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| {{Infobox Individual
| | '''No relation to George Dubya.''' |
| |image = [[Image:MelSmiling.jpg|250px]]
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| |individual name = Melanie Bush
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| |alias = Mel, Melanie
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| |race = [[Human]]
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| |home planet = [[Earth]]
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| |home era = [[20th century]]
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| |appearances = [[Melanie Bush - List of Appearances|Full List of Appearances]]
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| |actor = [[Bonnie Langford]]
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| }}
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| '''Melanie Bush, BSc (Hons)''' — or simply '''Mel''' or '''Melanie''' — was a computer programmer from the [[20th century ]] and a [[companion]] of the [[Sixth Doctor|Sixth]] and [[Seventh Doctor]]s. Not unlike [[River Song]], she had a temporally complex relationship with the Doctor, in which she met the Doctor at a different time than he met her. Eventually, however, their timelines did synchronize, and she was able to have a more-or-less linear relationship to the Doctor, starting in the later days of the Sixth Doctor's life. Her temporal relationship to the Seventh Doctor was thus always completely linear.
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| ==Personality==
| | '''Well, maybe a bit.''' |
| Mel was a computer programmer from the [[20th century]] who came from the village of [[Pease Pottage]] in [[West Sussex]], [[England]]. She had an [[eidetic memory]], and a cheery personality. She greeted most situations with a warm smile and good humour. She was an optimist who generally believed the best of people's natures, although she tempered this optimism with a realism and skepticism borne of her scientific education. Her generally perky personality could cool quite quickly if she detected a threat to either herself, the Doctor, or anyone whom she had befriended.
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| Mel was a health enthusiast and a vegetarian, often encouraging the slightly portly Sixth Doctor to exercise more. Though she remained staunchly vegetarian throughout her travels with the Doctor, ([[BFA]]: ''[[The Fires of Vulcan]]'') her attempts to be the ''de facto'' nutritionist of the Doctor virtually disappeared after that incarnation [[regeneration|regenerated]]. Though she was happy to go by the informal "Mel", she sometimes insisted on being introduced as "Melanie" to those she didn't quite trust. ([[BFA]]: ''[[The Fires of Vulcan]]'')
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| Mel's reaction to fear was dichotomous. In some situations, Mel met danger with a powerful scream ([[DW]]: ''[[Terror of the Vervoids]]'', ''[[Paradise Towers (TV story)|Paradise Towers]]'', ''[[Time and the Rani]]''). In others, she was possessed of an almost steely resolve. Though she might have cowered in fear upon first meeting the [[Vervoid]]s and [[Tetrap]]s, she comported herself quickly after expelling a scream. On other occasions, she displayed little fear at all. She possessed a relatively even temperament when defeating [[the Valeyard]] ([[DW]]: ''[[The Ultimate Foe]]'') and when facing down the [[Bannermen]] ([[DW]]: ''[[Delta and the Bannermen]]''), for instance. On still other occasions she allowed her logic to guide her swift and efficient action, as when she almost single-handedly defeated [[Davros]] and then derided the Doctor for not having killed Davros and the Daleks when he had the chance. ([[BFA]]: ''[[The Juggernauts]]'') Likewise, she displayed extraordinary calm when she had to navigate [[Pompeii]] on foot during the actual eruption of [[Vesuvius]], in search of [[the Doctor's TARDIS]] — when he believed it lost and his life near its end — or when she fought against the effects of having been slowly drugged for six months with [[laudenum]]. ([[BFA]]: ''[[The Fires of Vulcan]]'', ''[[Catch-1782]]'')
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| Her enthusiasm for healthy living was borne of the hard-nosed logic of basic science, which also manifest itself in other ways. She was, for instance, flatly dismissive of the supernatural — like [[ghost]]s — as scientifically ludicrous. ([[BFA]]: ''[[Catch-1782]]'') Equally, she did not believe in the concept of fate. ([[BFA]]: ''[[The Juggernauts]]'')
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| ==Before the Doctor==
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| Melanie had a keen interest in science from a very young age. Her uncle, [[Dr. John Hallam]] — most likely her mother's brother — was deeply influential to this childhood obsession, and she credited him with her later academic success. In [[2003]], Hallam told his colleague, Professor [[David Munro]], that Mel was "very gifted" with computers. ([[BFA]]: ''[[Catch-1782]]'') As a consequence of her education, she was adept in the [[Human]] computer languages of [[wikipedia:BASIC|BASIC]], [[wikipedia:COBOL|COBOL]] and [[wikipedia:FORTRAN|FORTRAN]]. ([[BFA]]: ''[[The Juggernauts]]'')
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| Her home address was 36 Downview Crescent in Pease Pottage. She regularly used this address as a [[wikipedia:backdoor (computing)|backdoor]] when writing code. For instance, she used it to override programming on the [[Juggernaut]]s. ([[BFA]]: ''[[The Juggernauts]]'')
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| ==A confused timeline==
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| Mel first met [[Sixth Doctor|the Doctor]] in [[Brighton]] in [[1989]]. However, as a consequence of the Doctor's [[The Trial of a Time Lord|trial]] at the hands of [[the Valeyard]], he ''already'' knew her then. To ''him'' their first meeting was when she was pulled from her timestream by the [[Time Lord]]s and was made to testify on the Doctor's behalf. Therefore, for a time of indeterminate length — from the moment she met him in Brighton until the time the younger Sixth Doctor returned her to the side of an older Sixth Doctor on the [[planet]] [[Oxyveguramosa]] — he had to pretend that he had originally met her in Brighton, as well. ([[PDA]]: ''[[Business Unusual]]'', [[MA]]: ''[[Time of Your Life]]'') It was only after she was returned to his future self that their timelines synched, and he was able to progress with her in a more forthright way.
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| Even so, Mel and the Sixth Doctor's timelines ware not asynchronous ''merely'' because of he unusual way in which they met. Even after their respective timelines apparently came into harmony, Mel was often parted from the Sixth Doctor. On at least two occasions, she was was stranded for months away from him, even though very little time passed for him. When transported back in time to [[1781]] by a freak accident, the Doctor was unable to retrieve her until six months later in [[1782]]. ([[BFA]]: ''[[Catch-1782]]'' Later, she was accidentally left on [[Lethe]], and the Doctor was delayed by an additional three months. ([[BFA]]: ''[[The Juggernauts]]'') On both occasions she fully became a resident of the new era in which she found herself while waiting for the Doctor's uncertain return.
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| Her timeline with respect to that of the [[Seventh Doctor]] was, by contrast, considerably better synchronized.
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| ===Departure===
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| She decided to stay on [[Iceworld]] with the galactic confidence trickster, [[Sabalom Glitz]], leaving the Seventh Doctor to travel on with his new companion, [[Ace]]. ([[DW]]: ''[[Dragonfire (TV story)|Dragonfire]]'')
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| ==Encounter with the Seventh Doctor following her departure==
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| Encountering the [[Seventh Doctor]] he revealed to her that he manipulated her to depart his company on Iceworld because he knew what was coming (as [[Aliases of the Doctor#Time's Champion|Time's Champion]]) and couldn't have her as a companion. ([[NA]]: ''[[Head Games]]'')
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| Following this encounter she returned to Pease Pottage. ([[PDA]]: ''[[Business Unusual]]'')
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| At some point in the future Mel ''may'' have ended up on the planet Heritage and died there in the [[61st century]]. However during this point in the Doctor's adventures many enemies were attempting to eliminate his companions from the timeline, thus she ''may'' not have died here. ([[PDA]]: ''[[Heritage]]'')
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| ==Alternate timelines==
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| Mel also encountered the [[Valeyard]] in an alternate version of the timeline, here she was much more cynical and hard than she had been originally. ([[DWU]]: ''[[He Jests at Scars...]]'')
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| ==Behind the scenes==
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| *Mel's last name is never uttered during any televised appearance, and the closing credits identify her only by her first name. It is, however, regularly used in [[Big Finish]] audios and various stories told in other media.
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| *According to his book ''The Companions'', [[John Nathan Turner]] planned to begin [[Season 24]] with a storyline explaining how the Sixth Doctor met Mel. This story was never produced due to [[Colin Baker]]'s removal from the role.
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| *Mel was the first companion whom the Doctor encountered prior to their first chronological meeting, something that would be repeated in the new series with [[River Song]].
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| {{Template:Companions of the Sixth Doctor}}
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| {{Template:Companions of the Seventh Doctor}}
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| [[Category:Human companions|Bush, Melanie]] | | [[Category:Human companions|Bush, Melanie]] |
| [[Category:20th century individuals|Bush, Melanie]] | | [[Category:20th century individuals|Bush, Melanie]] |
