Peri Brown
Portrayed by: Nicola BryantTravelled with: Fifth Doctor, Sixth Doctor
Series: Classic
Perpugilliam Brown, known as Peri to everyone else, was a companion of the Fifth and Sixth Doctor. A college student from America, Peri was the daughter of Janine and Paul Brown and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. The Doctor once noted that in Persian mythology, a peri was the name of a fairy which started off as evil before turning to good. Her father died in a boating accident and her mother remarried to Professor Howard Foster. Peri was studying botany when she first met the Fifth Doctor and his companion, Turlough, on Lanzarote. Here, the shape-shifting android Kamelion, at the time being controlled by the Master, assumed the shape of Peri’s step-father Howard and later that of the Master himself before taking her to the planet Sarn in the TARDIS it had seized control of to meet the real Master. After the Master’s defeat and the destruction of Kamelion, Turlough chose to return to his home world, Trion, and Peri became the Doctor’s companion. Peri and the Doctor had many travels together before they both contracted spectrox toxaemia before getting accidentally involved with local politics on the twin planets of Androzani Minor and Major. During this, Peri was abducted by Sharaz Jek, but when she escaped she began to die from the spectrox poisoning. The Doctor was able to save her, but did not have enough of the antidote (bat’s milk) to save himself, resulting in his regeneration into his Sixth incarnation.
Following the Doctor’s regeneration, he developed an unstable persona and at the peak of his madness, he attempted to throttle Peri to death in The Twin Dilemma (Classic Series). Peri is the only companion to date to have suffered a physical attack at the hands of the Time Lord. However, the Doctor managed to regain his wits enough that Peri accepted the change in the Time Lord and continued to travel with him as his companion. No doubt due to the assault she suffered, Peri continually appeared to be ill at ease with the Doctor from time to time, though her relationship with him did become more comfortable over time. During her adventures with the Sixth Doctor, Peri encountered the Daleks in Revelation of the Daleks (Classic Series), the Master for a second time with accomplice the Rani in The Mark of the Rani (Classic Series) and Sil, a member of the race of capitalist despots known as the Mentors in Vengeance on Varos (Classic Series). Peri also met the Second Doctor’s companion, Jamie McCrimmon during the adventure The Two Doctors (Classic Series).
In the year 2379, Peri and the Doctor were adventuring on the planet Thoros Beta, home of the capitalist despots known as the Mentors. During this, the Doctor and Peri became separated, where Peri then met Yrcanos, the warrior king from the primitive planet Krontep, who took a liking to Peri. Peri was then abducted by Kiv, a Mentor, and taken to his laboratory while the Doctor and the TARDIS were removed from Thoros Beta to prevent him interfering by the High Council of Time Lords. The Doctor was forced to watch from the space station Zenobia while Kiv transplanted his consciousness into Peri’s body, prompting Yrcanos to destroy her body in a form of mercy-killing. This was shown to the Doctor by the Valeyard during his trial in Mindwarp (Classic Series). However, it turned out that this never happened in The Ultimate Foe (Classic Series), when the Inquisitor revealed to the Doctor at the end of his trial that Peri and Yrcanos fell in love and that Peri chose to spend the remainder of her life with him. Supposedly, Peri was among the Doctor’s companions drawn into a temporal trap that had been set by the Rani, though it’s likely that this wasn’t an actual physical appearance by her and more of a manifestation.