In issue #5 of IDW's Doctor Who comic The Forgotten, we're told that Eight only had "brief companions" in that incarnation. Like many things about The Forgotten, this annoys me. But I think I have grounds for my annoyance in this case. (This was originally a reply to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
doyle_sb4 on my previous post, but it got long and statistical and might possibly be vaguely interesting to people apart from my axe-grinding, so here it is as a post.)
What I've done is work out the length of service for each companion who I think has a reasonable claim to have been a "current" companion in at least one branch of the ongoing story of Doctor Who (and yes, this is the sort of thinking that privileges the NAs over the MAs) both in terms of adventures they were involved in and the number of our months they were the current companion for. The point being to explode the idea that for those of us who follow the story, Eight's companions were "brief".
So here's the top 10, sorted by number of adventures:
And by months of being a current companion that fandom was experiencing stories about:
Now, this is really mostly about the nature of middle school more than anything else (note that telly companions only squeeze in in the bottom two or three places on each measure), but Eight's companions feature heavily in both these Top 10s (50% of the first and 40% of the second, with the top spot taken by an Eight companion in each case). Not only did he not have brief companions, he had most of the longest serving companions. He is the Doctor it is least sensible to make that claim about, if you're going to count spinoffery. And since The Forgotten is a spinoff ...
( If you're interested, full lists and caveats etc. under the cut )
doyle_sb4 on my previous post, but it got long and statistical and might possibly be vaguely interesting to people apart from my axe-grinding, so here it is as a post.)What I've done is work out the length of service for each companion who I think has a reasonable claim to have been a "current" companion in at least one branch of the ongoing story of Doctor Who (and yes, this is the sort of thinking that privileges the NAs over the MAs) both in terms of adventures they were involved in and the number of our months they were the current companion for. The point being to explode the idea that for those of us who follow the story, Eight's companions were "brief".
So here's the top 10, sorted by number of adventures:
- Fitz Kreiner (49)
- Benny Summerfield (42)
- Ace (41)
- Charley Pollard (28)
- Anji Kapoor (24)
- Sam Jones (24)
- Izzy Sinclair (23)
- Chris Cwej (22)
- Rose Tyler (21)
- K9 (21)
And by months of being a current companion that fandom was experiencing stories about:
- Izzy Sinclair (85)
- Charley Pollard (94)
- Ace (82)
- Fitz Kreiner (72)
- C'Rizz (46)
- Frobisher (45)
- Benny (44)
- K9 (40)
- Tegan Jovanka (37)
- Sarah Jane Smith (35)
Now, this is really mostly about the nature of middle school more than anything else (note that telly companions only squeeze in in the bottom two or three places on each measure), but Eight's companions feature heavily in both these Top 10s (50% of the first and 40% of the second, with the top spot taken by an Eight companion in each case). Not only did he not have brief companions, he had most of the longest serving companions. He is the Doctor it is least sensible to make that claim about, if you're going to count spinoffery. And since The Forgotten is a spinoff ...
( If you're interested, full lists and caveats etc. under the cut )