Vislor Turlough

Junior Ensign Commander Vislor Turlough was a companion of the Fifth Doctor.

He travelled principally alongside Tegan Jovanka, but also had a few adventures with Nyssa and Kamelion. He briefly met and saved the life of Peri Brown in Lanzarote on 8 May 1984 before leaving the Doctor's company. He also had significant interaction with Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, the First Doctor and Susan Foreman. He encountered but did not speak with the Second and Third Doctors and Sarah Jane Smith. After leaving the TARDIS, he also met the Tenth Doctor and Emily Winter.

Turlough was a complex individual. His motivations were often unclear to those around him. He was for a time willingly under the influence of the Black Guardian. During this period, he tried to kill the Doctor. After overcoming the Black Guardian, he was a mostly-trusted member of the TARDIS crew, but there were still moments where his actions were questioned. It was only at the end of his time on the TARDIS that the Doctor finally discovered the truth about how Turlough ended up on Earth and why he was susceptible to the Black Guardian in the first place.

The Doctor once indicated that what made Turlough such an interesting travelling companion was that he never knew what Turlough was thinking.

Life on Trion
Turlough, known in his youth as "Vis", (AUDIO: Kiss of Death) was born on Trion to a rich family who owned several planets (AUDIO: Kiss of Death) and grew up in a house deep within a forest. (PROSE: Turlough and the Earthlink Dilemma) As a child, he did not keep a diary as he did not want to risk others finding out his secrets. (AUDIO: Ringpullworld) He remembered a time before the Trion Civil War, when he was fascinated by the neon and plasticity of Trion. (PROSE: The King of Terror)

When he was still young, the Civil War began and his mother was killed. (TV: Planet of Fire, PROSE: The King of Terror) He fell in love with Deela, whose father was on the opposite side to Turlough's family. Once their families found out, they were forbidden from seeing one another. (AUDIO: Kiss of Death)

As part of his education, Turlough was taken around the factories on Regal where he was overwhelmed by the size of the operation and did a compulsory six month primary logic course at his first grade school. He studied with Juras Maateh before they both chose to go to institutes thousands of kilometres apart, Turlough electing to study astrophysics whilst she chose to study physical engineering. They continued to visit one another thanks to the VT system until their differing political opinions on the Civil War got in the way of their friendship. (PROSE: Turlough and the Earthlink Dilemma)

Turlough went on to join the military, holding the rank and serial number of "Junior Ensign Commander Vislor Turlough, VTEC9/12/44". He and his family were on the losing side of the war, resulting in his father and infant brother, Malkon, being exiled to Sarn. Due to his outspokenness, Turlough was exiled to Earth, watched over by an eccentric solicitor, where he could learn humility. (TV: Planet of Fire, PROSE: Turlough and the Earthlink Dilemma)

Life on Earth
Turlough was enrolled at Brendon Public School in England, with the solicitor sorting things with Mr Sellick. (TV: Mawdryn Undead) Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart was told that Turlough came from Coventry. (PROSE: The King of Terror) Unbeknownst to Turlough, fellow student Charlie Gibbs was also a Trion. (AUDIO: Eldrad Must Die!) The two had once scaled the wall of the girls' school, causing the girls to scream and Gibbs to fall and break his collarbone. (AUDIO: The Memory Bank) The atmosphere of Earth made him asthmatic and prone to nausea and migraine, meaning that he often abstained from PE.

His peers included Bolam, Matthewson, McMullen, Pradie, Rogerson, Shaw major, Shaw minor and Watt, (PROSE: The King of Terror) as well as his best friend Ibbotson, whom he nicknamed Hippo. (AUDIO: Devil in the Mist) He spent half-term with the Ibbotsons in Weston-super-Mare (AUDIO: The Memory Bank) and once watched a film about Zulu warriors with Hippo on a wet Sunday afternoon. (PROSE: Deep Blue)

Turlough was far more intelligent than any of his peers, for which he was bullied and had his head plunged down the toilet. He tried to run away a number of times but was always brought back and beaten with shoes, straps and canes. (PROSE: The King of Terror) On one occasion, he and Peter Smythe took the trophies from the sports cabinet and dumped them in the school pond. (AUDIO: The Memory Bank)

Although Turlough did not like living on Earth and especially hated reading the works of William Shakespeare, (AUDIO: The Emerald Tiger) he did enjoy learning History (AUDIO: Phantasmagoria) and had a fondness for America, enjoying American football, although he did not understand the rules, (PROSE: The King of Terror) and wanting to visit New York. (AUDIO: Black Thursday)

Deal with the Black Guardian
In 1983, after eight years on Earth, (PROSE: Turlough and the Earthlink Dilemma) Turlough was contacted by the Black Guardian who offered him his freedom in return for him killing the Fifth Doctor. Sick of the planet, Turlough agreed and ingratiated himself with the Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan Jovanka by helping them defeat Mawdryn and resolve a temporal paradox, after which he asked to join them on their travels. An initial attempt to kill the Doctor was by bashing him with a rock, but he was interrupted. (TV: Mawdryn Undead)

Aboard the TARDIS, Turlough was given Adric's bedroom. (TV: Terminus) His first adventure was to the Gardens of the Dead where he was under the painful control of the Black Guardian. (AUDIO: Gardens of the Dead) In the Cloisters on Gallifrey, he, Nyssa and Tegan convinced the Doctor to help Ophiuchus to regenerate. (COMIC: Ophiuchus)

He followed the Guardian's instructions to remove the Heart of the TARDIS, causing the TARDIS to begin breaking up and form a link with Terminus where Turlough was to kill the Doctor. He failed in his task and was given one final chance by the Guardian. Whilst he was in the TARDIS, Nyssa left the crew and remained on Terminus. (TV: Terminus) Tegan and Turlough later found themselves separated from the Doctor in 1904 St Petersburg where they solved a murder on a train. Tegan was untrusting of him and believed that he was capable of killing. (PROSE: Gudok)

Turlough became loath to carry out his mission as he grew fonder of the Time Lord. Finally, he destroyed a prize that would have guaranteed his freedom and his pact with the Black Guardian rather than kill the Doctor, ending his association with the Black Guardian and becoming a loyal member of the Doctor's team. (TV: Enlightenment)

Older Nyssa and E-Space
Turlough's first adventure as a free man was to Arizona where he was kidnapped by and forcibly joined Thaddeus P. Winklemeyer's freakshow. He learnt that Winklemeyer sold the locals a liquid containing an organism that would digest any who drank it. (AUDIO: Freakshow) Despite being free, he still worried that the Black Guardian would punish him. (PROSE: Falling from Xi'an)

Two days after leaving Terminus, the TARDIS landed on Helheim where the crew were reunited with Nyssa, fifty years in her future. After they found a way to flush out the Cractids, Nyssa joined them on their adventures, (AUDIO: Cobwebs) which included 29th century Chodor where Turlough was mistaken as a Taker, (AUDIO: The Whispering Forest) the Manussan Empire where he spent an extended period of time with Nyssa (AUDIO: The Cradle of the Snake) and Samur where they faced Sontarans, some of whom Turlough outranked. (AUDIO: Heroes of Sontar)

On Vektris, Turlough was reunited with his old love Deela, whom he had last seen in their special place "three years, nine months, and seventeen days" ago. However, Deela ended up betraying the TARDIS team. (AUDIO: The Kiss of Death) He helped defeat the Rat King (AUDIO: Rat Trap) and Cyril Haggard (AUDIO: The Emerald Tiger) before being trapped in Eight slash Q Panenka's Unstable Zone with the Doctor and had to wear atmospheric suits. (AUDIO: The Jupiter Conjunction)

Whilst en route to Brisbane, the TARDIS was caught in a time corridor which sent Turlough and Nyssa to the 50th century where they spent two years waiting for the Doctor to come for them. During the two years, Turlough acted as Nyssa's secretary as she investigated Magnus Greel. (AUDIO: The Butcher of Brisbane) In Ambermouth, Turlough went to visit Charlie Gibbs and learnt that he too was a Trion. After defeating Eldrad, Mulkris offered him the opportunity of joining him in tracking down other remnants of the Kastrian, but he decided that he belonged in the TARDIS. (AUDIO: Eldrad Must Die!)

After adventures in 1983 Frodsham (AUDIO: The Lady of Mercia) and on Valderon, (AUDIO: Prisoners of Fate) the TARDIS slipped through a Charged Vacuum Emboitment into E-Space. Turlough and Nyssa were taken captive by Yan Fara and his new Outlers on Alzarius (AUDIO: Mistfall) and he later fled for his life over the tundra of Isenfel. (AUDIO: Equilibrium) On Apollyon, Nyssa remained behind so that Turlough, the Doctor and Tegan could return to N-Space. (AUDIO: The Entropy Plague)

With the Doctor and Tegan
The Doctor attempted to land the TARDIS on Turlough's home planet of Trion, but instead landed in 1215 England where Turlough was threatened with torture by Hugh Fitzwilliam before imprisoned them both, as well as Hugh's mother, Isabella. He was freed by Geoffrey de Lacy and supported the idea of Kamelion joining the TARDIS crew. Although they had been planning to go to Trion, the Doctor instead chose to take them to the Eye of Orion. (TV: The King's Demons) On the way, a phoenix appeared in the TARDIS (PROSE: The Bird of Fire) and Kamelion was influenced by the Mara in Tegan's mind. (Mark of the Medusa)

Two days after leaving 1215, the TARDIS arrived in the Crystal Bucephalus where Turlough, the Doctor and Tegan were arrested for murder and Kamelion. He helped to defeat Maximillian Arrestis, who controlled Kamelion, (PROSE: The Crystal Bucephalus) and the Guardian of the Spring on Rastana (AUDIO: Devil in the Mist) before visiting 1902 Abertysswg (AUDIO: Black Thursday) and 1984 York where he and the Doctor had to search for their robot companion. (AUDIO: Power Game) He was willing to sacrifice himself for his friends on Mekalion where Kamelion decided not to venture out of the TARDIS with his crewmates anymore. (AUDIO: The Kamelion Empire)

After finally arriving at the Eye of Orion, Turlough, the Doctor and Tegan were taken to the Death Zone. Whilst the Doctor and Tegan took part in the Game of Rassilon, Turlough remained in the TARDIS with Susan Campbell. (TV: The Five Doctors) Afterwards, they returned to the Eye of Orion where Turlough and the Doctor played cricket before being attacked by a Raston Warrior Robot, whom they defeated with the help of the Eighth Doctor, (PROSE: The Eight Doctors) and, following their departure, they once again came across the Sontarans. (PROSE: Sontar's Little Helpers)

In the TARDIS, Tegan attempted to show Turlough what the Fourth Doctor looked like using Kamelion. (PROSE: Qualia) They faced the Master, who shrunk Turlough with his Tissue Compression Eliminator, (PROSE: The Velvet Dark) and visited Oxaqua, (PROSE: The Oxaqua Incident) Mesique, (PROSE: Winter on Mesique) Melphis (PROSE: Class 4 Renegade) and 1980s London where he was reunited with his old teacher, the Brigadier. (PROSE: The Nemertines)

Several weeks after leaving the Death Zone, the TARDIS crew visited Verbatim Six where Turlough met Huxley, his novelisor, who reminded him of Hippo. In the Ringpullworld, he chose to save a race who turned out to be warlike, and he later asked Huxley to tell him the future. (AUDIO: Ringpullworld) Further adventures took Turlough to Moon Village One, (COMIC: The Lunar Strangers) Sector 19, where they encountered the Master and the Cybermen (PROSE: Birth of a Renegade) and Sea Base 4, where he met and had little sympathy for the Silurians and Sea Devils. He was forced to shoot one to save the Doctor. (TV: Warriors of the Deep) To recover, the crew went to Tayborough Sands where their peace was interrupted by the Xaranti. (PROSE: Deep Blue)

Turlough met and saved Tegan's grandfather, Andrew Verney, in Little Hodcombe (TV: The Awakening) and was joined for a month by Will Chandler. After Will left, Turlough visited the Trion solicitor and left with a bloodied nose. He was later kidnapped in Los Angeles where he was poked, prodded and anally probed by the Jex. (PROSE: The King of Terror) He almost bumped into Peri Brown and Erimem on Earth (PROSE: Graham Dilley Saves the World) and visited Lant Land (PROSE: Lant Land) before going Christmas shopping, (PROSE: Last Minute Shopping) preventing Margaret Thatcher's assassination, (PROSE: The Assassin's Story) fighting Sextus Cornelius in Rome, (PROSE: Rome) visiting the Isle of Mona and being kidnapped by Adam Mitchell. (COMIC: The Forgotten)

On Frontios, Turlough's race memory caused him to collapse into catatonia, eventually remembering the Tractators' weakness. (TV: Frontios) Turlough later spent some time wandering a Dalek ship and said a brief farewell to Tegan as she made her spontaneous exit from TARDIS life, giving her a handshake. (TV: Resurrection of the Daleks)

With just the Doctor
A trip to 2144 Reykjavik resulted in Turlough and the Doctor almost being arrested for the crimes of the Bratanian Shroud. Turlough managed to escape the crime scene only to be possessed by the Shroud. The Shroud forced Turlough to return to the Doctor and try to kill him, but the Doctor purged the Shroud from Turlough's mind with a wave disruptor. (AUDIO: Repeat Offender)

Attempting to examine himself during a trip to the Moon and a meeting with the British Imperial Spacefleet, Turlough found himself uncomfortable with the view of his personality presented by his reading of Richard Haliwell's diary, feeling uncomfortably selfish after contrasting his actions with Haliwell's Victorian nobility. He briefly fell in love with Lytalia, apparently a Phiadoran prisoner on the Moon, but she was soon revealed to actually be possessed by a Vrall. (PROSE: Imperial Moon)

His other solo adventures with the Doctor involved taking down Nikolas Valentine in 1702 (AUDIO: Phantasmagoria), meeting werewolves in Brazil (AUDIO: Loups-Garoux) and defeating the Somnus Foundation in Russia. (AUDIO: Singularity) He and the Doctor also visited the Memory Bank, Vadhoc, and the Pandana system. (AUDIO: The Memory Bank and Other Stories)

Now fearing a return home, Turlough destroyed a distress beacon from a Trion ship, attempted to disable Kamelion who he believed was reacting to the beacon and was reluctant to contact his people. Despite his initial fear, he eventually accepted personal responsibility, potentially trading his freedom for the lives of the population of Sarn as he called Trion for help. (TV: Planet of Fire)

Departure
After discovering that his younger brother was still alive and the persecution of political prisoners had long been abandoned on Trion, Turlough finally left the TARDIS to return home, after effectively putting the Doctor ("who gets into the most terrible trouble") in the hands of new companion Peri Brown. (TV: Planet of Fire) Later, as he regenerated, the Doctor had visions of several of his past companions, including Turlough. (TV: The Caves of Androzani)

Later life
Upon returning to Trion, Turlough was heralded as a hero due to having returned from exile. He had a career in politics waiting for him, but he chose not to pursue it nor to embrace his status as a celebrity, instead touring archaeological sites of interest to the research the Laima. He and his old friend Juras Maateh began to build a space-time vessel using Turlough's knowledge of the TARDIS by installing an ARTEMIS drive into a Style 976 Interstellar Hawk. His aim was to prevent the entropic decay of N-Space.

Turlough and Juras were joined by the Magician, who claimed to be there to observe their progress. The ARTEMIS drive ended up creating various different timelines and he learnt from his future self, who led the Gardsormr, that Rehctaht was alive within Juras. Turlough killed her before going back in time and persuading Rehctaht to enter his mind instead, after which the Magician was able to help him resist and kill her. The Magician took him his TARDIS to a timeline in which he died whilst trying to kill Rehctaht, where he took his dead self's place and was reunited with Juras and presented his people with ARTEMIS. (PROSE: Turlough and the Earthlink Dilemma)

On Trion, Turlough was visited by the Tenth Doctor and Emily Winter after finding a diary that purported to be his. However, Turlough confirmed that he had never kept a diary. The Doctor later found that it had been planted by the Advocate. (COMIC: Tesseract, Don't Step on the Grass, Final Sacrifice)

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

At another point, Turlough was abducted by Adam Mitchell as part his plan to get revenge on the Doctor, in collaboration with. He 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)

Personality
Turlough was selfish, always shielding himself from blame. (TV: Mawdryn Undead) He could lie convincingly to most; some, such as Tegan Jovanka and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, were not fooled. (TV: Mawdryn Undead, Terminus)

Although usually quick to retreat, Turlough was not so much a coward as a survivalist, preferring to avoid danger and situations he felt he couldn't change. (TV: Warriors of the Deep, Resurrection of the Daleks)

Tegan did not like Turlough at first, finding him untrustworthy and with the manners of a pig. She did not approve of the Doctor letting Turlough consider the Black Guardian's offer, believing Turlough would choose the crystal. However, the Doctor was confident in Turlough's morals. Nevertheless, Tegan often tried to persuade him to banish Turlough from the TARDIS. (TV: Terminus, Enlightenment; AUDIO: Cobwebs)

He saved a Phiadoran female to whom he was attracted from a large drop. He appeared to fall in love with Lytalia, but this was later revealed to be a complex deception on the part of the Phiadorans, as the species were currently serving as 'hosts' to the ruthless Vrall and had manipulated men to do their bidding even on their own. Despite this, his experience during this encounter encouraged him to take a closer look at himself and determine who he wanted to be compared to his past actions. (PROSE: Imperial Moon)

Despite the Black Guardian's attempts to vilify the Doctor, he recognised the Doctor's good intentions. On numerous occasions, he tried to make the Black Guardian reconsider his order to kill the Time Lord. (TV: Terminus, Enlightenment) Although he initially expressed a desire to return to his homeworld and at one point asked the Doctor to take him home, (TV: Enlightenment) after he had spent more time travelling with the Doctor he grew reluctant to return. Turlough used the tranquillity felt at the Eye of Orion to draw. (TV: The Five Doctors) On another occasion, the Doctor took him to medieval Europe as he believed that the scenery would inspire him to draw. (AUDIO: The Last Fairy Tale) He also liked to paint. (AUDIO: The Memory Bank) He understood the TARDIS systems well enough to run a diagnostic (TV: The Five Doctors) and programmed the TARDIS to rescue the Doctor and Peri. (TV: Planet of Fire)

The Doctor once compared Turlough and Tegan to bickering siblings. (AUDIO: Freakshow)

He claimed not to be a people person. (AUDIO: The Memory Bank)

Appearance
Turlough was as thin as a willow and had an unworldly, pre-Raphaelite appearance thanks to his auburn hair, blue eyes and thin, sharp-boned face. (PROSE: Mawdryn Undead, Warriors of the Deep) He had a hint of the shifty and unreliable about him, making him look like he could be a school bully or school sneak, but was still attractive. (PROSE: The Eight Doctors) He wore a dark blazer, flannels and straggly striped tie. (PROSE: Warriors of the Deep)

Behind the scenes

 * Turlough was the last male companion to travel with the Doctor on-screen until Adam Mitchell, who joined in the episode Dalek in 2005.
 * Turlough was the last in a seven-year run of non-human televised companions who inhabited the TARDIS, beginning in 1977 with K9 Mark I. Others included K9 Mark II, Romana I, Romana II, Adric, Nyssa and, nominally, Kamelion.
 * When he was introduced in 1983, Turlough became the first televised companion since Jo Grant not to have travelled with the Fourth Doctor.
 * Mark Strickson himself did not have red hair. He dyed his hair for the role, as his natural fair hair was seen by John Nathan-Turner as too similar to Peter Davison's Fifth Doctor hairstyle.
 * Turlough's serial number, VTEC9/12/44, was derived from the date of birth of Eric Saward.

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