Victoria Waterfield

Portrayed by: Deborah Watling
Travelled with: Second Doctor
Series: Classic

Victoria Waterfield was a companion of the Second Doctor following her and her father’s experiments into time travel that went wrong. Her father, Edward Waterfield, and his colleague, Theodore Maxtible, experimented with time travel that resulted in an accidental link between Maxtible’s house and the Dalek city on Skaro, where the Daleks proceeded to use Victoria as a hostage to control her father and Maxtible. As a result, Victoria was moved to Skaro were she became stranded on the alien planet with her father dying to save the Doctor’s life, rendering Victoria an orphan. Drawing on her experiences of this, Victoria became better prepared to deal with more advanced civilisations in later life. Having no family to return to, Victoria chose, through necessity more than choice, to join the Doctor and fellow companion Jamie McCrimmon on the TARDIS in The Evil of the Daleks (Classic Series). During her travels with the Doctor, Victoria tended to look for the humanity of the circumstances she would find herself in and chose to worry about the Doctor’s age, rather than wonder at the TARDIS in The Tomb of the Cybermen (Classic Series). Until Victoria was abducted by the Daleks, she led a sheltered life that was commonly had by women from wealthy British families in the 19th century. However, she was more than capable of looking after herself and was able to hold her own during a verbal spar with Captain Hopper in The Tomb of the Cybermen. She was also able to cope well with Jamie’s teasing about short dresses in The Ice Warriors (Classic Series), which would eventually lead her to wear shorter dresses and skirts despite her initial discomfort at the idea.

Victoria Waterfield with the Second Doctor and Jamie McCrimmon

Despite her sheltered life, Victoria was not gullible, proving herself to be a clever and intelligent young woman, getting the better of Kaftan twice after she was tricked into drinking a drugged coffee. Victoria’s tricks on Kaftan included screaming as if a Cybermat were attacking again and telling Kaftan and Eric Klieg that the testing room, where the Doctor’s group had become locked within, contained another weapon. Because Victoria appeared to be a naïve and innocent young woman, Kaftan believed her both times during The Tomb of the Cybermen. Although Victoria enjoyed the company of the Doctor and Jamie, and loved them both, she missed her father and her home, and due to her joining the TARDIS as a result of her father’s death, made her an unwilling adventurer. To try and ease her emotional pain, the Doctor gave her a way to remember her past while remaining in the present, allowing her a gleeful recollection of the recipe for Kaiser pudding while she was working in Salamander’s kitchen which was a manifestation of her longing for home in The Enemy of the World (Classic Series). Victoria showed defiance and great courage from the start of her adventures, even defying the Daleks who captured her, despite being terrified of them and continued to feed the pigeons at the window of her room. She also had a curious nature which made her adventures with the Doctor and Jamie a little more bearable, though she could also be stubborn, refusing the opportunity of safety with the Monks in Tibet in The Abominable Snowmen (Classic Series). However, despite her courageousness, Victoria was still a screamer, never afraid to scream at danger, which ultimately provided the solution to the Weed Creature on the Euro Sea Gas refinery. Prior to this adventure, Victoria had been commenting, with greater frequency, a dislike for the danger she, the Doctor and Jamie faced during their travels. This no doubt assisted her decision to settle down with an established, caring family. Having no family of her own to return to, and realising that her adventures had changed her expectations and outlook, Victoria chose to remain with the Harrises rather than continue travelling with the Doctor, despite Jamie, who had feelings for Victoria, trying to persuade her to stay in Fury from the Deep (Classic Series)