to build 100 ships. She was cured of the virus and helped the Doctor to create a digital hologram to diminish the Eorgm powers. (AUDIO: The Blood Furnace)

Ace told Mel that the Doctor had changed their course because he wanted to deal with some unfinshed business, and warned her when the Doctor was in this state. In 2085, Mel, the Doctor and Ace prevented the Silurians from provoking war between China and the United States, later helping implement a plan to allow the Silurians to re-establish themselves on Earth in the future. (AUDIO: The Silurian Candidate)

Mel and the Doctor both investigated the Republic of Mokoshia in a timeline in which Mel was a communist, this disconcerted the Doctor. She was helped by Anna to acclimatised, she later went with the Doctor to a base on mars. (AUDIO: Red Planets)

She started reading the TARDIS manuals. The Doctor brought her and Ace to a tower block near Manchester. She decided to go with Ace into a lift which Ruck said was a bad idea. The lift took them to another world. They met with Arkallax and learnt about his plans. She helped Isobel to defeat him. Josiah W. Dogbolter manipulated Mel into delivering the TARDIS to him. (AUDIO: The Dispossessed)

She wanted to make sure that her debt was clear and had to sign a contract to do this. She was delighted was she discovered that Ace and the Doctor had escaped the cells. She used her technical ability to put a virus on the system to locate the TARDIS, and also could control Hob. She learnt about the Quantum Possibility Engine from Hob and was appalled by it. Having realised that Hob didn't kill her friends and Narvin but had put it in the engine's timelines she was determined to get them out of there to stop Dogbolter. She used the Engine to help the Doctor. Because she read the TARDIS manual, Mel was a better pilot of the TARDIS and knew ways to pilot it that the Doctor didn't even realise were possible. She asked for forgiveness to her actions. (AUDIO: The Quantum Possibility Engine)

Going home
According to one account, Mel travelled with Glitz for about six months before deciding to try to go home, working at Avalonian Resorts, Inc on the way. Her progress stalled and she remained on Avalone for two years before deciding to leave, hacking into computer systems to send a message to Glitz asking to pick her up. She was instead rescued by Dr. Who and Jason, who imprisoned her in the Galactic Prison in the Land of Fiction where she was reunited with the Seventh Doctor.

After the Doctor told Mel that he had manipulated her into leaving him as he knew that he would need another companion, she refused to travel in the TARDIS with him ever again and avoided his company. Although she did not think much of Ace's explanation of why she and the Doctor were the way they were, she accepted a ride from Ace, returning to Pease Pottage in the 1990s on Ace's time hopper. (PROSE: Head Games)

Another account of her return to Pease Pottage existed, but it was unclear whether it described events that followed the angry final encounter with the Seventh Doctor or an entirely different return journey. (PROSE: Missing, Part One: Business as Usual) This second account seemed to indicate her return did not involve the TARDIS. Whatever the truth of her return, she flung a message in a bottle into the universe at a moment near the end of her travels, hoping the Doctor would one day find it. (PROSE: Missing, Part Two: Message in a Bottle)

In 2003, John Hallam invited Mel to the National Foundation for Scientific Research, although her past self and the Doctor went instead, having intercepted the invitation. (AUDIO: Catch-1782) By 2010, she was working with Ace and A Charitable Earth, providing computers to schools in Africa. (PROSE: Death of the Doctor) In 2022, Melanie joined a support group for other people who had travelled with the Doctor, which also included Yasmin Khan, Graham O'Brien, Dan Lewis, Ian Chesterton, Jo Jones, Tegan Jovanka, Ace and Kate Stewart. (TV: The Power of the Doctor)

Undated events
At some point, Mel was taken to the Black Archive by UNIT to have her record as a companion of the Doctor taken. Her memories of the visit were subsequently erased and she was sent on her way. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)

At another point, Mel was abducted by Adam Mitchell as part his plan to get revenge on the Doctor, in collaboration with. She was placed in stasis alongside the Doctors' multiple other companions, before being released by the Doctors first eleven numbered incarnations with the help of Frobisher. (COMIC: The Choice, Endgame)

At a further point, Mel was the head of 24 Carat, a business built upon a once-small carrot juice company, which had expanded to be a technology, health, and lifestyle empire. She once met three investors, Drinking Fountain, Kane, and Derek the Tetrap, in her spacestation headquarters. After they submitted their pitches for items like Mr Melty Face Peel and bubble-trap bath, all of which she rejected, a hooded figure emerged, revealing himself to be an aged Seventh Doctor, and he and Mel happily reunited. (WC: 24 Carat)

Personality
Mel had a perky personality. She greeted most situations with a warm smile and good humour. She was an optimist who generally believed the best of people's natures, although she tempered this optimism with a realism and scepticism borne of her scientific education. Her cheeriness could cool quite quickly if she detected a threat to herself, the Doctor or her friends. (TV: Terror of the Vervoids; AUDIO: The Fires of Vulcan, The Wishing Beast, The Juggernauts) Though she usually went by the informal "Mel", she sometimes insisted on being introduced as "Melanie" to those whom she didn't quite trust. (AUDIO: The Fires of Vulcan) In 1959, she tried to befriend Delta, and could see that she was distressed. (TV: Delta and the Bannermen)

She enjoyed the music of ABBA and the Bee Gees. (PROSE: Business Unusual) She did not drink tea. (AUDIO: The Devil's Footprints) Mel sometimes found it difficult to cope with the mundane. She displayed reluctance at the sight of the rather ordinary Shangri-La holiday camp in Wales in 1959. (TV: Delta and the Bannermen)

Mel prided herself on her innate honesty, (TV: The Ultimate Foe, AUDIO: Red) and was reluctant to lie such as inventing stories to explain away the TARDIS' materialisation to those who witnessed it. (AUDIO: The Fires of Vulcan) In her own words, Mel was "as stubborn as they come". (AUDIO: A Life of Crime)

Mel's reaction to fear was variable. She sometimes met danger with a loud scream. (TV: Terror of the Vervoids, Time and the Rani, Paradise Towers) She was also possessed of an almost steely resolve. She might have cowered in fear upon first meeting the Vervoids and the Tetraps, but she composed herself quickly afterwards. On other occasions, she displayed little fear at all. (TV: Terror of the Vervoids, Time and the Rani) She showed a relatively even temperament when defeating the Valeyard (TV: The Ultimate Foe) and facing down the Bannermen. (TV: Delta and the Bannerman) On still other occasions, she allowed her logic to guide her swift and efficient action, as when she almost single-handedly defeated Davros and then derided the Doctor for not having killed the Daleks and him when given the chance; before realising to her shame she was acting as them. (AUDIO: The Juggernauts) She displayed extraordinary calm when she had to navigate Pompeii on foot during the eruption of Vesuvius in search of the Doctor's TARDIS — when he believed it lost and his life near its end. She could also fight against more internal threats, as when she fought off the effects of having been slowly drugged for six months with laudanum. (AUDIO: The Fires of Vulcan, Catch-1782) Despite the occasional scream, Mel rarely expressed genuine, lasting fear of anything. However, she did once admit to a fear of heights. (AUDIO: Red)

Mel was a health enthusiast and a vegetarian, often encouraging the slightly portly Sixth Doctor to exercise more. (TV: Terror of the Vervoids) Her enthusiasm for healthy living, born of the hard-nosed logic of basic science, manifested itself in other ways. She was flatly dismissive of the supernatural — like ghosts — as scientifically ludicrous. (AUDIO: Catch-1782, Unregenerate!) Neither did she believe in fate. (AUDIO: The Juggernauts)

Relationship with the Doctor
In her dealings with the Doctor, Mel was warmly affectionate. She sometimes found herself separated from him for months on end and always extremely glad to see him return. (AUDIO: The Juggernauts, Catch-1782) She was an especially enthusiastic travelling companion. Once, when asked what she would wish for, if she had the opportunity, she replied: "I was going to wish that things could go on just as they are — for as long as we could manage. I love all this, our lives, racketing about the galaxy." (AUDIO: The Vanity Box) The manner of her departure from the Doctor was also gently affectionate (TV: Dragonfire) and her emotional reaction and tears were genuine when she thought him dead. (AUDIO: The Wishing Beast, The Vanity Box)

However, her proactive lifestyle led her to be bossy to the Doctor. Not only did she try to reform the Sixth Doctor's health standards, she also demanded and apparently got him to abandon his motley outfit for a time. (AUDIO: Catch-1782) Likewise, she often spurred the Doctor to adventure, as when she insisted they stay on the Hyperion III to explore, against the Sixth Doctor's judgement, (TV: Terror of the Vervoids) or when she insisted on staying in Pompeii knowing Vesuvius was about to erupt. Her at times boundless optimism could prove the buoy the Seventh Doctor needed to survive, as when she insisted that there must be a solution to a temporal paradox that the Doctor believed doomed them to death under the volcanic ash of Vesuvius. (AUDIO: The Fires of Vulcan)

When she began to travel with the Doctor and Ace, (AUDIO: A Life of Crime) Ace speculated that the Doctor kept Mel around because she provided someone who genuinely believed that he was doing the right thing, in contrast to Ace's greater scepticism. (AUDIO: The Silurian Candidate)

Skills
Mel possessed an eidetic memory. (TV: Terror of the Vervoids, The Ultimate Foe, AUDIO: Unregenerate!) It was not, however, an absolute photographic memory, as it failed her when her mind was clouded by emotion. (AUDIO: The Wishing Beast) She also wasn't merely qualified in computer science; she was a veritable genius. Perhaps aided by her extraordinary memory, she could quickly assimilate new computer languages, even those in use in the distant future. (AUDIO: The Juggernauts, Red) At the age of eight, she committed the names of 150 different species of dinosaurs to memory and is therefore able to recognise an iguanodon on sight. (AUDIO: The Wrong Doctors)

Mel Bush proved able with martial arts. (TV: Time and the Rani; AUDIO: Terror of the Sontarans)

Appearance
Mel was four foot ten and had curly red hair and brown eyes. (PROSE: Terror of the Vervoids) Because of her complexion and the colour of her hair, she did not suit black clothes. (AUDIO: Mel-evolent) She cut her hair short after leaving the Nosferatu II. (PROSE: Head Games)

Behind the scenes

 * The Companions, a reference book by John Nathan-Turner, established that Mel joined the Sixth Doctor in 1986 when she helped thwart the Master (presumably ), who planned a dastardly attempt at a massive computer fraud involving all the banking houses on Earth.
 * Mel's last name is never spoken in any televised appearance and the closing credits in her original appearances identify her only by her first name. Her surname is, however, regularly used in novels, Big Finish Productions' audios, and various other stories. Her surname would finally be used onscreen in the closing credits of The Power of the Doctor.
 * According to his book The Companions, John Nathan-Turner planned to begin Season 24 with a storyline explaining how the Sixth Doctor met Mel. This story was never produced due to Colin Baker's removal from the role. An audio story of this nature, The Wrong Doctors, was eventually written by Matt Fitton and released in 2013.
 * Mel was the only character in the original series to be depicted on television as having an asynchronous relationship with the Doctor, unless multi-Doctor stories are taken into account.
 * Mel also appeared in the gag-comic strip How Much For Just The Planet?
 * She and Susan remain the only televised companions without a televised story on how they met the Doctor, aside from Handles.
 * There were plans for her to stay on for Season 25, but Bonnie Langford decided to leave the series, feeling there wasn't much more to be done with her character. So, the ending of Dragonfire was amended to have her leave with Sabalom Glitz while Ace went off with the Doctor.
 * Her character being a fitness fanatic was inspired by the workout craze of the late 1980s, which had been popularised by celebrities such as Jane Fonda.
 * She was the first British companion since Sarah Jane Smith departed.
 * John Nathan-Turner's main stipulation for her character was that she have red hair, hence why Bonnie Langford was cast.