Sharon Davies

Sharon Davies
Species:	Human
Place of origin:	Blackcastle
Spouse:	Vernon Allen
First appearance:	Doctor Who and the Star Beast
Appearances:	see list
Main voice actor:	Rhianne Starbuck

Sharon Allen (née Davies) was a companion of the Fourth Doctor.

Biography

Travels with the Doctor

Sharon grew up in the steel mill town of Blackcastle. Her best friend on Earth was a schoolmate nicknamed Fudge Higgins. After hearing reports of alleged UFO sightings, Fudge forced Sharon to search for the shuttle with him. In a shed, the two discovered Beep the Meep. The small alien appeared to be peaceful, and they were convinced that it needed help. They took care of it at Fudge's house, unaware that it was being hunted for extreme war crimes.

Under the mental influence of his black light radiation, she tried to kill the Fourth Doctor. After being cured and seeing the true nature of Beep, she helped him defeat the creature afterwards. The Doctor tried to take Sharon home, (COMIC: Doctor Who and the Star Beast) but his TARDIS accidentally landed aboard the Spacehog, an astro-freighter in the New Earth System, instead of Sharon's hometown. The ship was attacked by the Werelox, but the Spacehog crew and K9 Mark II overcame them. The Doctor tried attacking Sharon after he transformed into a Werelok, but he eventually found a cure. Sharon visited New Earth, her first planet other than Earth.

The Doctor refused to take Sharon with her on board the Dalek battlecraft after he realised the Daleks were behind the attack on the Spacehog. Sharon stowed away on board the Spacehog, not realising it was on a suicide mission to blow up the Dalek ship. Joe Bean sent her off in a life pod, and later picked her up when the Doctor froze the battlecraft in time and space. Because Sharon was having fun, she felt there was no hurry in returning to Blackcastle. (COMIC: Doctor Who and the Dogs of Doom)

Sharon experienced a Retinal Implant Viddy Machine education (on The Galactic Crime-Fighter's Notebook rather than Advanced High School Physics as the Doctor had intended) while on board the TARDIS. The TARDIS was ripped into two, and the Doctor and Sharon landed in a blank dimension. The Doctor defeated Brimo, a woman with psychic powers who drew energy from the Doctor's dimension but had to make a trip four years into the future to bring the two halves of the TARDIS together. Due to a malfunctioning chrono-compensator, the trip was instant but both the Doctor and Sharon were aged four years. Sharon had aged more noticeably than the Doctor. (COMIC: Doctor Who and the Time Witch)

Her adventures continued in China in 1522 AD, where stranded Sontarans were using Shaolin Monks to fight and retrieve crystals needed to send a distress signal. (COMIC: Dragon's Claw)

As the Doctor returned Sharon home, the Doctor, K9, Sharon and the TARDIS were caught by a teleport beam operated by Varan Tak. Their ship was collecting samples of lifeforms throughout the universe. (COMIC: The Collector)

Her next journey saw her revisiting old friends of the Doctor on Unicepter IV, where she struck up a relationship with Vernor Allen, a professional dreamer who used a Slinth called Miki. When the Slinth were drained and no longer used for dreaming, Sharon decided to start a new life with Vernon, feeling it impossible to return to Blackcastle since she had grown up. (COMIC: Dreamers of Death) Sharon's wedding was later held on Unicepter IV, and the Fourth Doctor tried to attend. (COMIC: Star Beast II)

Working against Dogbolter

An older Sharon. (COMIC: The Stockbridge Showdown)

Sharon was a reporter for the Galactic Broadcasting Corporation in the 82nd century (COMIC: Time Bomb!) and loathed Josiah W. Dogbolter for his increasing control over all private news media. The Twelfth Doctor recruited her in a plot to bring Dogbolter down. She confronted Dogbolter at his 500th birthday party, warning him all men with tyrannical ambitions have bad endings; and when Dogbolter was tricked into boasting about his mass murders, Sharon filmed it and broadcast it live on the GBC.

Following that, she went to Maxwell Edison's birthday party on Cornucopia and danced with Frobisher. (COMIC: The Stockbridge Showdown)

Sharon appeared on GBC’s coverage of the Thirteenth Doctor’s recent exploits, countering the false narrative started by Berakka Dogbolter that she was a dangerous terrorist. (COMIC: Mistress of Chaos)

Legacy

Long after Sharon left the Doctor, a facsimile of her was included in a recreation by the TARDIS of the Eighth Doctor's friends and allies from its own memories. (COMIC: A Life of Matter and Death)

Behind the scenes

• Created for the Doctor Who Weekly comic strip, Sharon has the distinction of being the first recurring person of colour as a companion of the Doctor to appear in any medium, predating Mickey Smith by 26 years. She is predated as a POC character only by Nick Willard from Zeron Invasion in TV Action, who only appeared in one story. She was also the first original companion to be created for the comic strip. Her creator, Pat Mills, designed her deliberately as a nontraditional comics heroine. Mills, noticing the preponderance of dumb, rich white girls as heroines, made Sharon deliberately black, poor and intelligent. Apart from K9, it would be several years before the comic strip began featuring TV companions.
• Sharon's surname, Davies, was never mentioned in Doctor Who Weekly, but comes from a data file on the Doctor in the Marvel UK comic book Death's Head, starring the character of the same name. It was later also given in the Big Finish adaptation of Doctor Who and the Star Beast.
• During production of the Doctor Who Magazine story Death to the Doctor! (which featured numerous villains discussing defeats caused by different incarnations of the Doctor) one idea suggested by Tom Spilsbury was that they only use comic-exclusive companions in the flashbacks. This would have included Sharon with the Fourth Doctor and John and Gillian with the First. However, this was ultimately decided against. (The Widow's Curse)