Wilfred Mott
Portrayed by: Bernard CribbinsTravelled with: Tenth Doctor
Appearances: Voyage of the Damned (2007 Christmas Special), Series Four, The End of Time part one, The End of Time part two
Associated with: Donna Noble
Enemies encountered: Daleks, The Master
Wilfred Mott first appears in Voyage of the Damned (2007 Christmas Special) as a newspaper seller whom the Doctor meets when he and others from the spaceship Titanic visit Earth. He returns again in Series 4 as the grandfather of companion Donna Noble, where it is also revealed that he is an amateur astronomy, looking out for aliens in an allotment that Donna sometimes joins him on when she wishes to escape her mother’s nagging. Wilfred was seen in various episode of Series 4, including The Sontaran Stratagem (Episode 4), The Poison Sky (Episode 5), Turn Left (Episode 11), The Stolen Earth (Episode 12) and Journey’s End (Episode 13).
Wilfred is an ex-military man who served his National Service during the Second World War, and has carried a gun on two occasions, the first in The Stolen Earth (a paint gun) and later in the 2009 Specials (an old service revolver). In the first instance, he used the weapon to try and blind Daleks that were invading the Earth, and in the latter he carried the gun as instructed by a mysterious woman who visited him. Due to Donna’s memories being wiped at the end of Journey’s End, it is Wilfred who see’s the Doctor off in his TARDIS and considers the Doctor a very good friend and almost a member of the family.
Wilfred returns in the 2009 Specials, The End of Time part 1 and part 2 (Special 3 and Special 4), where he is an official companion to the Doctor. He is visited repeatedly by a strange woman and searches the Doctor with a group of other OAPs, and find him within hours (which the Doctor remarks is quite good as it usually takes many years before they find him again). Together they journey to Naismith’s Mansion where the Master turns the human race into copies of himself, though Wilfred is protected as the Doctor placed him in a chamber that was shielded from the device. Wilfred assists the Doctor greatly in saving Earth, though he gets himself trapped in the chamber device trying to save someone else and becomes the one to fulfil the prophecy set out for the Doctor, and essentially becomes the person responsible for the regeneration from Tenth Doctor to Eleventh. Wilfred returned to his family in time for Donna’s second wedding, where he gets to meet the Doctor one last time when he turns up with a winning lottery ticket. Wilfred, knowing that the Doctor’s time is nearly over, honours him with a military-style salute as the Time Lord returns to his TARDIS.
