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Melanie Bush, or simply Mel, was a computer programmer from the 20th Century and a companion of the Sixth and Seventh Doctors.
Mel first appeared when she and the Sixth Doctor had been travelling together for some time. The events of were shown as part of a Matrix projection of future events being shown to the Sixth Doctor, so from his point of view, he was seeing an adventure he would have with Mel even before he met her in his own timeline. At the end of the Trial, the Sixth Doctor went off with this future Mel, presumably to drop her off somewhere, meet her past self for the first time (from her point of view), and then carry on from there.
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, almost perky personality. She greeted most situations with a warm smile and good humour, and was an optimist whose views extended to believing the best of people's natures, but could also scream with the best of them. She was a health enthusiast and a vegetarian, often encouraging the slightly portly Sixth Doctor to exercise more. She was present (albeit unconscious at the time) when the Sixth Doctor regenerated into his seventh incarnation, and continued to travel with him.
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.
Other appearances
The spin-off novel Time of Your Life states that the Sixth Doctor returned Mel to his future self at the point the Time Lords took her from, during an adventure on the planet Oxyveguramosa.
The actual story in which the Sixth Doctor met Mel for the first time was never shown in the programme, although the spin-off novel Business Unusual, by Gary Russell, covered this, and established that she came from 1989.
Mel's history after she left the Seventh Doctor was not explored in the series. The spin-off novels and short stories, however, reveal that her decision to leave the Doctor was actually due to psychic persuasion on the Doctor's part, so he could go on to become the darker and more manipulative Time's Champion. In the Virgin New Adventures novel Head Games by Steve Lyons, Mel confronts the Seventh Doctor over this and at the end of the novel he returns her to 20th Century Earth and Pease Pottage (Business as Usual by Gary Russell).
In the BBC Past Doctors novel Heritage by Dale Smith, it is revealed that at some point, Mel travelled in time and space again, ending up on the planet Heritage, where she dies in the 61st Century. However, this story takes place during a story arc where enemies of the Doctor are attempting to eliminate his companions from the timeline, so Mel's fate in Heritage may be part of an alternate destiny that vanished once those enemies were defeated.
Bonnie Langford played Mel once again in the 1993 charity special, Dimensions in Time, and has voiced the character in a series of audio plays from Big Finish Productions, alongside Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy as the Sixth and Seventh Doctors. The canonicity of the audio dramas, like other Doctor Who spin-off media, is unclear. Langford has also voiced an alternate, more cynical version of Mel in the Doctor Who Unbound play He Jests at Scars....