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Elizabeth Shaw - or simply Liz Shaw - was a civilian member of UNIT. She did much field work and became acquainted with the Third Doctor.
From then on, Liz helped Doctor while at UNIT. This often involved her winding up in the same life-threatening situations as the Doctor. She continued to work occasionally at UNIT even after leaving their regular employment.
Biography
Liz was the daughter of Reuben Shaw (1919-1995). (BBV: Ghosts of Winterborne)
Education
She was an accomplished scientist and an expert on meteorites. She had degrees in several disciplines, including physics and medicine. (DW: Spearhead from Space)
Experiences with UNIT
Recruitment
Liz was drafted from the University of Cambridge by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart as a scientific advisor to UNIT. (Lethbridge-Stewart did not know that the Doctor had arrived on Earth and would ably serve as UNIT's scientific advisor.) Skeptical at first of UNIT's remit to defend the Earth against alien invasions, she changed her mind when she encountered the newly-regenerated Doctor and became involved in defeating the Nestene Consciousness and its animated plastic servants, the Autons. (DW: Spearhead from Space)
Career with UNIT
Liz worked with the Doctor and UNIT through encounters with the Silurians (DW: Doctor Who and the Silurians), Cybermen (CC: The Blue Tooth), the rogue General Carrington (DW: The Ambassadors of Death) and the Inferno Project.
On a fascist version of the Earth, the Doctor would meet a parallel version of Liz who had joined the military, Section Leader Elizabeth Shaw. This version of Liz probably died, along with most of the rest of the other Earth in volcanic explosions. (DW: Inferno)
Liz's extensive training paled in comparison to the Doctor's own knowledge of the universe and scientific principles far beyond that of Earth's. Eventually, she resigned from UNIT and returned to Cambridge.
She reportedly told the Brigadier that all the Doctor needed was "someone to pass him his test tubes and tell him how brilliant he was." This feeling probably contributed to her decision to return to her own research. (DW: Terror of the Autons)
Continued association
Liz would occasionally return to help UNIT and the Doctor. (PDA: The Devil Goblins from Neptune). On one occasion, however, when the Doctor had gone away to Peladon (DW: The Curse of Peladon) and the Brigadier needed her assistance, she had gone away on a lecture tour. (PDA: The Face of the Enemy)
One year after leaving UNIT, Liz called the Doctor for help with a time experiment. They travelled to the year 2014 and encountered the organisation known as the Sentinels of the New Dawn. They returned to Liz's correct time and the two separated again. (CC: The Sentinels of the New Dawn)
A few years after leaving UNIT, Liz gave a short interview by the investigative journalist James Stevens. Stevens found her a "difficult" subject. She warned him against prying too deeply into UNIT affairs. (MA: Who Killed Kennedy)
As the Doctor's travelling companion
Generally, Liz was the Third Doctor's laboratory assistant, rather than his travelling companion, at a time when the Doctor was just beginning his exile on Earth. She certainly didn't believe that the TARDIS was capable of flight when she first met the Doctor, and remained suspicious for some time thereafter. (DW: Spearhead from Space, Inferno) To the extent that she travelled with him, it was in Bessie or by other, more conventional means.
However, she later came to travel in the TARDIS with the Doctor and her successor, Jo Grant, after the Doctor regained his knowledge of time travel. (PDA: The Wages of Sin) At an unknown time later, and for an indefinite period of time, she travelled with the Fourth Doctor, who had deliberately sought her out in order to apologise for not saying goodbye to her properly. (BE: Down to Earth)
P.R.O.B.E.
Decades after her initial employment with UNIT, Shaw worked with the Preternatural Research Bureau, or P.R.O.B.E., a paranormal investigation organisation not unlike UNIT or the Torchwood Institute. (BBV: The Zero Imperative) According to a several accounts, however, she was again working for UNIT by the early 21st century. (SJA: Death of the Doctor, NA: Eternity Weeps)
Death?
It was unclear when Shaw died. One account held that in 2003 Liz was part of a UNIT team which investigated an artefact left by the alien Cthalctose on the Moon in the year 2003. As a result, she contracted Agent Yellow and died. (NA: Eternity Weeps) According to UNIT personnel in 2010 Liz was unable to attend the Eleventh Doctor's fake funeral, as she was at the UNIT Moonbase and could not return until the following Sunday. (SJA: Death of the Doctor)
Alternate versions
As noted above, in one timeline, Liz worked under Brigade Leader Lethbridge-Stewart as Section Leader Elizabeth Shaw. (DW: Inferno)
In another, following the death of that timeline's version of the Third Doctor, she managed to survive into the early 1990s on an Earth devastated by the victorious Silurians and their virus. (NA: Blood Heat)
Other information
Unconventionally for a woman, Liz Shaw enjoyed smoking a pipe. (BBV: The Zero Imperative, MA: Who Killed Kennedy) The Seventh Doctor gave Liz's UNIT pass to Ace. It was stored in his hat. (DW: Battlefield)