Peri Brown
- For the mythological fairy, see Peri (mythological creature).
Perpugilliam Brown, known simply as Peri, (born 1966) was an American college student turned companion of the Doctor during his fifth and sixth incarnations.
Biography
Early life
Peri Brown was born to Paul and Janine Brown in 1966. Her parents were married on 21 November 1962 (CC: Peri and the Piscon Paradox) and she was their only child. She was raised in Fell's Point, Baltimore, Maryland, where her mother lived until her death. However, because her parents and her stepfather were all archaeologists, she travelled around the globe as much as she enjoyed a stable life in Baltimore. Her best friend was Kathy Chambers and, in her youth, she was attracted to Kathy's elder brother Nate. (PDA: Blue Box, BFA: The Reaping)
The Doctor once pointed out that, in Persian mythology, a peri was also the name of a kind of fairy which started off evil before turning good. (DW: The Twin Dilemma) As a girl, Peri used to read the comic book Swamp Thing. (PDA: Players).
When Peri was thirteen, Paul Brown died in a boating accident. (PDA: Synthespians™) Janine married a man named Professor Howard Foster, who already had two children of his own. One account claimed that Foster subjected Peri to sexual abuse and that Peri never forgave him. (TN: Shell Shock)
However, this account was hard to square against others. One said that Janine and Howard later split because Howard didn't respect her professionally. (BFA: The Gathering) Had abuse of Peri been a genuine issue, it surely would have been the proximate cause of the divorce. Another account said that Peri suffered sexual abuse as a young woman, but that the "abused Peri" was a version that had been mind-wiped by the Time Lords to remember only her first adventure with the Fifth Doctor and Turlough. This Peri returned to America and married her high school sweetheart — who brutally beat her. (CC: Peri and the Piscon Paradox) Had she been abused by Howard at an earlier point in her life, she would surely have mentioned it when giving her account of this later, similar act of violence.
She had an aunt named Mona who was still alive in 2009. Mona lived in a trailer park and collected golliwogs, which she ordered from England. She seemed to dress in a manner reminiscent of the Sixth Doctor. (CC: Peri and the Piscon Paradox)
Travels with the Doctor
First meeting with the Doctor
Peri studied botany (DW: Timelash; BFA: The Mind's Eye) and had an interest in archaeology, fueled by her parents' passion for the subject. (PDA: Blue Box) Circa 1984, she met the Doctor and Turlough on Lanzarote. The shape-shifting android Kamelion, controlled by the Master at the time, assumed the form of Peri's step-father, Professor Howard Foster, and later that of the Master himself, before seizing control of the TARDIS to take her to the planet Sarn to meet the real Master. After the destruction of Kamelion and the defeat of the Master, Turlough returned to his homeworld, Trion, and Peri joined the Doctor on his travels. (DW: Planet of Fire)
After Lanzarote
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Immediately after the events on Lanzarote, the Doctor took Peri to Astroville Seven, a 31st century space station where Peri saw lots of different alien races and got a taste of what travelling in the TARDIS was like. While on the station, they got caught up in an epic quest for the legendary treasure of Rovan Cartovall. (PDA: The Ultimate Treasure) She met Ice Warriors on Mars, (BFA: Red Dawn) helped a group of human colonists beset by the carnivorous Farakosh (BFA: Exotron) and pretended to be a waitress in an alien restaurant to figure out why three different gourmets wanted to kill the Doctor. (BFA: Urban Myths) The pair also ran into the Master in 1880s California, (ST: A Town Called Eternity) met an Essex priest who was hiding radioactive alien bodies in his church crypt in 1953 (ST: The Canvey Angels) and met the Brigadier before encountering a race known as the Arix, who lived their lives in the span of one Earth day. (ST: A Life in the Day)
With Erimem
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After this period of travelling alone with the Doctor, she encountered the ancient Egyptian princess, Erimem, who joined them in the TARDIS. (BFA: The Eye of the Scorpion) Peri grew exceptionally close to Erimem, and hoped that her feelings for Erimem were like those one had for a sister. (TN: Blood and Hope) After Erimem chose to remain on Peladon, she and the Doctor continued on alone. (BFA: The Bride of Peladon)
After Peladon
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Soon after Erimem's departure, Peri and the Doctor went to the planet Grallista Social for a spot of relaxation, but found themselves in the midst of a viral decontamination effort by the Viyrans. (BFA: Mission of the Viyrans) Soon after this, Peri was intentionally separated from the Doctor on an unnamed world. During this separation, the Doctor travelled briefly with a Tracer named Amy who helped him find the Key to Time. Peri likely reunited with the Doctor soon after his second attempt at finding the Key to Time concluded. (BFA: The Judgement of Isskar, The Chaos Pool) Around this time, Peri and the Doctor went to the village of Sair during the Middle Ages, where a young man named Tabilibik used a form of magic to get her to fall in love with him. The Doctor swiftly broke his spell, though. (VD: Fascination)
With a new Doctor
After contracting spectrox toxaemia and then getting accidentally involved in local politics on the twin planets of Androzani Major and Minor, Peri was abducted by Sharaz Jek and, upon her escape and began to die from the disease. The Doctor saved her but, not having enough bat's milk (which acted as an antidote) to save himself, regenerated into a very different new and unstable persona (DW: The Caves of Androzani). At the peak of his madness, the Doctor attempted to throttle Peri to death - Peri was the only companion known to have suffered a physical assault at the hands of the Doctor. Still, he managed to regain his wits enough that Peri accepted the change and continue to travel with him. (DW: The Twin Dilemma) Perhaps due to the assault, Peri seemed ill at ease with the Doctor from time to time (DW: Attack of the Cybermen, Timelash) although their relationship became more comfortable as time went on (DW: The Mysterious Planet).
After the Doctor's fifth regeneration, Peri alternated time traveling in the TARDIS with the Doctor, with time spent in the company of a second companion, Frobisher (a Whifferdill in the shape of a penguin) and occasional sabbaticals on Earth. During the first of these sabbaticals she lived in New York City in 1985, though she grew frustrated at her (undisclosed) job there and soon quit before gratefully rejoining the Doctor and Frobisher. (DWM: Kane's Story)
Peri would encounter Sil, one of a race of capitalist despots known as the Mentors (DW: Vengeance on Varos). She met the Master a second time, now with an accomplice, the Rani (DW: The Mark of the Rani), and made the acquaintance of the Doctor's former companion Jamie McCrimmon at an earlier stage of his life (DW: The Two Doctors) and later as a much older man (DWM: The World Shapers). She also encountered the Doctor's greatest enemies, the Daleks. (DW: Revelation of the Daleks) Over time, Peri matured and her relationship with the Doctor became less combative.
The Five Peris
The reason for the large number of contradictory accounts regarding Peri's life was that competing factions of Time Lords chose different ways to re-write her life. According to an un-named Time Lord who visited the Sixth Doctor and a version of Peri living in Los Angeles in 2009, no fewer than five versions of Peri existed:
- One was killed when Lord Kiv replaced her brain with his own, as the Doctor viewed during his trial (Kiv-in-Peri's body was subsequently killed by Yrcanos). The Time Lord encountered in 2009 likened this to an assassination, strongly implying that it was orchestrated by the Time Lord faction behind the trial, i.e. The Valeyard, as a way of removing a potential witness who could contradict the altered recordings played at the trial. It's unclear whether Sil and/or Yrcanos were knowing accomplices. (DW: Mindwarp)
- A rival Time Lord faction, feeling the assassination unwarranted, pulled Peri out of that timestream at some moment before her death and allowed her to, as the Time Lord puts it, "live out her days" as a warrior queen alongside Yrcanos, as revealed to the Doctor at the conclusion of his trial (DW: The Ultimate Foe, and referenced in later novels such as NA: Bad Therapy). Peri and Yrcanos ultimately had three children: two sons and a daughter, just as Peri had always wanted. (CC: Peri and the Piscon Paradox)
- This Peri, or a substantially similar version, had at least three grandchildren, a few of whom would meet the Doctor and Frobisher. (GN: The Age of Chaos)
- This Peri, or a substantially similar version, was visited by the Doctor when she was in her early forties. By this time, still bitterly unhappy with the Doctor, she felt resigned to her fate. (BE: Reunion)
- This Peri, or a substantially similar version, never forgave the Doctor for abandoning her. Following another of his regenerations, the Doctor and Peri made peace with each other and the Doctor returned Peri to late 20th century Earth. (NA: Bad Therapy)
- An unnamed female Time Lord president (possibly Romana), feeling that forcing Peri to spend her days with Yrcanos was a fate worse than death, arranged for another permutation of Peri to be removed from the timestream and returned to Earth in the mid-1980s with all her memories of travelling with the Doctor erased, except for her first encounter (i.e. DW: Planet of Fire), similar to what occurred to Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe Heriot following the Doctor's first trial (DW: The War Games)). Although the president's intentions were good, this version of Peri faced great challenges over the next quarter century. After returning to America, she married her childhood sweetheart, who proved to be extremely abusive to her, ultimately injuring her so badly she could not bear children and required reconstructive surgery to her face. This Peri became a relationship counselor and, later, a popular TV talk show host in Hollywood, as well as an actress. In her late forties, she reunited with the Doctor on an adventure that saw her interact with her younger self and, ultimately, learn about her other selves. Offered a chance to travel with the Doctor again, she declined and returned to her life in 2009 Los Angeles.
- The other two permutations of Peri, and the reason for their creation, were not specified. (CC: Peri and the Piscon Paradox)
Mysteries and discrepancies
- During the Doctor's fifth incarnation, Peri spent a year as a guerrilla fighter while separated from the Doctor, who meanwhile headed a military organisation known as the Alliance (PDA: Warmonger) (Where this falls in terms of Peri's personal timeline remains unknown.)
- The length of time Peri spent with the Doctor is unclear. Some accounts suggest her travels with the Doctor occurred over the space of months, but at least "a couple of years" passed (for her, anyway) between her first encounter with Jamie McCrimmon (DW: The Two Doctors) and the second (DWM: The World Shapers). As noted above, she was also separated from the Doctor for as long as a year on one occasion (PDA: Warmonger) and two years on another (BFA: The Kingmaker). The fact one version of Peri was returned to Earth immediately after her first encounter with the Doctor suggests her time with the Doctor was brief enough that she didn't change physically unless the Time Lords altered her appearance (CC: Peri and the Piscon Paradox)
Behind the scenes
- Using her real English accent Nicola Bryant played "Miss Brown", an obvious analogue to Peri in three BBV Productions videos in the Stranger, Summoned by Shadows, More Than a Messiah and In Memory Alone. Later videos in the series would make clear that the Stranger series did not take place in the Doctor Who Universe and that Peri and Miss Brown had no connection with each other. Bryant also played Elenya "Ellie" Brown, the girlfriend of Colin Baker's character, in another BBV production, the non-Doctor Who The Airzone Solution. It is conceivable that the "Miss Brown" of the Stranger series could be the fifth alternate Peri mentioned in CC: Peri and the Piscon Paradox, suggesting she either coincidentally began travelling with a Doctor-like individual who happened to look exactly like the Sixth Doctor, and began affecting a British accent, or she was placed in an alternate reality.
- Counting audio and televised adventures together, Peri effectively shares the longest-serving companion title — both in terms of number of stories and recorded time — with Ace. As they are tied, the title essentially alternates as new stories are released. Her nearest rivals are Jamie McCrimmon, Charley Pollard and Nyssa. Of these, only Nyssa appears to be in active use past 2010, and so she represents the only potential threat to Peri and Ace's record-breaking number of appearances. While she clearly eclipses the amount of time Sarah Jane Smith has been seen or heard as a companion, Peri is easily outpaced by the character of Sarah, due to Sarah's latter-day appearances as a solo character.
- While Peri is supposed to be an American, her English accent often slips through, and her American accent wanders between different regional accents. She sometimes uses phrases and pronunciations that Americans would not use, such as "lift" instead of the American "elevator". Indeed, the Attack of the Cybermen DVD commentary maintained that it was mandated that Peri only use British slang so as to not confuse the audience. This may have worked for the British audience, but, as Peter Davison pointed on on the DVD commentary for Planet of Fire, it had the opposite effect on American viewers. They could spot Bryant's fake American accent — or, really, any British actor's attempt at American — with ease. This was one of the principal reasons that Davison fought hard against adding an American companion to the show. This idiosyncrasy of language did not end with the TV series, as it can be heard as recently as the 2011 release CC: Peri and the Piscon Paradox.
- According to Nicola Bryant on the DVD commentary for Planet of Fire, there was an active effort to cover up the fact that she was not, in fact, American. She recounted there how John Nathan-Turner insisted she use her American accent when making public appearances, or appearances that could have been monitored by the press. At least during the recording of her earliest serials, like Fire, she was even required to use the American accent when she broke character between takes. It's unclear how long this obfuscation lasted, but evidence for the subterfuge can be heard on a clip from Breakfast Time broadcast the day the first episode of The Twin Dilemma aired. During the interview, the interviewer asserted that as a "little girl in America" Bryant used to watch Doctor Who and dream of being a companion. Bryant, who used only a very mild English accent during the interview, failed to correct the interviewer or to even look as though the interviewer had made an error. Near the end of the 1984 production block — which is to say after the recording of Season 22, but probably slightly before its airing — Bryant gave a radio interview in which she used her natural British accent. (BBCR: Doctor Who at the BBC Volume 3)
- Peri is one of only two Americans to serve as a companion for the Doctor on television. The other is Grace Holloway.
- The idea of Howard Foster sexually abusing Peri is one never considered by the production team on Planet of Fire, and does not have resonance in audio and print literature beyond TN: Shell Shock. Nicola Bryant says that the idea, as envisioned by her, Fiona Cumming and Dallas Adams, was to suggest that she and her stepfather had an appropriate but friendly relationship. Indeed, according to Bryant, Peri much preferred the company of Howard to that of her mother. (DCOM: Planet of Fire) However, the character of Peri (or at least one aspect of Peri) was still destined for an abusive relationship as revealed in CC: Peri and the Piscon Paradox.
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