Melanie Bush

Melanie Bush, BSc (Hons) — or simply Mel or Melanie — (born 22 July 1964) was a computer programmer from Pease Pottage, West Sussex, who hailed from the decades that surrounded the turn of the 21st century. (PDA: Business Unusual, BFA: Catch-1782, BFA: The Juggernauts) Like Frobisher, she was a companion who travelled with the Doctor both before and after his sixth regeneration. Unlike the Whifferdill, however, she was with him at the actual moment of regeneration.

She had a temporally complex relationship with the Doctor, in which she met the Doctor in a different order than he met her, as River Song later would. Eventually their timelines synchronised, and she was able to have a more-or-less linear relationship to the Doctor, starting in the later period of his sixth life. Her temporal relationship to the seventh version of the Doctor was considerably more straightforward and linear. Even so, her travels with both versions of the Doctor mainly had to do with time paradoxes in general and/or her own alternate timelines.

Biography
Because Mel's timeline was confused with respect to the Doctor, it was difficult to state with authority the order in which events happened to her.

Before the Doctor
Melanie Bush was born to Alan and Christine (probably née Hallam) Bush, some twenty-five years prior to beginning her travels with the Doctor in 1989. As a child, Mel took dancing lessons from a woman named Miss Fairs, and enjoyed the music of ABBA and The Bee Gees. (PDA: Business Unusual) Mel read the entire canon of Sherlock Holmes by the age of nine. (BFA: Unregenerate!)

Melanie had a keen interest in science from a very young age. Her uncle, Dr. John Hallam — likely her mother's brother — was deeply influential to this childhood obsession, and she credited him with her later academic success at a London university. In 2003, Hallam told his colleague, Professor David Munro, that Mel was "very gifted" with computers. (BFA: Catch-1782) As a consequence of her education, she was adept in the human computer languages of BASIC, COBOL and FORTRAN. (BFA: The Juggernauts)

At the time of her initial encounter with the Sixth Doctor she was working at a summer job with Brighton Information Technologies, a prerequisite for a full time job with ACL Services, Ltd.

Her home address was 36 Downview Crescent in Pease Pottage. (PDA: Business Unusual) She regularly used this address as a backdoor when writing code. For instance, she used it to override programming on the Juggernauts. (BFA: The Juggernauts)

Though a young career woman at the time she travelled with the Doctor, she once told Evelyn Smythe on the planet Világ that she had never been in love. (BFA: Thicker than Water)

With respect to the Doctor
Mel first met the Sixth Doctor in Brighton in 1989 when she was twenty-five. However, as a consequence of the Doctor's trial prosecuted by the Valeyard, he already knew her. To him their first meeting was when she was pulled from her timestream by the Time Lords and made to testify on the Doctor's behalf. For an indeterminate time — from the moment she met him in Brighton until the younger Sixth Doctor returned her to the side of an older Sixth Doctor on the planet Oxyveguramosa — he had to pretend that he had originally met her in Brighton, as well. (PDA: Business Unusual, MA: Time of Your Life) It was only after she was returned to his future self that their timelines synchroniseded, and he was able to progress with her in a more forthright way. Mel and the Sixth Doctor's timelines were not asynchronous merely due to the unusual way in which they met. Even after their respective timelines seemed to come into harmony, Mel was often parted from the Sixth Doctor. At least twice, she was stranded for months away from him, even though very little time passed for him. When carried back in time to 1781 by a freak accident, the Doctor was unable to retrieve her until six months later in 1782. (BFA: Catch-1782 Later, she was accidentally left on Lethe, and the Doctor was delayed for an additional three months. (BFA: The Juggernauts) On both occasions she became fully a resident of the new era in which she found herself while waiting for the Doctor's uncertain return.

Her timeline with respect to the Seventh Doctor was, by contrast, considerably better synchronized — though they, too, were heavily involved in a variety of time anomalies.

With respect to companions
Her chronological placement with respect to other companions was also tricky. Technically, she both pre-dated and post-dated Evelyn Smythe. One time, for instance, Smythe – or as she was then, Rossiter —called Mel "my replacement". (BFA: Thicker than Water) Though they disagreed on many other aspects of Bush's and Smythe's first meeting, another account agreed that the bulk of Mel's travels with the Doctor was after Evelyn's. (PDA: Instruments of Darkness) This view of events was likely one Mel held only at the moment of the encounter. The Mel from the trial had not yet been taken out of her timestream by the Time Lords; the Mel who met Evelyn would not yet have had knowledge that she had met the Doctor long before their "first" encounter in Brighton. From the Doctor's perspective, he met Mel at the trial, took her back to her proper time, met Evelyn (either before or after he encountered Charley Pollard and an older Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe Heriot), traveled with Evelyn, re-encountered Mel in Brighton, re-encountered Evelyn, then regenerated and continued traveling with Mel in his Seventh persona. Even less certain was Mel's placement with respect to Frobisher. Clearly, the Doctor met Frobisher when he was primarily traveling with Peri, although for some of that time, she was on hiatus back in the United States. (DWM: Kane's Story) Equally clearly, Frobisher knew of the outcome of the Doctor's trial by the Time Lords; he knew, for instance, of Peri's marriage to Yrcanos. (GN: The Age of Chaos) Frobisher also briefly continued his journeys with the Doctor's seventh persona. (DWM: A Cold Day in Hell!) This suggests some overlap with Mel's time in the TARDIS, but no account definitively establishes that the two ever met.

Departure
Mel was highly unusual amongst the Doctor's human companions,. She chose to leave him at a place and time radically different from her origin, without being enticed by a romantic relationship. Unlike most companions, she left the Doctor, but remained an adventurer. Trading one travelling companion for another, she departed the Doctor's side on the planet Iceworld, only to begin her travels with the galactic confidence trickster, Sabalom Glitz. It was unclear at that time how or if she expected to ever return home. (DW: Dragonfire)

Going home
Mel traveled with Glitz for about six months before deciding to try to go home. On her way she detoured to the planet Avalone, where she ended up working at a holiday camp owned by Avalonian Resorts, Inc.. Her progress towards Earth was halted and she succumbed to life on Avalone. After two years she chanced another run at Earth. She hacked into computer systems to send a message to Glitz to pick her up. Instead, she was "rescued" by Dr. Who and Jason, who imprisoned her in the Galactic Prison in the Land of Fiction. There, she met another prisoner, the Seventh Doctor. He, however, was a changed and considerably darker man than she had known. He revealed to her that he had manipulated her into leaving him on Iceworld because he knew what was coming (as Time's Champion) and couldn't have her as a companion. Incensed, she avoided his company and refused to travel with him in the TARDIS ever again. Ace, who was also much changed from the person she'd left behind on Iceworld, tried to calm her and explain the reasons she and the Doctor were so much "harder" than the people she had known. Although the explanation did little to dispel her disillusionment, Mel accepted a ride from Ace. Mel thus returned to Pease Pottage in the 1990s thanks to Ace's time hopper. (NA: Head Games)

There was another account of her return to Pease Pottage, but it was unclear whether it described events that followed the angry final encounter with the Seventh Doctor, or an entirely different return journey. (ST: Missing, Part One: Business as Usual) This second account seemed to indicate her return was not effected by the Doctor's 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. (ST: Missing, Part Two: Message in a Bottle)

Alternative timelines
While her return to Earth and possible death were perhaps the most obvious signs that the various accounts probably described different Melanies, there were other signs. She knew of at least one other version of herself in an adventure on the planet Puxatornee. (BFA: Flip-Flop) Likewise, she could not ignore the potential of thousands of other versions of herself when the the Sixth Doctor took her to Library of Carsus to explore the fact that some parallel universes had disappeared. (PDA: Spiral Scratch)

At some times she may not have been aware of other realities, but neutral observers could not rectify conflicting information about her life. There was an alternate reality in which Mel became the British Prime Minister who led the United Kingdom against an invasion of Cybermen, only to be betrayed by an alternate version of the Third Doctor who had never ended his exile. (PDA: The Quantum Archangel) Mel's relationship with another of the Doctor's companions, Evelyn Smythe, also appeared to reveal alternate realities. It was particularly murky whether the Mel who bade farewell to Evelyn Smythe on Világ (BFA: Thicker than Water) was the same Mel who met her on Earth. (PDA: Instruments of Darkness) As Mel's trip to Carsus made clear, it was possible that neither of these Mels traveled with the the Sixth Doctor in the prime universe. (BFA: Spiral Scratch)

A timeline existed in which Mel never returned home, but died on the planet Heritage in the 61st century. (PDA: Heritage) This turned out to be the doing of the Council of Eight. The Council had eliminated the Doctor's companions from the timeline by causing their deaths. This was corrected when the Doctor's eighth incarnation defeated the Council. (EDA: Sometime Never...)

In a timeline in which Mel never met the Doctor, she died of a brain tumour on Earth in 2012. In another timeline, she died in the crash of the spaceship Nosferatu II while travelling with Sabalom Glitz. In yet another timeline, she travelled as the companion of the Valeyard, the Doctor's alternative self. (BFDWU: He Jests at Scars...)

Personality
Mel had a cheery 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 skepticism borne of her scientific education. Her generally perky personality could cool quite quickly if she detected a threat to either herself, the Doctor, or any friend. (DW: Terror of the Vervoids, BFA: 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 she didn't quite trust. (BFA: The Fires of Vulcan)

She tried to befriend Delta and could see she was distressed. (DW: Delta and the Bannermen)

Mel prided herself on her innate honesty, (BFA: Red, DW: The Ultimate Foe) and disliked inventing stories to explain away the Doctor's TARDIS' materialisation to those who witnessed it. (BFA: The Fires of Vulcan)

An extraordinary mind
Mel had at least a couple of outstanding skills. First, she possessed — like Zoe Heriot — an eidetic memory. (DW: Terror of the Vervoids, The Ultimate Foe) It was not, however, an absolute photographic memory, as it failed her when her mind was clouded by emotion. (BFA: 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. (BFA: The Juggernauts, Red)

A screamer with a steely resolve
Mel's reaction to fear was variable. She sometimes met danger with a loud scream (DW: Terror of the Vervoids, Paradise Towers, Time and the Rani). She was also possessed of an almost steely resolve. She might have cowered in fear upon first meeting the Vervoids and Tetraps, but she composed herself quickly after a scream. On other occasions, she displayed little fear at all. She showed a relatively even temperament when defeating the Valeyard (DW: The Ultimate Foe) and facing down the Bannermen (DW: Delta and the Bannermen). 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 he had the chance. (BFA: 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. (BFA: 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. (BFA: Red)

The logic of healthy living
Mel was a health enthusiast and a vegetarian, often encouraging the slightly portly Sixth Doctor to exercise more. Though she remained staunchly vegetarian throughout her travels with the Doctor, (BFA: The Fires of Vulcan) her attempts to be the Doctor's de facto nutritionist almost vanished after that incarnation regenerated.

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. (BFA: Catch-1782) Neither did she believe in fate. (BFA: The Juggernauts)

Relationship with the Doctor
In her dealings with both of "her" Doctors, Mel was warmly affectionate. She sometimes found herself separated from him for months on end, and always extremely glad to see him return. (BFA: 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."

- Mel, in BFA: The Vanity Box

The manner of her departure from the Doctor was also gently affectionate (DW: Dragonfire) and her emotional reaction and tears were genuine when she thought him dead. (BFA: The Wishing Beast, The Vanity Box) However, her proactive lifestyle led her to be bossy to both her Doctors. Not only did she try to reform the Sixth Doctor's health standards, but she also demanded and apparently got him to lose his multi-coloured outfit for a time. (BFA: Catch-1782) Likewise, she often spurred the Doctor to adventure, as when she insisted they stay on the Hyperion III to explore against his better judgment (DW: 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 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. (BFA: The Fires of Vulcan) Perhaps because of her highly adventurous nature, she sometimes found it difficult to cope with the mundane; she displayed reluctance at the sight of the rather ordinary Shangri-La holiday camp. (DW: Delta and the Bannermen)

Behind the scenes

 * Mel's last name is never uttered during any televised appearance, and the closing credits identify her only by her first name. Her surname is, however, regularly used in Big Finish Productions' audios and various stories told in other media.
 * 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.
 * In a completely non-canonical story, yet another version of Mel once again encountered the Valeyard. This version of Mel was much more cynical and hard than she was in the Doctor Who universe. (BFDWU: He Jests at Scars...)
 * Mel is one of the few companions of the Doctor whose timeline is out of sync with his timeline.