Bliss

Bliss was a companion of the Eighth Doctor.

A postgraduate student whose life was rewritten by both Deepa and the Last Great Time War, Bliss met the Doctor on the Theseus and later joined him on his adventures. Upon learning that she had been orphaned by the Time War and could never return to Derilobia, she decided that she wanted to make a difference during the war rather than completely avoiding it, but she eventually disappeared as a result of a shift to the timeline and was all but forgotten by the Doctor and Alex Campbell.

Childhood
Bliss had multiple possible histories due to Deepa intentionally rewriting her timeline. (AUDIO: State of Bliss) Additionally, the Time War led to her family dying prematurely or being erased from time, leaving her as an orphan of the war. (AUDIO: The Lords of Terror) As a result of these possible histories, the Eighth Doctor would later say that it would not be a good idea for her to return home as it could make one history dominant. (AUDIO: State of Bliss)

Able to trace her ancestry to South Asia, (AUDIO: The Conscript) Bliss was born in Central City on Derilobia to a mother and father. (AUDIO: The Lords of Terror) Her name was suggested by her grandfather, (AUDIO: State of Bliss) whom she and her mother lived with (AUDIO: The Lords of Terror) and who often brought her toys from the lost and found at Derilobia Spaceport. (AUDIO: Salvage) She once said that she had always wanted to be a knight (AUDIO: Restoration of the Daleks) and dreamt of leaving the planet, finding Derilobia to be grey and dull.

Bliss befriended Calla and Ryall at a young age, but had some secrets that she did not wish to share with them or her mother. When her grandfather gave her a Gosset Stone, she told her secrets to it every night and came in contact with Misbah, a girl of about her age who told her about Salvage. One day, their communications ceased and Bliss would later leave the stone in a drawer. (AUDIO: Salvage) As she got older, she learnt that Calla and Ryall both had feelings for her and had difficulty choosing between them. (AUDIO: State of Bliss)

Studies at Luna
With Calla and Ryall, (AUDIO: State of Bliss) Bliss attended Luna University. (AUDIO: Echoes of War) She celebrated by dancing in the street when she was informed that she had been accepted there and lost her favourite chequered scarf whilst doing so. During a physics lecture, she found a brief reference to Misbah's home and learnt that it had been destroyed long ago. (AUDIO: Salvage)

Bliss studied Applied Quantum Astrotech as a postgraduate student. She was aware of the Time War, although she thought that it was "ancient history". She went on a field trip to Titan (AUDIO: Echoes of War) with Calla and Ryall and observed a temporal anomaly which split her across several timelines. She would later find that she could not remember much about her past nor exactly what happened during her field trip. (AUDIO: State of Bliss)

Meeting the Doctor
Bliss boarded the Theseus to measure quantum fluctuations in a temporal warzone (AUDIO: Echoes of War) and, arming herself with a regression weapon, led a group of people when the ship was attacked by Daleks. She met the Eighth Doctor and escaped with him and a group of others, including Jefferson and Rupa and Quarren Maguire, in a Dalek timeship. (AUDIO: The Starship of Theseus)

The timeship crashed on a jungle planet where, following the Doctor's kidnapping, Dal put Bliss in charge of leading the refugees. She tried to save Dal when Cardinal Ollistra arrived with Time Lord soldiers, but Captain Tamasan killed him and took Bliss and the Maguires prisoner. (AUDIO: Echoes of War)

On the Moon of Tenacity, Bliss refused to answer Ollistra's questions when she interrogated her to find out if she was the renegade that she was looking for. (AUDIO: One Life) Bliss fled to the TARDIS with the Doctor and the Maguires when the Daleks attacked, but Ollistra refused to allow her prisoners to leave, (AUDIO: The Conscript) only relenting when the Daleks broke through the Time Lords' final defences.

Upon learning that Quarren was the renegade that Ollistra was looking for, the Doctor tried to find a safe planet for Bliss and Rupa but, after the Daleks were defeated and Quarren erased himself from time, Bliss joined the Doctor as his companion instead. The Doctor told her that they would have to try to stay ahead of the Time War. (AUDIO: One Life)

Early adventures
Not wanting her mother and grandfather to think that she was dead, Bliss asked the Doctor to take her back to Derilobia for a visit. However, they found that the Time Lords had altered the history of the planet and that Bliss's family seemed to have been erased from history, making her an orphan of the Time War. She helped the Doctor defeat Carvil, telling him that he was far worse than the Daleks, and left in the hope that there might be a way to restore her family. Until then, she and the Doctor agreed to look after one another and help out far from the battlefields. (AUDIO: The Lords of Terror)

Bliss was followed by the Salvage Train and boarded it with the Doctor when it drove towards the TARDIS in the Time Vortex. With the Doctor's help, she remembered Misbah and the Gosset Stone and took control of the train to take her back to Derilobia as she remembered it, arriving at the frozen moment of its erasure from time and realising that she could not stay. Before leaving the Salvage Train, she gave the Gosset Stone to one of the passengers and asked them to find Misbah. (AUDIO: Salvage)

Bliss and the Doctor visited Sto, where she convinced him to hear the Twelve out when she approached them with Doctor Ogron. On the Planet, Bliss and Doctor Ogron attempted without success to get the Ogrons to fight against the Daleks, after which they instead decided to appeal to the Crab Gods. Bliss, the Doctor and the Twelve were later taken prisoner by a Dalek taskforce. (AUDIO: Planet of the Ogrons)

Imprisoned on Sangrey with their memories wiped, Bliss, the Doctor and the Twelve were periodically interrogated by the Daleks before having their memories of the interrogations removed. Bliss, known as Kappa Zeta, befriended the Doctor and came to believe that she might have once been an engineer. The trio eventually escaped and recovered their memories. Bliss rounded up the other prisoners to be taken to safety by the Time Lords, after which she was told she would be joining the Doctor and the Twelve in travelling to Uzmal. (AUDIO: In the Garden of Death)

Bliss, at the Doctor's request, kept an eye on the Twelve whilst aboard the Bloodhound. She found that she could not remember exactly what she had been doing and what she had been escaping from when she met the Doctor on the Theseus. She was attacked by the Twelve when the Ourashima took over and later plotted the course towards it. (AUDIO: Jonah)

Making a difference
To make sense of her past and corrupted biodata, Bliss used the TARDIS's telepathic circuits to find out exactly how she ended up on the Theseus. She observed several possible histories and learnt that Calla, as "Professor Deepa", had rewritten her past several times over as part of a plan to lure the Doctor to her and give her access to a TARDIS. She found that she was happy to remember her possible pasts and not to fix one by returning to Derilobia, asking the Doctor if he could take her somewhere she could help make a difference. (AUDIO: State of Bliss)

On Iptheus, Bliss ate some of the ichor but, unlike the Doctor, was able to escape from the Enablers and investigate what was happening to the starving people of the planet. She was reunited with the Doctor after stealing a teleport from an Enabler and was cured of the ichor by Aeronwen after they managed to convince her to stop using it. (AUDIO: The Famished Lands)

In return for Tamasan's promise to protect the Sea of Nemocene, Bliss and the Doctor joined her in travelling to Thellian in an Argodian escape pod to find out how the last of the Helixara survived time deletion. Bliss became lady-in-waiting to King Vashko and was exposed as an off-worlder by her ignorance of Thellian culture, leading her to pretend that she, the Doctor and Tamasan were Argodians. She sympathised with Shonnath, feeling that she too was an aberration of the timelines. (AUDIO: Fugitive in Time)

Cessation of war
Bliss and the Doctor found that the Daleks had been erased from time, ending the Time War, although nobody was sure how. They continued to travel together long after leaving Thellian (AUDIO: The War Valeyard) and, at some point, met Hudson Sage on the Vespertine. (AUDIO: Vespertine)

After the Doctor had a vision of the Valeyard, Bliss went with him to a Time Lord waystation and learnt about the Valeyard's mission and imprisonment on Grahv, something which sickened her. The two of them went to rescue him in Tamasan's TARDIS and told him the truth, although he chose to remain there believing that he was the Doctor rather than risk his true personality reasserting itself. Bliss and the Doctor left through a portal, Tamasan's TARDIS having been severely damaged. (AUDIO: The War Valeyard)

Bliss and the Doctor arrived in another universe and met Davros, learning from him of the return of the Daleks. They worked to stop the Time Strategist's plan, with Bliss attempting unsuccessfully to execute Davros with a gunstick in order to prevent the merger of realities. Eventually, she and the Doctor were forced to flee through Davros's portal. (AUDIO: Palindrome)

The War resumes
Arriving on Gallifrey, Bliss and the Doctor found themselves suffering from amnesia and learnt from Rasmus and the General of the Time War, which nobody could remember happening. Bliss went with Rasmus to Hassion III to meet the foot soldiers taken prisoner by the Time Lords and came to remember her adventures with the Doctor, that she came from Derilobia and that the war had been against the Daleks. She later calmed the Dreadshade down and left with the Doctor, suddenly remembering the Time Strategist and his plans. (AUDIO: Dreadshade)

Bliss and the Doctor informed Tamasan and Rasmus of the Daleks' return and, at Bliss's insistence, went to Cosca to save the Coscans from the Daleks appearing in the Gulf of Ithon. She worked closely with Rasmus, who gave her a communicator and, following the reborn Dalek Emperor's capture of Davros and Bliss restoring the Coscans to their original form, he promised to find her a position. However, she believed that her place was with the Doctor and returned to the TARDIS, where she was introduced to Alex Campbell. (AUDIO: Restoration of the Daleks)

Disappearance
The timelines shifted, affecting everybody but Hudson Sage, who was in a time lock. (AUDIO: Vespertine) The Doctor and Alex retained no memory of Bliss, but the Doctor felt as though somebody was missing from the TARDIS and allowed Cass Fermazzi to join him and Alex to try to fill the gap. Hieronyma Friend, who had records on the Doctor, hinted that she knew about Bliss and her disappearance (AUDIO: Meanwhile, Elsewhere) and the Doctor became aware of his missing companion when Alex learnt of her from Hudson's memory recorder. He initially assumed that Bliss must be from his future, but Alex's instincts told him that Bliss was in his past. (AUDIO: Vespertine)

When the Doctor, Alex and Cass landed on an uninhabited planet, the Doctor believed that there were four of them in the TARDIS. Alex and Cass told him that that was not the case, but he was sure that somebody was missing and had been there a few minutes, or several years, ago. He reflected on how his life was full of contradictions and that some parts of his past had been undone and Cass said that they would have to live in "blissful ignorance". She later admitted, however, that it felt as though somebody had been with them, out of the corner of their eyes. (AUDIO: Previously, Next Time)

Legacy
The Doctor told River Song about Bliss and how they travelled together during the Last Great Time War. Upon learning of her from River, the Nine attempted to kidnaped her, but instead captured the version of her from before the Time War. (AUDIO: Companion Piece)

The Valeyard remembered Bliss from their adventures together, which were far in his past. (AUDIO: The War Valeyard)

Pre-Time War
Before the Last Great Time War affected history, Bliss was a student of robotics and computer science on Derilobia. She was kidnapped by the Nine to join his collection of the Doctor's companions, being unaware that this version of Bliss had never met the Eighth Doctor. Because of this, she was confused about the situation that she found herself in, but worked with Charlotte Pollard, Liv Chenka and Helen Sinclair to escape, reprogramme the Nine's drone guards and rescue River Song.

Bliss stated that she would be sure to run away from the Doctor if she ever met him, despite having enjoyed working with Charley, Liv and Helen. To ensure that there was no risk to the timeline, River erased her memory after returning her home to Derilobia, but accepted that her memory of the event might very well have been erased by the Time War anyway. (AUDIO: Companion Piece)

Deepa's meddling
Deepa's meddling with Bliss's timeline was what caused her to become a companion of the Doctor. Versions of Bliss before Deepa achieved her goal included: one living on a Derilobia controlled by the Time Lords, one who chose to study at Derilobia University rather than Luna because of her concern for her grandfather, one who was accepted by Luna and died on the Moon and one who died young. (AUDIO: State of Bliss)

Personality
Bliss was intelligent and enjoyed solving problems, always deconstructing and analysing situations as well as people. She saw the practical application in things (AUDIO: In the Garden of Death) and was gifted academically, (AUDIO: State of Bliss) having a thorough understanding of complex scientific theories. (AUDIO: Palindrome)

Interested in both men and women, Bliss had trouble choosing between Calla and Ryall and chose to put off making a decision for as long as possible. (AUDIO: State of Bliss) She could be sarcastic in serious situations (AUDIO: Palindrome) but was able to take a leadership role when necessary. (AUDIO: The Starship of Theseus) In such situations, she had no qualms with using weapons (AUDIO: The Starship of Theseus, Palindrome, etc.) and did not hesitate to attempt to execute Davros. (AUDIO: Palindrome)

Davros told Bliss that she was pragmatic, intelligent and had greater potential than many of the Doctor's associates. Rasmus was similarly impressed by her and offered to one day find a position for her, although she believed that her place was with the Doctor. She considered Rasmus a friend. (AUDIO: Restoration of the Daleks)

Appearance
The Twelve told Bliss that she could do with "fattening up a bit". (AUDIO: Planet of the Ogrons) She was of South Asian ancestry. (AUDIO: The Conscript)

Behind the scenes

 * Although Bliss appeared in all of the The Eighth Doctor: Time War: Volume One stories, she was not originally intended to be a companion and the end of One Life had to be rewritten to accommodate this change. (BFX: The Eighth Doctor: Time War: Volume One) The Lords of Terror was rewritten to include her, making Derilobia her home planet. (BFX: The Eighth Doctor: Time War: Volume Two)
 * Bliss was intended to appear in the fifth volume of The Eighth Doctor: Time War. Rakhee Thakrar's work schedule, however, necessitated Bliss being written out of the series. (BFX: Meanwhile, Elsewhere)

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