Eleanor Blake

Eleanor Blake was a mathematician, linguist and codebreaker who came to travel with Alpha Wheeler after an adventure shared with the Seventh Doctor, Chris Cwej and Roz Forrester during World War II.

Biography
Eleanor Blake was born to Janice and Richard Blake on 4 August 1911, in the entrance way to Manchester Tram Station. She was given the name Michael at birth.

At some point, Eleanor realised that she had always been a woman, and that her birth assignment spoke nothing to who she really was. Choosing the name Eleanor, she chose to keep the gender incorrectly assigned to her at birth a closely guarded secret, fearing other people's reactions should they find out. Nevertheless, despite others' non-acceptance, Eleanor was fully aware that she had "always been Eleanor".

Before or during the 1940s, Eleanor studied pure mathematics and linguistics at Imperial College. She also specialised in codes. For this reason, she demonstrated the capacity to aid the British in the Second World War. (AUDIO: The Jabari Countdown)

Meeting the Doctor and Chris
After completing a puzzle in the newspaper, Eleanor was selected with regards to what seemed like a secret government initiative during World War II to use mathematics in the cause against the Nazis. In reality, Alpha Wheeler was the one who invited her and the others, hoping to recruit "the best" to save her own planet from the Jabari.

Eleanor met Chris Cwej, who was travelling with the Seventh Doctor, on the boat en route to their mysterious mission. When their boat crash-landed on an island, the group found a rather large house, which was secretly a Jabari ship masquerading as such. Alpha had devised a series of tests, which they all encountered within the house.

In one of those tests, Alpha hoped to gauge not only each participant's skills but their loyalty, by providing files containing each member's deepest secrets. When Arbuckle read Eleanor's file, and saw she had been born under a different name, he responded with violence, and followed her and Chris around the house, taunting Eleanor and refusing to use her name or pronouns.

Chris, for his part, kissed Eleanor to prove what he thought of her. The two developed a brief romantic relationship over the course of their experience together. Roz later tied up and gagged Arbuckle in response to his behaviour towards Eleanor.

After the adventure was over, and the Jabari dealt with, Eleanor chose to travel in space with Alpha Wheeler, among the stars, rather than return to her ordinary world, so that she might live truthfully and without fear of condemnation. She felt she owed Earth no loyalty. Alpha warned Eleanor that she "can't promise [her] much safety", but that she could count on an adventure.

Before Chris boarded the TARDIS and left with the others, he and Eleanor spoke privately. Chris instructed her to close her eyes and count to ten, like in a game of hide and seek. So that they would not have to say goodbye, the TARDIS would be gone by the time she re-opened them. (AUDIO: The Jabari Countdown)