Alice Obiefune

Alice Uwaebuka Obiefune was a 21st century British library assistant who travelled with the Eleventh Doctor. Alice's time as a long-term companion of the Doctor saw many other companions coming and going: John Jones, ARC, Abslom Daak, the Squire, and River Song.

Alice helped the Doctor face SERVEYOUinc and the Talent Scout, (COMIC: The Rise and Fall, The Comfort of the Good, et al.) at one point taking on the title of the Doctor while he had been transformed into SERVEYOU's CEO, (COMIC: The Other Doctor) stop the Voord plot to take over all of time and space, (COMIC: Four Doctors) outrun the the Then and the Now and discover the fate of the Cyclors, (COMIC: The Then and the Now, Physician, Heal Thyself, et al.) and raise the Sapling. (COMIC: The Scream, et al.)

Early life
Alice was born to Ada Obiefune (COMIC: After Life) and Ijezie Obiefune. Her father passed away when she was a small child, leaving her to be raised solely by her mother.

One year, a classmate named Maddie Potter told Alice that her parents "should go back to where [they] came from". When Alice responded that her father was dead, Maddie stated that her father said it was "good riddance". At her father's grave, Alice cried about Maddie and her father's cruel comments and when her mother asked what was wrong, she told her it was nothing. Ada insisted that it was not right to keep things inside and if something was wrong, a person should speak up about it. Alice recounted the story to her mother, as well as the fact that when she told their teacher about Maddie's behaviour, it was dismissed as "teasing" and indicated that the teacher always dismissed similar incidents. Alice declared that it was unfair and expressed a desire to run away to space and never come back. Ada challenged her daughter, asking, "And what happens to the rest of us, then? Who have to stay behind?" (COMIC: Whodunnit?) In June 1982, Ada told Alice that a person must always speak up when they think something is wrong, no matter how hard or painful it might be. (COMIC: The Infinite Astronaut) Alice never passed a driving test. (COMIC: What He Wants...)

As an adult she worked as a library assistant, often helping people who had been turned away by the Department for Work and Pensions and reading books to children during storytime. In 2014, prior to August, her mother passed away and gradually her life began to fall apart: she lost her job due to cutbacks, her landlord Mr Badura evicted her from her flat, and her friend moved away. (COMIC: After Life) The eviction forced her to hire a solicitor. (COMIC: Whodunnit?)

Meeting the Doctor
Stuck in the depths of depression, Alice received a spark of joy in her life when she encountered a Kharitite while walking down the road. While Alice was drawn into the Eleventh Doctor's adventure, the Doctor was drawn into Alice's life. After chasing the Kharitite through the House of Commons, the Doctor offered Alice the chance to travel with him and she accepted. (COMIC: After Life)

Travelling with the Eleventh Doctor
Rokhandi was the first planet the Doctor took Alice to. There they met August Hart for the first time, though he already knew them. They also encountered the sinister corporation called SERVEYOUinc. Alice assisted the Doctor in freeing the local people from the influence of the Entity. (COMIC: The Friendly Place)

New companions join
To console Alice, who was missing her mother, the Doctor took her to 1962 to visit a concert of Ada's favourite musician, John Jones. He was so unremarkable that he managed to follow them into the TARDIS undetected. To cheer Alice up, the Doctor took her on a second trip to the past, this time for Delta blues music from another of Ada's favourites and his personal friend, Robert Johnson, in 1931 Mississippi Delta. There the Doctor fell victim to the influence of the Talent Scout. Only Alice's quick thinking saved him and the company. (COMIC: What He Wants...)

After visiting two ice planets and a dinosaur civilisation, Alice insisted on going back home, but instead of her apartment, the TARDIS materialised on the United System Research Base ten years before the events on Rokhandi World. August Hart was the Chief of Security of the base. Several employees had been sent to a coma by ARC, the subject of one of SERVEYOUinc's cruel experiments. (COMIC: Whodunnit?) After saving Jones from ARC using a fire extinguisher, Alice was almost shot on Hart's orders: they were to serve as a bait for the Doctor. The Doctor, however, managed to neutralise both threats from Hart and ARC, to befriend ARC, and to sneak it out of the station in his TARDIS. Although the Doctor offered to finally take Alice to the meeting with her landlord, Alice decided she'd like to have a little more fun before going back home. (COMIC: The Sound of Our Voices)

Adventures with Jones and ARC
Following a distress call, the TARDIS crew picked up the sole "survivor" from the planet Datastore 8, a Nimon who in reality was responsible for the planet's destruction. Knowing about his sinister plans from alternate timelines, the Doctor dealt with the intruder, after which the TARDIS crew went back in time and prevented the destruction of Datastore 8. (COMIC: Space in Dimension Relative and Time)

Alice finally returned to her flat in 2015 with the intention of staying only a few days to sort out her affairs, but discovered Earth skies had been invaded by the Eternal Dogfight between the Amstrons and the J'arrodic in her absence. The Doctor left Alice with an old mobile phone promising to return soon. In his absence, exploiting her grief, the Talent Scout appeared in her kitchen, first in the form of a Time Lord and then pretending to be her mother come back from the dead. He took Alice to the Great Wheel and to the Doctor, Jones and ARC. (COMIC: The Eternal Dogfight)

Using her librarian skills, Alice managed to find in Amstron sacred library a way to force a ceasefire by becoming an Infinite Astronaut on behalf of Earth and claiming the right to pilot the Infinite through the Gate of Creation to another universe. Distressed at discovering the Talent Scout's deceit, Alice was impervious to the beauty of that universe, which saved her and Jones from the fate of all other Infinite Astronauts who chose to die rather than leave the "face of the creator". Alice's description of the other universe put an end to the dispute that initiated the Eternal Dogfight. As a result, the Amstrons and the J'arrodic Federation finally negotiated peace. (COMIC: The Infinite Astronaut)

Multiple Doctors and the Voord
The Doctor and Alice visited Paris in 1923 and saved the world from radiation monsters coming out of the Seine. Afterwards, Alice went to a café while the Doctor shopped for comics; a café which Gabby Gonzalez and Clara Oswald were also at. Clara and Gabby beckoned Alice to their table, knowing that she too was a companion of the Doctor. Clara began sharing with Alice and Gabby what she had learned at the Museum of Terrible Fates and how she thought the Doctor's "terrible fate" could be averted, but she was interrupted by a version of Gabby from a potential future timeline in which the companions had failed to stop the Twelfth Doctor from joining with the Voord. This Gabby described what had occurred in her timeline (including Alice's death), giving Alice, Clara, and Gabby the information to prevent that future from happening.

When the Tenth, Eleventh, and Twelfth Doctors came to the café, the three companions explained the Voord situation. All three Doctor-companion duos went to Marinus and got themselves caught in the blast of a continuity bomb like they had done in the previous timeline, except this time they decided on letting the bomb reshape the Eleventh Doctor's continuity so that he never prevented River Song's World. From 22 April 2011, they went to the Voord pocket dimension to confront the alternate Twelfth Doctor leading the Voord. They were all absorbed into the Voord group mind, where they convinced the alternate Twelfth Doctor to regress the Voord timeline to a point before the mutations caused by the Last Great Time War, saving the Doctor from the fate of joining the Voord.

The six time travellers then briefly visited Marinus again and returned to the Parisian café in 1923, but didn't stay because the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler were already there. After short goodbyes, they parted ways.

While Alice would remember this multi-Doctor event, the Doctor naturally lost his memories of it. (COMIC: Four Doctors) Before he completely forgot, Alice and the Doctor picked up a Weeping Angel from the Weeping Angel Museum, put it in a paper package, and planted it back at the newsagent's shop in 1923 Paris for the Doctor's past self to find. (COMIC: The Doctor Shops for Angels)

Running from the Then and the Now
The Doctor and Alice were joined in their travels by the Squire and Abslom Daak. During this time they were chased by the Then and the Now. (COMIC: The Then and the Now, et al.)

With the War Doctor
Alice entered the Last Great Time War and aided the War Doctor in fighting the Cyclors and the Volatix Cabal. (COMIC: First Rule, et al.)

Encountering Cyber-Silurians
Alice and the Doctor visited prehistoric Earth to obtain a fruit for Jenny Flint to give to Vastra as an anniversary gift. Alice found a Nanjura fruit hoping it would be suitable, but the Doctor told her that it would be toxic to Vastra. Before they could continue, Alice and the Doctor were found by a large dinosaur and forced to run for their lives. However, they ran into a greater danger: a group of Cyber-Silurians.

Alice and the Doctor escaped the Cyber-Silurians after the Doctor distracted them with his sonic screwdriver. Alice wanted to return to the TARDIS, but the Doctor insisted that the Cyber-technology in this era was an anachronism that had to be investigated. They found that the Cyber-Silurians were planning on seeding the universe with Silurian Arks filled with cyber-technology. After the Doctor opened a teleportal to the inside of one Ark, he and Alice went inside to discover a room where hundreds of Silurians were being cyber-converted. Their presence awakened the converted Silurians and the Doctor - deciding that the situation was too dangerous for Alice - teleported her outside with instructions to initiate the Librarian Protocol of the TARDIS. Alice couldn't get in the TARDIS and she could do nothing but watch as the Doctor failed to stop the Arks from being launched.

Actions of the Twelfth Doctor and Rassilon on Gallifrey erased the Cyberman presence on prehistoric Earth from history, but Alice and the Doctor retained their memories of the event. (COMIC: Supremacy of the Cybermen)

The Scream and the Sapling
Alice and the Doctor went to Britzit-247 to obtain the only copy of John Jones' final album, but ran into some trouble with its angry inhabitants. Alice had to take the wheel of Bessie 2 and drive the Doctor to safety. They managed to escape to the TARDIS, but the album was damaged in the commotion.

Once back in the TARDIS, the Doctor set it to go to coordinates hidden in Jones' song Whitestar: the location of John Jones' funeral. After mourning for Jones, Alice and the Doctor were approached by a Cwrier and given an invitation summoning them to a forest planet.

On the forest planet, the Doctor and Alice fell into a trap set by the Scream (COMIC: Remembrance) and had their memory energies drained into a Memory Engine Machine. This created the Sapling. (COMIC: The Scream)

The Doctor took Alice and the Sapling to Plex's planet and found that its inhabitants were at war. They went into the ruins of Plex's laboratory and retrieved a biodata module, which the Doctor used to to turn a Plex into a new leader who would bring an end to the war. (COMIC: The Promise)

Alice was playing chess with the Sapling when Ood Sigma mentally contacted the Sapling and brought the TARDIS to the Devil's Eye. Alice and the Doctor left the Sapling to recover in the TARDIS while they explored the Devil's Eye. They found that the pleasure club was being menaced by 15 Ood in a violent red-eye state. Jonni Halburton teleported Alice and the Doctor to the maintenance room of the Devil's Eye and explained to them what she had done to the 15 Ood. Halburton planned on shooting Alice and the Doctor, but she was killed by an Ood before she had the chance. On the Doctor's instruction, Alice returned to the TARDIS and put the psychic paper and Halburton's data-slice onto the Sapling's forehead, using his unconscious body as a conduit between Ood Sigma and the 15 Ood, bringing them out of the red-eye state.

Alice, the Doctor, and the Sapling then brought the 15 Ood to the Ood Sphere. The Doctor introduced Alice to Ood Sigma during the visit. (COMIC: Time of the Ood)

Alice and the Doctor attempted to talk to the Sapling about how he had killed the Wayfarer while the TARDIS was parked in the Antrozenus Zone, but they were interrupted when a Memory Ark drifted into the area. The TARDIS trio journeyed into the Ark and - after some encouragement from Alice - decided to explore. They found a Thrake infestation and discovered the body of the Xerxes being carried by the Ark. The Doctor purged the Ark of the Thrake by getting them to kill themselves by overfeeding on the Xerxes memoryweb. (COMIC: The Memory Feast)

After having an adventure involving an "old friend" of the Doctor in an English town in 1189, Alice, the Doctor, and the Sapling decided to spend an afternoon at a Village Green Festival. Alice enjoyed herself at the festival; she played hook-a-duck, had ice cream, rode on a carousel, and participated in an event involving love and archery. The afternoon was not all fun and games, as the TARDIS trio had an encounter with a Krovian who was stealing the memories of festival-goers. (COMIC: Fooled)

Undated events
The Doctor showed Alice a book with pictures of all of his past selves so that she would be familiar with them. (COMIC: Four Doctors)

Alice once attended a meeting of many of the Doctor's companions. (COMIC: The Meeting)

The Doctor once took Alice to the Gilmore to retrieve a mug which had been left there by Drax. With the help of two criminals, Lenora and Critchlow, Alice and the Doctor got through the starliners' many unusual defence protocols and found the mug. (COMIC: Something Borrowed)

Alice got the Doctor very excited by introducing him to Fray Bentos pies. (COMIC: The Memory Feast)

The Nimon incursion
There were several timelines of the incident involving the exiled Nimon who infiltrated the TARDIS while Alice and the Doctor were travelling with John Jones and ARC.

In the original history, Alice stole the Nimon's black box and tried to escape in the maze of corridors that made up the interior of the TARDIS. The Nimon found Alice and knocked her to the floor. The Nimon almost killed Alice by absorbing her energy, but she was saved by Jones, who sacrificed his life by jumping into the Nimon's energy-draining beam. Worried that the Nimon would do the same to the Doctor, Alice knocked him out by hitting him on the head with the geranium Dave. After ARC defeated the Nimon, Alice sat with the Doctor on the edge of the TARDIS' exterior doorway, contemplating Jones' death.

However, as the Time Vortex leech sent the Doctor's consciousness back in time in increments, the Doctor began changing the events of the Nimon incursion. During many of these increments, the Doctor confused Alice by talking about what he was going through. In one increment, Alice slapped the Doctor for - as she saw it - joking about Jones' death. In one timeline which came into being during these events, Alice was in the TARDIS when it was destroyed in the explosion of Datastore 8. (COMIC: Space in Dimension Relative and Time)

Personality
As a library assistant, Alice had to help a variety of people with a variety of problems and therefore honed skills in kindness and patience. (COMIC: After Life)

Despite her patience, Alice could be forceful if the situation needed her to be. When she noticed that the Eleventh Doctor was being rude to the Rokhandi World employees, she called him out on his behaviour and pointed out that they were just trying to do their jobs, most likely for minimum wage like many of the people that she had helped at work, and that he should be more respectful of them and what they do. She was also quick to stand up to the Doctor when she felt he was treating her as an accessory or rudely refusing to acknowledge her job as a library assistant. (COMIC: The Friendly Place) She even slapped him in an alternate timeline when he disrespected the ashes of John Jones to test whether he could change things. (COMIC: Space in Dimension Relative and Time)

Alice was fan of the musical Hamilton; she was familiar with the contents of the official soundtrack and - although not proud of it - shipped Hamilton/Angelica. (COMIC: The Long Con)

Age
Alice was not always consistent describing her age. While chiding John Jones for running too slowly, she called herself a "forty-year-old library assistant". (COMIC: The Sound of Our Voices) Later she described herself as being in her 30s. (COMIC: Space in Dimension Relative and Time)

Skills and abilities
Alice was very competent with computers because she frequently worked with the general public who needed her help navigating the systems. (COMIC: After Life)

Alice was skilled with a gun. She won the Doctor a Customer Service Pig toy at the Rokhandi World Target Happy shooting gallery game and later took one of their guns to use against the men who abducted the Doctor. She shot one man in the backside and threatened to shoot him in the crotch if the Doctor was not released. (COMIC: The Friendly Place)

Behind the scenes
A few alternate covers for issues of Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor featured real life models representing Alice.