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Tegan Jovanka was an Australian air stewardess trainee who wandered into the Fourth Doctor's TARDIS when she mistook it for a genuine police box, a mistake that left her aunt Vanessa isolated and later killed by the Tremas Master's TCE. She quickly became embroiled in the events surrounding the Doctor's regeneration and found herself a somewhat unwilling passenger of the Fifth Doctor as he failed continuously to live up to his promise of returning her to her proper time and planet. She was one of the few companions to have parted company with the Doctor only to return for a significant number of adventures.
She was joined in her travels at various times by Adric, Nyssa, Turlough, Kamelion and, briefly, the Brigadier. She played the Game of Rassilon in the Death Zone on Gallifrey, where she also met the First, Second and Third Doctors, along with Susan Foreman and Sarah Jane Smith.
Her relatively long tenure of service onboard the TARDIS belied an ambivalence about travel with the Doctor. Until her final glimpse of the TARDIS, she vacillated between wanting to stay and wanting to go.
Biography
Early life
Tegan was born in the city of Brisbane on 22 September 1960. (AUDIO: The Gathering) In her youth, she spent time in Caloundra, north of Brisbane. (PROSE: The King of Terror)
She had a younger brother. (PROSE: Cold Fusion)
She went to high school with Mike Bretherton, who lived next door to her in Brisbane. They were taught physics and chemistry by Miss Anderson. When she was fifteen, she broke her toe during track and gym and Mike carried her books home for her. (AUDIO: Hexagora)
Tegan went to college. (AUDIO: The Lady of Mercia)
As she wanted to see the world and broaden her horizons, she studied foreign languages and Aboriginal culture. She spent most summers travelling aboard. For instance, she visited Hong Kong in 1979. (PROSE: Cold Fusion)
She moved to London to pursue a career as an air stewardess in 1981. (TV: Logopolis)
During the 1980s, her father owned a sheep farm near Brisbane. (AUDIO: The Butcher of Brisbane)
Her paternal grandfather emigrated from Yugoslavia to Australia. He always referred to Australia as "the New World." (PROSE: Cold Fusion)
Her mother, the daughter of Andrew Verney (TV: The Awakening), was still alive in 2006. On 22 September of that year, she telephoned her daughter to wish her a happy forty-sixth birthday. She wanted to pay Tegan a visit so they could celebrate together, but Tegan claimed she was too busy with work to fit her mother into her plans. She told her she was going to have a few drinks with her friends from work instead. (AUDIO: The Gathering)
Travels with the Doctor
On 28 February 1981, Tegan's aunt Vanessa drove her to Heathrow Airport for her first day as an air stewardess. The car broke down in the London Borough of Barnet. Seeing what she thought was a police box, Tegan tried to call for help. Instead, she entered the huge interior of the Doctor's TARDIS. Astounded by the console room like others before her, she ventured into its depths. The Fourth Doctor and Adric, not knowing she was on board, dematerialised for Logopolis to have the Logopolitans perform the complex calculations to restore functionality to the TARDIS' chameleon circuit.
The TARDIS crew discovered they had an accidental passenger. However, returning her to her rightful time and place was a secondary concern. The Doctor grew aware the Tremas Master was trying to create instability in the universe by manipulating Logopolis. Tegan became embroiled in the Doctor's cause once she learned the Master had in the meantime killed her aunt. Stranded on a crumbling Logopolis with the Doctor, she became one of the few companions to travel in the Master's TARDIS. The trio journeyed to Earth's Pharos Project to stop the rampant entropy the Master had unleashed upon the universe. Once there, she witnessed the Doctor's near-fatal fall from the Project's radio telescope and his consequent regeneration. (TV: Logopolis)
Tegan did not abandon the Doctor, even though she was ostensibly in her proper time and place. Perhaps seeing she would face a charge for criminal trespass, she threw her lot in with Nyssa, Adric and the newly-regenerated Doctor. Nyssa and she were critical to stabilizing the Doctor's difficult regeneration. She became a temporary TARDIS pilot (albeit receiving unknowing help from the Master) and saved it from being destroyed when it tried to travel past the Event One horizon. Her success was tempered by the Master's manipulation of the outcomes. (TV: Castrovalva)
On the planet Deva Loka, Tegan accidentally fell asleep at "the place of shared dreams",
allowing the Mara to take over her body after torturing her with nightmares. She was freed from the Mara when it possessed a mute Kinda male. While the Mara was being destroyed by forcing it to look at its reflection, Tegan looked at the Mara, apparently allowing a small portion of it to escape deep into her subconscious. (TV: Kinda)
She later displayed at least a basic appreciation for cricket and a talent for dancing the Charleston, which she had learned for a school play, as an accidental guest at Cranleigh Hall with the Doctor, Adric and Nyssa. She strove to prove the Doctor innocent of the murder of one the mansion's staff, which was committed by the deranged and hidden son of the Cranleighs. (TV: Black Orchid)
During a trip to the 26th century, when the Doctor took a walk to ease his stress after an argument with Adric, Tegan was accused by soldiers, along with the Doctor and Nyssa, of killing archaeologists. It turned out to be androids controlled by the Cybermen. Tegan joined them in their trip to a cargo freighter, inadvertently transporting Cybermen to invade Earth. During this encounter Adric lost his life trying to disarm the Cybermen's control device on the ship out of scholarly pride. Tegan was furious at the Doctor's refusal to go back in time and rescue Adric. (TV: Earthshock)
Tegan was left behind at Heathrow Airport in her home time due to a misunderstanding. (TV: Time-Flight)
Having been sacked from her job as an air stewardess for unknown reasons, Tegan went to Amsterdam in January 1983 on a trip to find her lost cousin, Colin Frazer. She ended up captured by Omega, a rogue Time Lord whom the Doctor had previously defeated during his third incarnation. Omega had kidnapped her cousin to use as bait to lure her there. Tegan was used as leverage by Omega to have the Doctor stay alive so his genetic template could be used to create a new body for Omega out of positive matter. Once the process was done and began to fail, Tegan reunited with the Doctor and watched him seemingly destroy Omega before he could revert to anti-matter and destroy Earth. (TV: Arc of Infinity) However, the Doctor soon learned that Omega had survived and had taken refuge in the Sector of Forgotten Souls. (AUDIO: Omega)
On Manussa, the remnants of the Mara which had possessed her gave Tegan prophetic dreams about the cave whence the jewel drew power. Despite the Doctor's efforts to help her suppress the monster, Tegan submitted to its will again and helped it feed on the negative emotions of those at a ceremony recalling the creature's first defeat. The Doctor performed the "snakedance" and found the "still point" within himself, destroying the Mara for good, for he had no negative emotions for it to feed on. Tegan was permanently freed from its possession. (TV: Snakedance)
Back on Earth, Tegan met two different versions of the retired Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart. He was teaching at a public school whose student population included the mysterious Turlough. She displayed a talent for character assessment when she immediately warmed to the former, while distrusting the latter. When she mistook Mawdryn for the Doctor, going through a bad regeneration, Tegan ended up infected with his virus, which caused her to age backwards when the real Doctor tried to remove her from Mawdryn's spaceship in the TARDIS. Tegan was saved when the two versions of the Brigadier met, releasing enough energy to power Mawdryn's machine, cure her and Nyssa, and allow Mawdryn and his fellow mutants to die. Turlough joined the TARDIS crew, something Tegan was not pleased about. (TV: Mawdryn Undead)
Thanks to Turlough's sabotaging of the TARDIS, Tegan and the others ended up on a spaceship filled with victims suffering from Lazar's disease. While the Doctor sought out the controls to prevent the ship from causing another Big Bang that would end the universe, she and Turlough were sent to find Nyssa, who had been infected and taken away for treatment. Nyssa's decision to stay on Terminus to care for the victims of Lazar's disease affected Tegan emotionally. (TV: Terminus)
Tegan had a brief romance with the Eternal Marriner, a being who didn't love her so much as want to live vicariously through her emotions. During the same adventure, she saw Turlough turn from evil and reject the Black Guardian. This caused her to warm up to Turlough, if just a little. (TV: Enlightenment)
Two days later Tegan, Turlough and the Doctor arrived on Helheim where they were reunited with Nyssa but it had been fifty years for her. Tegan discovered that Nyssa had cured Lazar's disease. After the Doctor failed to take Nyssa home she joined them again on the TARDIS. (AUDIO: Cobwebs)
The Doctor, Tegan, Turlough and Nyssa then arrived on Cherdor in the 28th century, where they found a society which was obsessed with cleanliness, and lived under the menace of the Takers. After discovering the truth behind the origins to the corrupt society, the TARDIS crew returned to the TARDIS, but discovered that she was still possessed by the Mara. (AUDIO: The Whispering Forest)
They then arrived on Manussa during the Manussan Empire where they fought against the Mara. (AUDIO: The Cradle of the Snake)
While briefly stranded in the mid 1980s, Tegan met a teenage McDonald's employee named Dorothy "Ace" McShane, who would later become a companion of the Seventh Doctor. (PROSE: The Crystal Bucephalus)
Tegan met Peri Brown and Erimem at a cricket match attended by both her and their versions of the Doctor. That night, the three of them got drunk at a pub. (PROSE: Graham Dilley Saves the World)
The Doctor took Tegan and Turlough to the Eye of Orion to relax. However, she soon was pulled into helping the Doctor and his first three selves complete the Game of Rassilon, as part of a plan by the corrupt Lord President Borusa. Here, Tegan again met the Brigadier, along with Susan Foreman and Sarah Jane Smith. After the Doctor was made Lord President in Borusa's place, Tegan was surprised the Doctor wanted to run from the Time Lords. (TV: The Five Doctors)
She also met the Sea Devils and the Silurians when they attacked an underwater base in the late 21st century to rid the Earth of humanity. Tegan watched as the Doctor defeated them by using a gas that was fatal to reptiles.(TV: Warriors of the Deep)
Eventually, the carnage of the early phase of the Dalek civil war proved too much for Tegan to bear. She bid an emotional and accusatory farewell to the Doctor and Turlough in London in 1984 and ran off before the Doctor could respond. Even so, she ran back to see the TARDIS dematerialise, calling out her goodbyes. (TV: Resurrection of the Daleks)
Life after the Doctor
After leaving the TARDIS for the second time, Tegan apparently continued working as an air stewardess for some time before returning to Brisbane to take over her father's animal-feed company.
On her 46th birthday, 22 September 2006, Tegan was briefly reunited with the Fifth Doctor, who discovered that she had been diagnosed with an incurable brain tumour and had at most a year to live. Despite the Doctor's entreaty, Tegan chose to forgo his assistance in treating the tumour. She stated that she wished to remain on Earth, because she was happy with the life that she had. She rekindled her relationship with Michael Tanaka. She had previously ended the relationship because of her tumour. (AUDIO: The Gathering)
According to another account, Tegan married William Haybourne. He died when they were both elderly. Tegan had by this point come to believe that her time with the Doctor was just her imagination. She came across a version of the Doctor that she didn't recognise. (PROSE: Good Companions)
According to research conducted by Sarah Jane Smith, Tegan was still alive as of 2010, campaigning for Aboriginal rights. (TV: Death of the Doctor)
Personality
Tegan was stubborn, loud and direct, once describing herself as "just a mouth on legs." (TV: Earthshock) While she often bickered with her fellow travellers, her intrinsic honesty and morality proved useful. The Doctor once noted that these qualities made her a good coordinator. (TV: Castrovalva) She was also more likely to detect a threat to the Doctor's safety than her fellow companions. (TV: Castrovalva, TV: Mawdryn Undead)
Of her fellow travellers, she was likely closest to Nyssa, whose controlled nature was in many ways the precise opposite of her own. She was indignant at the Doctor's apparent unwillingness to save Adric's life (TV: Earthshock) and genuinely saddened when Nyssa left. (TV: Terminus)
On Deva Loka, Tegan argued with Adric after he suggested she was too weak-minded to defy the Mara and that the ensuing chaos was her fault. (TV: Kinda) However, she also showed concern for Adric's well being when he was captured and tortured by the Master. (TV: Castrovalva)
Although she despised violence (TV: Resurrection of the Daleks), she would resort to it under extreme circumstances. When the Master threatened the Doctor, Tegan immediately threw a knife at him. (TV: The King's Demons)
The Doctor often encouraged her to find her inner strength with the words, "Brave heart, Tegan" (TV: Earthshock, TV: Warriors of the Deep), which he saw her saying as he regenerated. (TV: The Caves of Androzani)
Known family
- Vanessa - aunt (TV: Logopolis)
- Andrew Verney - maternal grandfather (TV: The Awakening)
- Colin Frazer - cousin (TV: Arc of Infinity)
- William Haybourne - husband (PROSE: Good Companions)
Other information
- Tegan spoke one of the many indigenous Australian languages fluently. Given that Kurkutji had been taken from Earth more than twenty thousand years earlier, this feat may have been aided by the TARDIS' telepathic translation circuits, as any language would change greatly over that period of time. (TV: Four to Doomsday)
- She was a talented artist, sketching the latest fashions on Earth for Enlightenment to see. (TV: Four to Doomsday) On another occasion, she drew a picture of two Cybermen. (PROSE: Lackaday Express)
- Before leaving Earth, Tegan had seen Blake's 7. (PROSE: Cold Fusion)
- At the age of three, Tegan didn't like ice cream. (TV: Kinda)
- In terms of her personal politics, Tegan described herself as "a fully paid up Aussie republican" and "downright Bolshie." (AUDIO: The Children of Seth)
- The renegade Time Lady Iris Wildthyme met Tegan (as well as Adric and Nyssa) when she spent Christmas in the TARDIS on one occasion during the Doctor's fifth incarnation. Iris came to dislike Tegan, later describing her as "that shrill Australian woman." (AUDIO: Excelis Dawns)
- At one point during her travels with the Doctor, Tegan visited Nocturne. The Seventh Doctor later told his companions Ace and Hex that it was "a particularly lively visit." (AUDIO: Nocturne)
- The Doctor once compared Tegan and Turlough to bickering siblings. (AUDIO: Freakshow) On another occasion, Turlough jokingly told Tegan that "stubbornness is one of Australia's greatest exports." (AUDIO: The Emerald Tiger)
- Nyssa considered Tegan to be her best friend. (AUDIO: The Emerald Tiger)
- The tigress Dawon once referred to Tegan as a "shrieking she-cat." (AUDIO: The Emerald Tiger)
- The Fifth Doctor used to hide from Tegan in the TARDIS' Cloister Room. (AUDIO: No Place Like Home)
- Shortly before his death on 31 December 1926, Major Cyril Haggard referred to Tegan as "an Antipodean harpy." (AUDIO: The Emerald Tiger)
- After he believed that she had been killed, the Fifth Doctor told Lady Adela Forster that Tegan was "very dear" to him. (AUDIO: The Emerald Tiger)
- She believed that her first name was Welsh in origin. (COMIC: The Immortals)
- Harry Houdini was the first historical figure whom she met during her travels with the Doctor. (AUDIO: Smoke and Mirrors)
- Tegan once told Nyssa that the English were "surly buggers." (PROSE: Not So Much a Programme, More a Way of Life)
- The Eleventh Doctor once described Tegan as "a gobby Australian." (TV: The Crimson Horror)
Behind the scenes
- Actor John Barrowman, who plays Captain Jack Harkness in both Doctor Who and its spin-off Torchwood, has a dog named Tegan Jovanka, as he told David Tennant in an episode of Doctor Who Confidential.
- The reference to Tegan still being alive in 2010 is not necessarily a contradiction of her terminal condition in The Gathering as there are many real-life accounts of people surviving with tumours for much longer than predicted, and given her connection to the Doctor there's also the possibility an as-yet-unchronicled event changed her circumstances after The Gathering. Also, the Doctor told System to help Tegan, and System did at some point go into production, as it was active in 2021 at St. Gart's Brookside Hospital in The Harvest.
- Janet Fielding appears in-character as Tegan with the Sixth Doctor in NOTDWU: A Fix with Sontarans, a story which this wiki does not consider a valid source.
- According to REF: The Doctor's Lives and Times, Tegan gave a full account of her travels with the Doctor to a mysterious individual by the name of Dr. Song.
