Professor Patricia McBride was a professor of anthropology in Sheffield. According to Hebe Harrison, she was the most celebrated professor on campus.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Patricia was married to Ron for several years, but the relationship ended in divorce. (AUDIO: The Mindless Ones)
Adventures with the Doctor[]
She encountered the Sixth Doctor, Melanie Bush and Hebe whilst they were investigating the Mindless Institute and assisted them in derailing the plot orchestrated by its leading benefactor, Mr Betterment. (AUDIO: The Mindless Ones)
Some months later, she called in the Doctor, Mel and Hebe from the Emit Institute in Sweden to look into their claims that they can rewind a person's time. After uncovering a crashed ship beneath the facility, she helped the Doctor repair Killian Holm's machine after she destroyed it so he could undo the damage. After the institute was destroyed, Patricia asked for a trip into the future. (AUDIO: Reverse Engineering)
Bringing her to the 26th century, Patricia immediately demanded to return home. After a collision in the time vortex brings them back to the 21st century, the Doctor called out Patricia, having realised long before that her reaction to the future was because of entirely bigoted views she possessed about the disabled and the unalike, considering the people of the future and those of the present to be simply "wrong". Disgusted, the Doctor sent her away and Hebe, after hearing these views for herself, was equally sickened and shunned her. Confronted by her hatred everywhere she went, she ran into Khavûl and is made under duress to help him find the Drornidian Oubliette. After Khavûl was defeated, Patricia scuttled off and used Khavûl's abandoned time suit, adopting the username Purity, to alter the world to her own image, making Hebe disappear from existence in the process. (AUDIO: Chronomancer)
As Purity[]
Info from Girl in a Bubble, The Corruptions and The Wrong Side of History needs to be added
Using the time suit, Patricia attempted to shape the future she desired by orchestrating the movements of Thomas Rodden's family through time, until she ran into the Doctor and Mel again and they attempted to intervene. She furiously rebutted the Doctor's allegations of acting out of spite and steadfastly insisted that she did not kill anyone when the Doctor and Mel accused her of murdering Hebe. She was ultimately overcome when her plans were endangered and killed a police officer and Jasper Woodward, yet she held the Doctor responsible for her own actions. She attempted to flee with her time suit but was snared by the Doctor in the time vortex; now in a state of delirious madness, Patricia severed the tether and sent herself and the TARDIS hurtling wildly through time. (AUDIO: Purification)
Washing up in Sheffield in 1864, Patricia began work on her backup plan and installed herself as the proprietor of a steel mill, hoping to coerce local workers into joining her to crush any inferior installations and prosper in a better, more efficient world. Before her dam broke down to flood Sheffield, as history had already dictated, Patricia activated her time suit to return to the 21st century, dragging the Doctor along with her. However, the suit, critically damaged by the ordeal of escaping the TARDIS, transported them both to a limbo state in the vortex. The Doctor warned Patricia that attempting to use the suit in its condition would inevitably result in her own destruction, but she stubbornly refused to heed his warning and offer of help and activated the suit, being torn apart in the process. (AUDIO: Time-Burst)
Personality[]
Patricia was possessing of a sharp wit and a sharp tongue and was not taken to suffering fools lightly. She appeared to take most abnormal situations in her stride, accepting the alien nature of the Mindless Institute and Killian Holm's time machine fairly swiftly. (AUDIO: The Mindless Ones, Reverse Engineering)
However, for all her positive attributes, Patricia was greatly bigoted and withheld a great dislike for those with 'flaws'; she claimed to be tolerant of the disabled, the neurodivergent or homosexuals, but in reality believed that they were simply something to put up with because they couldn't be changed and told Hebe that she'd hoped that by the 26th century, they'd have fixed people "like [Hebe]", claims which both Hebe and the Doctor were respectively distraught and appalled by. (AUDIO: Chronomancer)
When recieving the power to change the world to her own desire, Patricia blindly followed what the time suit instructed her to do. She made out that she was Elizabeth Rodden's mother because of how she's stagemanaged the important events in Lizzie's life, demonstrating how shallow and egomaniacal she was. She equally refused to take responsbility for her actions driven by her prejudice, killing a police officer and Jasper Woodward and insisting that the Doctor was really to blame. While she claimed that she wanted to make humanity "better", the Doctor denied the idea that any of her actions came from love, instead proclaiming that Patricia's actions were motivated by a hatred of what she didn't like about the human race rather than love of humanity's better qualities. (AUDIO: Purification)
Appearance[]
Patricia had blonde hair and a smile which did not reach her eyes. (AUDIO: Time-Burst)
Behind the scenes[]
There are similarities that can be drawn between Patricia and Adam Mitchell in their brief acquaintances with the Doctor, such as how they each received only two trips in the TARDIS before they were kicked out. Unlike Adam, however, who was dismissed for bad behaviour in 2005's The Long Game, Patricia is the first companion to earn the Doctor's ire through attitude rather than actions, the Doctor having been turned irrevocably against her by her own prejudices and discriminatory beliefs.
A comparison could be made to the version of Elizabeth Klein who travelled with the Seventh Doctor prior to the 2010 Big Finish Main Range audio story The Architects of History, an unrepentant nazi with equally discriminatory views; however, she was brought into the Doctor's company more on account of her anomalous existence than her political ideals.
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