Steven Taylor

Steven Taylor was a spaceship pilot who became a companion of the First Doctor. Though human, he did not join the TARDIS' crew on the planet Earth. Instead, he stowed away on their vessel at the planet Mechanus, shortly after Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright left the Doctor's company. He remained with the Doctor until a relatively short time before the Time Lord's first regeneration. He travelled with Vicki Pallister, Oliver Harper, Katarina, Sara Kingdom and Dodo Chaplet, though he also briefly met Ian and Barbara as well. Oliver, Katarina and Sara were all killed during their travels together. He left the Doctor's side to help govern the planet of the savages.

Taylor was notable for being the first known male companion to travel alone with the Doctor (TV: The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve) — something that would not happen again until Jamie McCrimmon had a brief solo stint with the Second Doctor. (COMIC: Invasion of the Quarks, et al) He was also the first of a rare breed of companion: one that neither joined nor departed the TARDIS at the planet on which they were born.

Prior to meeting the Doctor
Steven was born on 10 February. (AUDIO: Return of the Rocket Men)

Steven grew up during a war (TV: The Chase) on a Hiveblock on Earth (PROSE: The Empire of Glass). After visiting the ruins of New York City (a legacy of the 22nd century Dalek invasion), he enlisted in the military. He served as helmsman on a battleship and later as a solo combat pilot, going from one spaceship or space station to another. He held the latter post as a form of reprisal for reporting the killing of a homeless person on Roylus Prime, which he visited on shore leave. (PROSE: Salvation)

He studied basic anatomy as part of his pilot training. (AUDIO: The Suffering)


 * By the time Steven met the Doctor, the war with the Krayt had stretched on for fifty years. (PROSE: The Empire of Glass)

On a mission, Steven crashed on the planet Mechanus in the jungle. He wandered around for days, trying to avoid the hostile plant life. He was captured by the Mechanoids and taken to their city. There, he spent two years as a prisoner, alone but for a toy panda mascot he called HiFi. (TV: The Chase)

Adventures with the Doctor
While a prisoner, Steven built a wooden construction rather like a climbing frame to keep himself active. It let him climb up to the roof for fresh air. It was in his room in the Mechanoid City that Steven met the Doctor and his companions and soon after, the Daleks. He asked, "Who won the war?" and introduced himself as "Steven Taylor, Flight Red Fifty". He helped the others escape from the city, though he returned to retrieve HiFi. Steven fell from a great height when the Daleks destroyed the Mechanoid City. Luckily, he stumbled through the jungle and found the Doctor's TARDIS and entered it as the Doctor and Vicki Pallister were saying goodbye to their former companions, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright. Before the Doctor and Vicki returned to the TARDIS, Steven passed out in a dead faint. (TV: The Chase) When Steven recovered, he found the TARDIS had re-materialised in England in 1066. The Doctor explained briefly how the TARDIS worked and that the TARDIS would blend in with its surroundings. Steven's natural sarcasm showed as he commented, "That rock over there looks just like a blue box". Despite his sharp wit, Steven was good-humoured. He was also independent, and had good leadership skills. He had also brought HiFi with him, but left it in the TARDIS. (TV: The Time Meddler)

In the city of Troy, Steven temporarily adopted the name "Diomede". He was wounded in the shoulder by a sword thrust and suffered blood poisoning. A temple handmaiden called Katarina, whom the travellers had met earlier, nursed him back to health and helped him return to the TARDIS. (TV: The Myth Makers) Once he had recovered, Steven faced some of the worst experiences of his life. Katarina and two new allies, siblings Bret Vyon and Sara Kingdom, all died violently in the midst of a complicated series of events which ranged from the planet Kembel in 4000 through time and space. Minutes after the death of Sara Kingdom, Steven asked the Doctor, in the waste that the Time Destructor had made of Kembel, if he considered the loss of so many lives worthwhile to defeat the Daleks. (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan)

After the Daleks and Mavic Chen had been defeated, the TARDIS materialised in London in 1966. There they encounter the Fulgurites, who were involved in the trafficking of humans across the galaxy for slave labour with the full knowledge of the British government. The Doctor and Steven put an end to the Fulgurites' activities with the assistance of a young city trader named Oliver Harper, who joined the TARDIS crew. (AUDIO: The Perpetual Bond) Oliver travelled with the Doctor and Steven briefly. He met his death at the hands of the Vardans on the asteroid Grace Alone while saving his companions' lives. (AUDIO: The First Wave)

When the travellers arrived in Paris in August 1572, Steven was disgusted by the Doctor's abandonment of his Huguenot friends, in particular the young Anne Chaplet. He was so disillusioned that he left the TARDIS when it had returned to London in 1966, but returned to warn the Doctor that two policemen were approaching. He met Dodo Chaplet, who was possibly, he thought, a descendant of Anne Chaplet, proving she had lived. (TV: The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve) When Dodo Chaplet joined the Doctor and Steven, he picked up her cold virus, as he had no immunity to it. (TV: The Ark)

Leaving the Doctor
Steven ended up disguising himself to save a younger version of himself from being killed at the hands of the Rocket Men. After this he began to wonder if his time with the Doctor was nearing its end. (AUDIO:  Return of the Rocket Men) Eventually, the experiences that Steven had on his travels led him to decide to use his skills and training to help rebuild a civilisation. When Chal invited him to help the Elders and the Savages live together, he accepted the challenge and left the TARDIS. (TV: The Savages)

Later life
Many years after he had left the TARDIS, he was transported to an alternative version of the Death Zone on Gallifrey by Borusa. Once there, he was soon reunited with not only the Doctor, by then in his fifth incarnation, but Ian and Sara, whom he learned had been essentially brought back from the dead. He also met the Doctor's later companions Polly Wright and Nyssa. Steven and his fellow former companions assisted the Doctor in defeating the Daleks and the Sontarans, who had likewise been brought to the alternative Death Zone using a Time Scoop. As a Sontaran scout ship had landed on the Elders' planet several years earlier, Steven was aware that a Sontaran could be incapacitated by striking their probic vent. Before the Doctor was transported to the Capitol with a transmat recall device supplied by, he promised his former companions that he would check up on them soon. Once the Doctor had gone, Steven was the first to acknowledge that, in spite of his best intentions, they would most likely never see him again.

As the Doctor told his former companions that their memories could be hazy after being returned to their respective native eras by the Time Lords, it is unclear how much of his experiences in the alternative Death Zone Steven remembered. (AUDIO: The Five Companions)

Other information

 * The Doctor did not give Steven his own TARDIS key until late in his travels. (PROSE: The Empire of Glass)
 * The Doctor took pains to ensure that Steven did not draw undue attention to himself during their travels together. When the TARDIS materialised in the American Wild West, Steven wore a flashy, inaccurate recreation of Western dress which he had procured from the TARDIS wardrobe. He fancied himself "Dead-eye Steve, the fastest, meanest gun in the West". The Doctor introduced him as "Steven Regret, tenor." Fortunately, Steven could sing and play the piano or this cover would have been almost as eye-catching as Steven's own idea. (TV: The Gunfighters)
 * Steven was unaware that the Doctor was a Time Lord and was unfamiliar with the concept of regeneration until reunited with the Doctor in the alternative Death Zone on Gallifrey. (AUDIO: The Five Companions)
 * Vicki once described Steven as a "handsome space pilot." (AUDIO: The Suffering)

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