Vicki Pallister
Portrayed by: Maureen O'BrienTravelled with: First Doctor
Series: Classic
Vicki Pallister was a companion of the First Doctor after meeting him on the planet Dido. Vicki was born in 2479A.D on Earth, where, as a product of the 25th century education system, she obtained certificates in medicine, physics, chemistry, computers and other disciplines by the age of ten. Vicki’s mother died while Vicki was young, and when her father got a new job in a new colony on the planet Astra, Vicki left Earth in 2493A.D with him. The ship, UK-201, crashed on the planet Dido, which most of the passengers survived until one, Bennett, murdered all of the survivors except for Vicki and two native Didonians. Vicki had a pet Didonian Sand Beast named Sandy, but Barbara Wright, believing the beast to be a threat to Vicki, shot it with a flare gun, killing it. It took Vicki a lot of effort to forgive what would become her fellow companion for this act. After the Didonians took revenge on Bennett, Vicki was left with no one following her father’s death as well. The Doctor, perhaps because he missed his grand-daughter, Susan Foreman, who had recently departed the TARDIS crew, invited Vicki to join him and his companions, Barbara and Ian Chesterton, on the TARDIS, making Vicki the first companion that the Doctor would willingly invite on his travels in The Rescue (Classic Series).
Vicki enjoyed her adventures with the Doctor, being a keen adventuress anyway, and became bored if they were stopped without adventure or travelling to their destinations. When the TARDIS crew were staying in a villa near Rome, Vicki quickly became bored with the lack of adventure and excitement. Vicki’s adventuress nature was teamed with a sense of awe and wonder which did not falter during her travels, bursting with excitement at the sight of Nero and the view of Rome burning in The Romans (Classic Series). These characteristics are most likely what reminded the Doctor of his grand-daughter. Vicki had a knack for saying the wrong thing to fellow companion Barbara despite having a close relationship though whether she was teasing or being undiplomatic is unclear. On Vortis, Vicki commented that aspirin tablets were old fashioned to her; until she had seen some of them in the Doctor’s First Aid kit, she had never heard of them before. When Barbara commented that the main subjects taught in her school were the three R’s, Vicki offended her by asking if her school was a nursery, comparing it to the schools of Vicki’s era.
Vicki’s intelligence helped her to assist the Xerons stage a revolution on Xeros, when she reprogrammed the Morok armoury door to not check for correct answers in The Space Museum (Classic Series). By inciting the Xeron rebels to act, Vicki was able to save her companions from danger and used her considerable technical and analytical skills to reprogram the Morak armoury’s computer to allow the rebels access to it, which enabled them to fight. Despite her bravado, Vicki was scared of heights and had to be blindfolded while escaping from the Mechanoid City in The Chase (Classic Series). In this adventure, she also showed the era difference again by not knowing that the Beatles band played “classical music” and referring to 1960’s New York City as “ancient”. Following the events of The Chase, Vicki said farewell to her fellow companions, Barbara and Ian, as they departed the TARDIS crew but welcomed new companion Steven Taylor after he stumbled upon the TARDIS. Although Vicki’s knowledge seemed to be based in science, she did have some historical knowledge, displaying knowledge of Greek heroes and the Trojan Horse when the TARDIS landed on Earth during the Trojan War. While in Troy, Vicki called herself Cressida, prompting Cassandra, a high up Trojan, to set her servant, Katarina, on her, thinking Vicki to be a Greek spy. Vicki also met Troilus, a young Trojan, with whom she fell in love with, and chose to leave the TARDIS to stay with him. The tale of Troilus and Vicki would later be recounted as a poem by Geoffrey Chaucer and also as a play by William Shakespeare in The Myth Makers (Classic Series).