Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-9435571-20140927221308/@comment-188432-20141005151843

OttselSpy25 wrote: Czech, I believe that you have always wanted to categorize a companion as anyone who travelled with the Doctor twice or more. Thus she is one now. That's not really my position, no. I think "companion" is a matter largely of out-of-universe factors. I believe Astrid is a companion, because that's what the pre-title credits imply. We've had no out-of-universe proclamations about this character, to my knowledge, so we're going strictly on in-universe factors. To me, the only "dead cert" there is in terms of in-universe definitions is when characters actually say, "This is my companion," or "I'm his assistant", or the like.

When such declarations are unavailable, then we have to read the tea leaves and make an arbitrary determination. Does the character occupy the narrative space of a companion? And in this case, I wouldn't say that she does, quite yet. At this point, Courtney is merely in the TARDIS because of her relativity to Clara. And Clara just served eviction notice to the Doctor. If Clara has just given her walking papers, will there be any cause for Courtney to travel on the TARDIS? If not, that really means that Courtney is just Clara's student who happened to have a few adventures with the Doctor, much like Tish Jones, Elizabeth I, Liz Ten — or to be in a two-parter, like Nasreen Chaudhry or Joan Redfern or Nancy.

Actually, the closest analogue to this character is DI Patricia Menzies, who appears in a handful of non-consecutive Sixth Doctor audios. She's fully aware that the Doctor is a time traveller and participates in adventures in a very similar way to Courtney, but most don't consider Menzies a companion so much as a recurring character. That could be all we're looking at here, particularly if her time travelling comes to an end when Clara's does.

There is no rush to put her in a category or on a navbox somewhere. Although I'm very glad this discussion is going on — it'll give the wiki something to point back to a couple of years from now when people wonder why we've classed Courtney as a companion, or not — there's no need to take action until the series is over and we can look back on it as a whole.


 * ''There is obviously the possibility that some of you are operating with knowledge from spoilers revealed by the press or fan sites. Keep in mind that I don't know any of that, nor should any of that make its way into this thread. I'm only going by what has so far been in episodes that have actually aired.