Liv Chenka
Liv Chenka was a companion of the Seventh and Eighth Doctors.
She was a female human originally from the planet Kaldor. Before encountering the Doctor, she worked as a spaceship Med-tech.
Biography
Early Life
Liv's father took her hiking through the mountains on Kaldor. (AUDIO: The Sonomancer)
When she was barely out of college, her father died. Although her sister Tula paid for the funeral, she did not attend. This left Liv bitter and she cut contact with her. (AUDIO: Escape from Kaldor)
Encounter with the Seventh Doctor
Liv served aboard the Lorelei cargo spaceship. She encountered the Seventh Doctor shortly before a group of Voc robots began to attack the crew of her ship. She helped the Doctor to discover that the Voc robots were not behind the attacks, and found that it was actually the ship's security chief, Farel, dressed as a robot when instigating an attack. Liv and the Doctor then prevented Farel from crashing the Lorelei into Ventalis. Liv stayed behind on Ventalis after the Doctor had departed. (AUDIO: Robophobia)
The Doctor's TARDIS took a liking to Liv during this encounter and talked with the Doctor afterwards. She asked the Doctor if he could take on Liv as his companion to which he replied, "Another time perhaps, but not now." (AUDIO: Black and White)
Meeting the Eighth Doctor
Liv was present on Nixyce VII when the Daleks invaded. She was used by the Dalek Time Controller to be a source of compassion amongst the natives of Nixyce VII. It was here she encountered the Doctor for the second time, although she did not recognise him at first because he had regenerated since they last met. Eventually she was convinced of his identity and she helped him with his plans to turn the Daleks against an Eminence fleet nearby. (AUDIO: The Traitor)
Liv eventually fled the Dalek invasion in the bowels of a cargo ship, but suffered severe radiation poisoning which compromised her metabolism and condemned her to death, be it through embolism or renal failure, whichever would strike first. (AUDIO: The Reviled)
Because of this, she signed up as a med-tech on the science vessel Orpheus and went into cryo-sleep on board for a thousand years. She awoke when the Orpheus had reached the edge of the universe. Liv once again met the Doctor on board the Orpheus, shortly before it came under attack from the Eminence, and it began to possess the crew. Liv planned on blowing herself up next to a piece of the Eminence in order to stop its plan, but was rescued by the Doctor and Molly O'Sullivan. She promptly joined them on their adventures. (AUDIO: Time's Horizon)
Travels with the Eighth Doctor and Molly O'Sullivan
Liv travelled with the Doctor to London in the 1970s, where she helped him to defeat the Reborn Master and the Eminence. After they were defeated, the Doctor made Liv stay behind in London with his companion Molly at his home in Baker Street, due the fact that they had met out of order — he had to play out the events in which Liv first met him on Nixyce VII. (AUDIO: Eyes of the Master)
When Molly disappeared, Liv suspected the worst and was able to fashion a crude communications device from the technology of the era, and sent out a distress call which was intercepted by Coordinator Narvin of the Celestial Intervention Agency. (AUDIO: The Death of Hope)
Liv was later sent by Narvin to help the Doctor fight the Master and the Eminence, sending her to Ramosa, where she worked to improve the conditions of the humans refugees of the Eminence War who had settled there, alongside the native scorpion-like Ramossans, who began to despise their visitors and the danger they placed them in. When the humans were isolated into a "quarantine camp", Liv worked to make conditions livable and acted as a medic to the injured, while waiting for the Doctor to arrive. Once he did, together, they worked out a way to make sure the humans escaped an incoming Eminence attack, however, their plan failed resulting in the complete destruction of the Ramossans, their world, and the Master securing the refugees for his own purposes. (AUDIO: The Reviled)
Scared by the Doctor's determination to avert the war, but willing to go along with him, she snuck aboard the private research complex of Professor Markus Schriver, the man responsible for the eventual creation of the Eminence itself, and posed as an assistant sent to him by the Ides Scientific Institute. She became concerned by his mental health but facilitated a meeting between him and the Doctor, which only reinforced the fact he was slowly losing his sanity. Her cover was blown by the arrival of Dr. Sally Armstrong, working for the Master, and she would have died during a neural extraction procedure if Shriver's insanity hadn't caused him to trap Sally inside a second chamber and program the computer to decide which one would undergo the procedure through random chance. Due to her condition, Liv was ready for death, but in the end survived when the computer "chose" Sally instead. She was then taken by the Master instead to play nursemaid to Molly, who was suffering from the mental conditioning and retro-genitor particles that Master had assaulted her with. (AUDIO: Masterplan)
Liv was present on Earth as the Master set up his final endgame, with the eventual result that all of humanity was slave to his will, only able to keep Molly stable and calm during her moments of wakefulness. When Narvin, working with the Doctor, tried to rescue her, she tried to shoot the Master with a hidden firearm, but his hypnotic abilities caused her to believe she was finally succumbing to her illness. However, the Master revealed it was all in her mind, and that her continuous exposure to the particles inside Molly had in fact cured her of the radiation poisoning.
She was eventually rescued from the Master's grasp by the Doctor, and sent by him to take control of a nearby television communications hub, which proved essential to ending the Master's control over the Earth, and defeating the Eminence in the here and now. Afterwards, she was invited on board the TARDIS as a full-fledged companion, even being given a TARDIS key of her own, and said her farewells to Molly, who was to be sent home by Narvin for her own protection. (AUDIO: Rule of the Eminence)
Travelling with just the Eighth Doctor
She visited London 1921 when the Doctor was looking for Molly. She hated looking out of place in her usual attire, so wore clothes of the era. The Doctor then asked her to take Martin Donaldson out on the town. When Martin took her to see a Buster Keaton film she pointed out the flaws in it. The Woman was looking for her. (AUDIO: A Life in the Day)
She went to Paris with the Doctor when he tracked the TARDIS there. She talked to Georges Legrand which led her to Adelaine Dutemps. She kicked down the Doctor's artist friend's apartment door. She told the Dalek Time Controller about the outcome of The Eminence war. (AUDIO: The Monster of Montmartre)
Liv was disgusted that the Reborn Master was working with the Daleks. She got used to being taken prisoner by the Daleks. She expected the Master of being better than using the Daleks. She attacked the Master with the perfume the Doctor had given her in Paris, and stole his Tissue Compression Eliminator. She went to Moscow with him to find the Doctor. She blew Molly O'Sullivan's cover there. (AUDIO: Master of the Daleks)
She became worried after Molly became ill after they arrived in the Eye of Orion. The Time Controller then took her to see Markus Schriver's final experiments. She witnessed the birth of the Eminence. The Dalek Time Controller wanted her to transfer his mind into the gasses the Eminence were composed of; she wouldn't. She wanted the Dalek Time Controller to die to save billions. She took Molly home after her sacrifice. (AUDIO: Eye of Darkness)
With the Doctor, she visited several England-themed planets. (AUDIO: Absent Friends)
Helen Sinclair joins the crew
After years of travelling with the Doctor, (AUDIO: Absent Friends) she was brought to Gallifrey with the Doctor by Cardinal Padrac after the Eleven escaped. Although some of the Time Lords were prejudiced towards her because she was human, Liv was able to see through a Time Lord trick the Eleven had used to hide from the authorities.
She helped Padrac search the Time Lord Academy for evidence against Kiani. Padrac was complimentary towards Liv for travelling with the Doctor. After the Eleven created a state of emergency, he took her hostage. (AUDIO: The Eleven)
When the Doctor traced a temporal anomaly to London 1963, she helped Helen Sinclair to translate some documents from ancient languages using the TARDIS telepathic circuits. She discovered references to the Red Lady. (AUDIO: The Red Lady)
In Florence, 1639 she helped the Cavalli in his investigations. (AUDIO: The Galileo Trap)
She was again used by the Eleven as a hostage against the Doctor. She managed to stop Helen getting dissected. (AUDIO: The Satanic Mill)
After this ordeal, the Doctor took her and Helen to Stegmoor to recuperate. She was the first to notice the Voord spaceship. She almost ran over Ishtek, which alerted the Voord to human presence. (AUDIO: Beachhead)
She wanted to rescue Caleera from the machine that she was kept in. She went off to find the Eighth Doctor. She later helped a set of slaves escape from confinement. (AUDIO: Scenes From Her Life)
When they landed in San Francisco 1906, she asked Helen to take her around to find the Doctor as she knew the time period better. When Helen was kidnapped she went back to find her. She went ahead to unlock the TARDIS to help the Doctor's plan but was trapped underneath a building. (AUDIO: The Gift)
She helped the Doctor to discover why the planet Syra was about to explode. In doing this she distracted the Eleven, and started a fight with him in mining robots. She was about to be thrown down the mine until River Song stopped the Eleven. (AUDIO: The Sonomancer)
The Doctor, Helen and Liv went to Calcot on 1998. She helped the Doctor investigate a mysterious set of nuisance calls. While there, Liv received a call from her father, who was long dead. When the Doctor told her the calls were temporally displaced she took advantage of this to tell her father how much he meant to her. (AUDIO: Absent Friends)
Liv was placed in 15th century Prague in order to find a piece of the Doomsday Chronometer. Apolena took her to the forest and told her about the stories Osm told her. She then met River Song again, and helped her find out a bit more about the Chronometer. (AUDIO: The Eighth Piece)
She was to be killed by the Clocksmith who wanted to encase her in molten metal, but River managed to save her but then the Clocksmith's shop went up in flames and River took her away from the time zone to Rome in 2016. There she met up with Helen again, just before the Clock was reassembled and the museum which they were in collapsed. Helen and Liv managed to get back to the TARDIS just in time to see the Eight regenerate. (AUDIO: The Doomsday Chronometer)
She found it difficult to deal with the Nine in his post-regenerative state, believing him to be the Doctor but his erratic behaviour caused some strain before she realised who he really was. The Nine left her behind on Gallifrey where she met with Padrac, who told her what he had stolen. She realised that Padrac was working with the Eleven after she saw a picture of Stormblood on his council and the fact that he was referring to Caleera when he was taken not the Eleven. Padrac then took her to the Crucible of Souls to show off his work. (AUDIO: The Crucible of Souls)
She, the Doctor and Helen were trapped in a scape capsule careering into the nontime of a murdered future by Padrac. She got moody at the Doctor for leaving her and Helen in Rome 2016 while the Doctor was angry and hurt that she and Helen had gone off with the Nine in his TARDIS and was offended that they had believed one of the most dangerous, insane criminals in Time Lord history was him. After the Doctor couldn't fix the Time Ruders but found some sails which could capture the Time winds. She was determined to find a way to get out of the situation. They jumped out of the pod and rode the shock wave back into normal time. (AUDIO: Ship in a Bottle)
Liv and Helen appeared back in the normal universe with only five minutes of oxygen. They were rescued by a Time Ship which traversed the vortex and started to disintegrate. She managed to programme the ship to deposit them on Earth in the 25th century. River managed to get her to Gallifrey where she got to the TARDIS she left with Veklin to find the Doctor. (AUDIO: Songs of Love)
Helen and Liv went exploring New York. When they went to the main museum, they saw a picture of the TARDIS and a Weeping Angel which had been bequeathed by them. At the museum. they started to hear about the Weeping Angels. The Monk projected an angel which then became an angel in front of them. Veklin came to save them and told her that she was the one giving them clues. (AUDIO: The Side of the Angels)
She was tasked in the Doctor's plan to stop Padrac by destroying the transduction barriers. When she got into the city, she got a message from Caleera to destroy the Capitol shields instead. After Helen crashed the Battle TARDIS, Liv decided to help the injured Time Lords, before the Doctor told her that they were going to search for Helen. (AUDIO: Stop the Clock)
Searching for Helen
While the TARDIS calculated the route taken by the Battle TARDIS Helen was in, the Eighth Doctor was summoned by Winston Churchill to investigate a mysterious abnormality to which the RAF were losing pilots. Liv ended up flying through the breach and was used by the Heliyon as a bargaining chip against the Doctor, who thought Liv was dead. After defeating the Heliyon, Liv was saddened to hear about the death of the pilot with whom she was a prisoner, calling his death a waste. (AUDIO: Their Finest Hour)
The Doctor and Liv followed Helen's trail, but were dragged off course by a disturbance in the vortex, caused by the experiments of Cornelius Morningstar. After Morningstar's scientific consultant, Stralla Cushing, killed him, Liv and the Doctor worked to find her. (AUDIO: How to Make a Killing in Time Travel)
When the TARDIS finally tracked down Helen, the Doctor and Liv ended up at Rykerzon, a prison, where Liv was interrogated. She was broken out by inmates attempting to escape the Kandyman. Then, she and the Doctor finally reunited with Helen, who had also been an inmate there with the Eleven. (AUDIO: World of Damnation) The Doctor was initially skeptical that Helen was still the same person that they knew, but Liv was convinced by her. After defeating the Eleven and the Kandyman, Liv and the Doctor happily welcomed Helen back on board the TARDIS. (AUDIO: Sweet Salvation)
Return to Kaldor
Info from Better Watch Out, Fairytale of Salzburg, Seizure, Deeptime Frontier, Companion Piece, L.E.G.E.N.D. & The Odds Against needs to be added
Seeking a holiday after recent events, the Eighth Doctor took Liv and Helen to the opening of a new leisure centre on Kaldor, hoping to also arrange a reunion between Liv and her sister Tula. After a distraction caused by an aborted attempt to rob the complex that reverted the robots to a setting where they would destroy all life in the complex as part of an early attempt at pest control, Liv decided to remain on Kaldor for a year to patch things up with her sister, arranging to rejoin the Doctor and Helen later after they travelled forward in time by one year after saying goodbye to her. (AUDIO: Escape from Kaldor)
Legacy
The Tenth Doctor told Gabby Gonzalez about Liv, along with several other former companions. (COMIC: Vortex Butterflies)
Behind the scenes
Along with Thomas Brewster, Evelyn Smythe and Charlotte Pollard, Liv is one of four companions created by Big Finish Productions to be depicted travelling with or meeting two incarnations of the Doctor.
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