June (The Slitheen Excursion)

June was a university student from the 21st century studying Classics- a fact that had caused many people to ask why she didn’t take a proper subject but which the Doctor appreciated due to her studying simply for the sake of it-, June first encountered the Doctor while taking a trip to the Acropolis, where she helped him drive off a group of aliens who were attempting to plant a bomb powerful enough to blow up Greece. As thanks for her help, the Doctor offered to take her back to see the Acropolis when it was new, but in the process received a distress signal from the same area in the year 1500BC- over a thousand years before the date the Doctor was aiming for- resulting in June becoming caught up in the Doctor’s latest fight with the Slitheen as the two of them discovered that the crime family were running ‘package tours’ into the past, endangering human history as humanity became dependent on the aliens for survival rather than developing themselves.

During her time with the Doctor, June quickly demonstrated a great deal of courage and compassion, diving in to help the Doctor when she saw him being threatened by the aliens even without having spoken to him before. She also showed a great deal of initiative and a useful ability to think on her feet; when a Slitheen attempted to strangle the Doctor after he began to ask uncomfortable questions, she saved his life by claiming that he was actually there to review their tours for a magazine (Although this deception was eventually exposed).

While the Doctor was taken to examine the Slitheen’s time-travel technology- simultaneously manipulating it to broadcast the distress signal that drew him and June there in the first place-, June was forced to participate in some of the ‘displays’ organized by the Slitheen in the form of mock battles from future history demonstrating humanity’s brutality. However, June managed to win alien support for the humans when she was part of a group forced to re-enact the last battle of the Platonic war by arranging for the actors playing the humans to retreat before the ‘alien’ forces, prompting the aliens to grow increasingly supportive of humanity. During the subsequent riots, one of the Slitheen abducted an infant from one of the tourists in an attempt to use the child as a hostage, but when a young woman the Doctor and June had befriended took the child to try the same strategy, June was able to talk the woman down and convince her to return the child to its mother, helping the aliens to see that humans weren’t the monsters they believed them to be.

Outraged at this latest damage to their business, the Slitheen attempted to kill June, only for the tourists to rise up in anger against the Slitheen, forcing the Slitheen to activate an emergency measure that turned them into statues (Although the statues were subsequently shattered). After a quick stop-off in 952 BC to show June Athens like he had originally promised, the Doctor returned to the present, having deduced that the aliens he and June had encountered when they met had actually been trying to recover the now-‘dormant’ Slitheen- the Slitheen having reverted to stone as they waited for rescue-, the Doctor and June subsequently immobilising the Slitheen and leaving them for the aliens (Although June was forced to answer some questions from the police about the Slitheen’s attempts to capture her and the Doctor). With the Slitheen defeated and history restored, the Doctor and June parted company, June having difficulty coping with the death she had witnessed during her trip, although the Doctor agreed to help June out by giving her one last lift back home- with no diversions on this occasion- after she missed her train.

(NSA: The Slitheen Excursion)