Melanie Bush

Melanie Jane "Mel" Bush, BSc (Hons) was a companion of the Sixth and Seventh Doctors.

She hailed from Pease Pottage, West Sussex, at the turn of the 21st century. Although she was present for the Doctor's sixth regeneration, she did not witness it, as she was unconscious at the time after being exposed to a latent radiation which only knocked her out, but was fatal to Time Lords. As a result, the presence of a new incarnation of the Doctor confused her and made it hard to adjust to the differences in his appearance and personality.

She had a temporally complex relationship with the Sixth Doctor, as she met him in an order different than he met her, as Charley Pollard and River Song later would. Eventually, however, their timelines synchronised, and she had a more-or-less linear relationship to the Doctor, starting in the later period of his sixth incarnation. Her temporal relationship to the Seventh Doctor was considerably more straightforward and linear.

Early life
Mel was born on 22 July, 1964 to Alan and Christine Bush. (PROSE: Spiral Scratch) According to one account, she was an only child. (PROSE: Business Unusual) According to another, she lived at 8 Gosling Street in Croxdale, until she accidentally caused her older sister, Anabel, to fall down the stairs when Anabel was 3-years-old. After Anabel's death, the Bushes moved to Pease Pottage to separate themselves from the tragedy. (PROSE: Spiral Scratch)

Mel took dancing lessons from Miss Fairs, (PROSE: Business Unusual) and did combat training in the Pease Pottage community hall. (AUDIO: Terror of the Sontarans) At the age of 8, she committed the names of 150 different species of dinosaur to memory (AUDIO: The Wrong Doctors) and had read the entire canon of Sherlock Holmes by the age of 9. (AUDIO: Unregenerate!) When she was 10, she was bullied by Andy Ledger. (PROSE: The Best Joke I Ever Told) She was a Girl Guide and once, with her parents, walked through deep snow to their village hall whilst carrying all the props and costumes for a show for pensioners, though the pensioners did not show up. (AUDIO: The One Doctor)

At primary school, Mel made a replica of Mount Vesuvius out of papier mâché. (AUDIO: The Fires of Vulcan) She had a keen interest in science from a young age thanks to her uncle, John Hallam, (AUDIO: Catch-1782) and was talented in mathematics (PROSE: Business Unusual) and computers, becoming adept in the computer languages of BASIC, COBOL and FORTRAN. She regularly used her address - 36 Downview Crescent - as a backdoor when writing code. (AUDIO: The Juggernauts) In secondary school, she discovered vegetarianism. (PROSE: Spiral Scratch)

Mel went to either the University of West London (PROSE: Millennial Rites) or London University for three years and graduated with a degree in computer studies, (PROSE: Business Unusual) for which she would credit her uncle John, (AUDIO: Catch-1782) with whom she used to visit museums. (AUDIO: The Wrong Doctors) She dated Stuart Dale for more than two years whilst at university, and they had a long-distance relationship for a time after they graduated and he moved to the Middle East. The two eventually broke up (AUDIO: The Blood Furnace) and Mel would later say that she had never been in love. (AUDIO: Thicker Than Water)

Following her graduation, Mel received a number of offers from various companies, but chose ACL Services, Ltd, as it looked more rewarding to her, despite I2 offering a better financial package. To get the job, she was required to get experience in management and complete a summer placement at a local firm, for which she chose Brighton Information Technologies. She worked in the troubleshooting department under Peter Lovelady. (PROSE: Business Unusual)

Meeting the Doctor
Mel first met the Sixth Doctor in cauterised time in 1987 Pease Pottage, where a time demon possessing Stapleton Petherbridge used her ability for total recall to manipulate time. She sacrificed herself and forced Petherbridge into a temporal cul-de-sac, removing herself from time. The Doctor pieced her together with the right memories and left her behind without any memories of the events. (AUDIO: The Wrong Doctors)

In Brighton in 1989, Mel helped the Sixth Doctor and the Brigadier defeat a Usarian plot and a Nestene invasion. She quit her job at Brighton Information Technologies before stowing away in the TARDIS. The Doctor resigned himself to travelling with her. (PROSE: Business Unusual) According to other accounts, she joined the Doctor in 1986. (PROSE: Head Games; AUDIO: We Are The Daleks)

Adventures with the Sixth Doctor
Mel and the Doctor travelled to Vertipax where they met Mosca Ragazzo and prevented the Vervaloochenen from visiting and designating humans as pollution. (PROSE: The Deal) To celebrate the Doctor's 991st birthday, they went to the Royal Albion Hotel in Brighton where they were reunited with the Brigadier and accidentally introduced him to his future wife, Doris Wilson. (PROSE: A Wee Deoch an ...?) They also went to the Eye of Orion, (PROSE: A Tourist Invasion) 23rd century Andron, (PROSE: Mortal Thoughts) 1975 Hong Kong (PROSE: Old Boys) and an old woman's house where they defeated a giant insect that stole eyes. (PROSE: The Eyes Have It)

In the Generios system, Mel and the Doctor met Banto Zame, whom they exposed and left with the Cylinder, and Sally-Anne Stubbins. (AUDIO: The One Doctor) Mel spent two months apart from the Doctor living as a programmer on Lethe, working for a disguised Davros. She met the Daleks for the first time and, after being reunited with the Doctor, instructed the Juggernauts to kill Davros. (AUDIO: The Juggernauts) She spent a further six months at Hallam Hall as "Eleanor", suffering from amnesia. (AUDIO: Catch-1782) She met the Chelonians (PROSE: Fegovy) and, after finding herself unable to make sense of Dalek technology, decided to make sure to educate herself on future tech. (PROSE: The Best Joke I Ever Told)

Having heard of Evelyn Smythe from the Doctor, Mel and the Doctor went to Világ to visit her per Mel's request. She berated the Doctor for his attitude (AUDIO: Thicker Than Water) and later made him take an anger management class in 1986 Pease Pottage. (PROSE: Loud and Proud) She helped him defeat the Flux Beast (PROSE: Change Management) and the Wishing Beast (AUDIO: The Wishing Beast, The Vanity Box) and visited Switzerland, (AUDIO: Intuition) Hammerston, (PROSE: Swamp of Horrors (1957) - Viewing Notes) New New York (PROSE: Fairy Tale of New New York) and Tantane Spaceport. (AUDIO: Spaceport Fear) Whilst wandering around the TARDIS, she entered the Thrusk dimension within the Time-Space Visualiser and incited rebellion. (AUDIO: Mel-evolent)

Mel wondered what the Doctor was doing on his secret missions, unaware that he was not keeping to the diet that she had set him. (PROSE: The Man Who Wouldn't Give Up) They went to New Year's Eve 1999, after accidentally landing before Christmas, (PROSE: Dr Cadabra) and thwarted Ashley Chapel. By this time, Mel had received some TARDIS training. (PROSE: Millennial Rites) She helped fight the Vervoids aboard the Hyperion III, from which she was almost ejected, (TV: Terror of the Vervoids) and, on Oxyveguramosa, was taken by to give testimony at the Doctor's trial. (PROSE: The Ultimate Foe) She left Zenobia with a younger version of the Sixth Doctor, who left her in Pease Pottage for his future self to pick up (AUDIO: The Wrong Doctors) or returned her to Oxyveguramosa. (PROSE: The Ultimate Foe)

On Maradnias, Mel and the Doctor intervened in a civil war and narrowly escaped nuclear devastation for which the pair both blamed themselves. Mel asked to be dropped home but was instead dropped off in 2003 where they thwarted the Master, after which Mel forgave the Doctor and returned to travelling with him. (PROSE: The Quantum Archangel) According to one account, Mel first met Evelyn some time after, in 1993, and fought the Cylox. Afterwards, she asked the Doctor to invite Evelyn aboard to take her home, with Evelyn adding that she wanted to return via the "scenic route". (PROSE: Instruments of Darkness) Following the defeat of Diamond Sharp, the Doctor suggested that he and Mel reunite with the Brigadier. (PROSE: Sold Out) The two visited the tower of Kalsos, where Mel was almost killed when one of the floor's collapsed, as well as Ridius IV and future Earth. Remembering a poem, she helped Helgert Teveler remember the seed banks on Earth and helped fight the Eminence. (AUDIO: The Seeds of War)

Mel was present during the Doctor's regeneration, although she was unconscious at the time and did not witness it. According to one account, he suffered a fatal head injury whilst Mel was knocked out. (PROSE: Time and the Rani) Another said that the Doctor had been suffering from chronon energy starvation after a confrontation with the Lamprey. (PROSE: Spiral Scratch) A third said that Mel was rendered unconscious by radiation which, whilst harmless to her, was deadly to Time Lords and caused the Doctor to regenerate. (AUDIO: The Brink of Death)

Adventures with the Seventh Doctor
Whilst took the Seventh Doctor from the TARDIS, Mel was left behind and, upon waking, was caught in one of the Rani's traps from which she was saved by Ikona. She was reunited with the Doctor, whom she did not recognise and did not believe was him until he mentioned carrot juice and other memories. With Mel's help, the Doctor overcame his amnesia and they thwarted the Rani, liberating the Lakertyans. Assured by the new Doctor that he would grow on her, they left for adventures new. (TV: Time and the Rani)

The Doctor left Mel in 2007 for a time until she found the empty TARDIS. Following a message to follow Louis, she located the Doctor inside of a CIA laboratory, with the help of a cabbie. She showed Louis the error of his ways and left with the Doctor after the Time Lords' operation was ended. (AUDIO: Unregenerate!)

At some point during her travels with the Seventh Doctor, they visited the planet Nocturne (AUDIO: Nocturne) and Ancient Greece, where Mel corrected Euclid's geometry, much to his annoyance. (AUDIO: Mask of Tragedy) He also took her to 2040 Earth to see how far human technology advanced after she offered to help with his TARDIS repairs (PROSE: Daisy Chain) and to 1999 where she destroyed a Nestene meteor at a Millennium Party. (COMIC: Plastic Millenium) She and the Doctor become separated in the 20th century, with the Doctor in 1995 and Mel in 1935, where she met Michael Gregson. (PROSE: 24 Crawford Street)

In search of a swimming pool, Mel and the Doctor went to Paradise Towers, where she was almost eaten by Rezzies and befriended Pex before he died to kill Kroagnon. (TV: Paradise Towers) Pex's death remained on her mind, thinking about him when Oliver decided to join the British Army to kill Nazis. (PROSE: Special Weapons) In 1978, she sent Ly aboard the Water Carrier to poison the Cnidarians' water with salt, causing them to flee. (PROSE: The Invertebrates of Doom)

In search of Leptonite Crystals, Mel and the Doctor travelled to Puxatornee landing in a slum. Soon after they were captured as terrorist by a local Slithergee patrol. She was then interrogated by Professor Capra before being saved by Reed and Stuart. When Reed and Stuart wanted to go back in time to rewrite history she was used as a hostage to get the Doctor to do it. She was appalled at Stuart murdering Bailey. When visiting the new timeline she was intrigued that they already knew who she was when she was captured by Potter. After being freed by Reed and Stuart, they forced the Doctor and Mel to take them back to before they initially left. They then went back in time and got captured to maintain the timeline saying they were Slithergee spies and escaped before this timeline's Mel and the Doctor turned up. This version Mel and the Doctor landed here for Leptonite crystals and were immediately captured by Lt. Reed and Lt. Stuart for being spies and interrogated. They were then rescued by the original timelines Stuart and Reed and decided to visit professor Capra's time machine. She was caught in the time field of the machine and taken back in time. She was with Stuart when he stopped the assassination of Bailey. This created the timeline that the original Mel and the Doctor were from, and which Lt. Stuart and Lt. Bailey didn't like so forced the Doctor and Mel to take them back to where they started to stop Capra's experiment. Back on the day they arrived, the Doctor maintained the timeline into saying they were terrorist. They then left before the original Mel and the Doctor arrived. (AUDIO: Flip-Flop)

They managed to escape an exploding ship, landing on Dark Space 8 just before the Intergalactic Song Contest. She was mistaken for a pilot. When exploring the space station she met Nicky Newman, who was pleased that she didn't know who he was. There was a series of murders and she and the Doctor decided to investigate. She started accusing people of murder left, right and centre, from Angvia, Golos, to the Scientific Officer Ivor Fassbinder even the neutral arbiter Geri, who Mel attacked. After the Doctor revealed the murderer she realised that the solution was too easy, which led them to find the bomb that Loozly had planted in Newman. She stopped him just in time for the Doctor to win the contest. (AUDIO: Bang-Bang-a-Boom!)

Mel and the Doctor landed in Pompeii 79 AD, the day before Vesuvius erupted. She went to get some clothes with Aglae and realised she was a prostitute. When the Doctor told her that the TARDIS would be buried in the ash until 1980 she was determined to find a way to stop it. Eumachia had her arrested for theft but the Doctor helped her to escape. She left the city but was caught. She eventually found the TARDIS and allowed the Doctor to realise a way to both escape Pompeii and for the TARDIS to be found buried in the future. (AUDIO: The Fires of Vulcan)

She got annoyed with the Doctor after he went off after he was acting strangely when they landed on the Needle. She was trapped outside shortly after arriving and fell into Draun's hover car. In the underworld, she was given the drug Slow by Draun and experienced the being that was causing harm. She later visited Vi Yulquen who found it exciting that Mel was unchipped. The Doctor then used her programming skills to reprogram Whitenoise and stop the Red infection. (AUDIO: Red)

The Doctor and Mel once visited Dido. On another occasion, they encountered weretarantulas on Vyga 3. (AUDIO: Maker of Demons)

They once visited Llanfer Ceiriog. (PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Witch Mark)

Departure from the TARDIS
Mel chose to leave the Doctor 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, (TV: Dragonfire) although one account had her tell the Doctor she wasn't a traveller and needed somewhere she could belong. (PROSE: Dragonfire) Trading one travelling companion for another, she departed the Doctor's side on Iceworld, in search of new adventures with the galactic confidence trickster Sabalom Glitz, intending to keep him away from anymore "dodgy deals," and pausing only to hint to the Doctor that their newfound friend Ace would appreciate his intervention. (TV: Dragonfire)

During their travels together, Mel and Glitz encountered a Galactic Heritage fleet. The experience led Mel to describe the organisation as "a militarised, spacefaring National Trust". (AUDIO: The High Price of Parking)

Travels with the Doctor and Ace
After travelling with Glitz, Mel ended up on the run from his criminal associates. She was reunited with the Seventh Doctor and Ace on Ricosta, learning that Glitz had tried to compensate for his debts by selling Mel's possible futures to the Speravores. After preventing the Speravores devouring the planet's population, Mel joined the Doctor and Ace on their travels. (AUDIO: A Life of Crime) They accidentally visited Spain during the Spanish Civil War, (AUDIO: Fiesta of the Damned) the planet Prosper, (AUDIO: Maker of Demons) Parking, (AUDIO: The High Price of Parking) and Liverpool. (AUDIO: The Blood Furnace) Visiting the old Silurian capital city in 2085, Mel found herself helping the Doctor implement a plan to essentially let the Silurians re-establish themselves on Earth, preventing their initial efforts to provoke a war between China and America in favour of remaining in stasis until Earth was devastated by solar flares and began to regenerate itself. (AUDIO: The Silurian Candidate)

Going home
According to one account, Mel travelled with Glitz for about six months before deciding to try to go home. On her way she detoured to the planet Avalone, where she worked at a holiday camp owned by Avalonian Resorts, Inc. Her progress towards Earth stalled 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 that she had left behind on Iceworld, tried to calm her and explain the reasons why 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. (PROSE: Head Games)

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

As of 2010, Melanie worked with Dorothy and A Charitable Earth, providing PCs to schools in Africa. (PROSE: Death of the Doctor)

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

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

Other realities
Mel knew of at least one other version of herself in an adventure on the planet Puxatornee. (AUDIO: Flip-Flop) Likewise, she could not ignore the potential of thousands of other versions of herself when the Sixth Doctor took her to Library of Carsus to explore the disappearance of parallel universes, which included a Mel who was a slave in a world where the Roman Empire never fell and a world where Mel was a human/Silurian hybrid named Melina Baal. (PROSE: Spiral Scratch) There was an alternate reality in which Mel became the Prime Minister who led the United Kingdom against an invasion of the Cybermen, only to be betrayed by an alternative version of the Third Doctor whose exile on Earth had never ended. (PROSE: The Quantum Archangel)

A timeline existed in which Mel never returned home. She got married to Ben Heyworth and lived on the planet Heritage in the 61st century. They tried to conceive a child, but she was unable since she had gone through menopause. They went to a local geneticist, Wakeling, for help, and he created a clone of Mel. Furious when she found out, she argued with Wakeling, who accidentally killed her. (PROSE: Heritage) These events 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 Eighth Doctor defeated the Council. (PROSE: Sometime Never...)

In one history, on the day Mel was supposed to meet the Doctor, she was distracted by Ellie Martin and she never encountered the Doctor. In 2012, Mel was killed by a brain tumour brought on by radiation from a mobile phone. (AUDIO: 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 scepticism borne of her scientific education. Her generally perky personality could cool quite quickly if she detected a threat to herself, the Doctor or any friend. (TV: Terror of the Vervoids; AUDIO: 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 whom she didn't quite trust. (AUDIO: The Fires of Vulcan) In 1959, she tried to befriend Delta, and could see that she was distressed. (TV: Delta and the Bannermen)

She enjoyed the music of ABBA and the Bee Gees. (PROSE: Business Unusual) She did not drink tea. (AUDIO: The Devil's Footprints) Mel sometimes found it difficult to cope with the mundane. She displayed reluctance at the sight of the rather ordinary Shangri-La holiday camp in Wales in 1959. (TV: Delta and the Bannermen)

Mel prided herself on her innate honesty, (TV: The Ultimate Foe, AUDIO: Red) and disliked inventing stories to explain away the TARDIS' materialisation to those who witnessed it. (AUDIO: The Fires of Vulcan) In her own words, Mel was "as stubborn as they come". (AUDIO: A Life of Crime)

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

Mel was a health enthusiast and a vegetarian, often encouraging the slightly portly Sixth Doctor to exercise more. (TV: Terror of the Vervoids) 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. (AUDIO: Catch-1782, Unregenerate!) Neither did she believe in fate. (AUDIO: The Juggernauts)

Relationship with the Doctor
In her dealings with the Doctor, Mel was warmly affectionate. She sometimes found herself separated from him for months on end and always extremely glad to see him return. (AUDIO: 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." (AUDIO: The Vanity Box) The manner of her departure from the Doctor was also gently affectionate (TV: Dragonfire) and her emotional reaction and tears were genuine when she thought him dead. (AUDIO: The Wishing Beast, The Vanity Box)

However, her proactive lifestyle led her to be bossy to the Doctor. Not only did she try to reform the Sixth Doctor's health standards, she also demanded and apparently got him to abandon his motley outfit for a time. (AUDIO: Catch-1782) Likewise, she often spurred the Doctor to adventure, as when she insisted they stay on the Hyperion III to explore, against the Sixth Doctor's judgement, (TV: 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 Seventh 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. (AUDIO: The Fires of Vulcan)

When she began to travel with the Doctor and Ace, (AUDIO: A Life of Crime) Ace speculated that the Doctor kept Mel around because she provided someone who genuinely believed that he was doing the right thing, in contrast to Ace's greater scepticism. (AUDIO: The Silurian Candidate)

Skills
Mel possessed an eidetic memory. (TV: Terror of the Vervoids, The Ultimate Foe, AUDIO: Unregenerate!) It was not, however, an absolute photographic memory, as it failed her when her mind was clouded by emotion. (AUDIO: 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. (AUDIO: The Juggernauts, Red)

Behind the scenes

 * Mel's last name is never spoken in any televised appearance and the closing credits identify her only by her first name. Her surname is, however, regularly used in novels, Big Finish Productions' audios, and various other stories.
 * 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. An audio story of this nature, The Wrong Doctors, was eventually written by Matt Fitton and released in 2013.
 * Mel was the only character in the original series to be depicted on television as having an asynchronous relationship with the Doctor (aside from himself), as the production team opted to ignore the implications of The Five Doctors.
 * Mel also appeared in the gag-comic strip How Much For Just The Planet?
 * She and Susan remain the only televised companions without a televised story on how they met the Doctor, aside from Handles.