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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. She quickly became embroiled in the events surrounding his regeneration and soon found herself a somewhat unwilling passenger of the Fifth Doctor. 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 by Adric, Nyssa, Vislor Turlough, Kamelion and, briefly, the Brigadier. She also once played the Game of Rassilon in the Death Zone on Gallifrey, during which she 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 wishing to travel with the Doctor. Until her final glimpse of the TARDIS, she vacillated between wanting to stay and wanting to go. She returned to work as an air stewardess in 1985.
Biography
Early life
Tegan was born in the city of Brisbane on 22nd September 1960. (BFA: The Gathering) In her youth, she spent some time in Caloundra, north of Brisbane. (PDA: The King of Terror) She moved to London to pursue a career as an air stewardess in 1981. (DW: Logopolis)
Her mother was still alive in 2006. (BFA: 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 but her car broke down in the London Borough of Barnet. Seeing what she thought was an ordinary police box, Tegan tried to call for help. Instead, she discovered the huge interior of the Doctor's TARDIS. Astounded by the console room, like others before her, she ventured off into its depths.
The Fourth Doctor and Adric, not knowing she was on board, dematerialised for Logopolis, in an effort to get the Logopolitans to perform the complex calculations needed to restore functionality to the TARDIS' chameleon circuit.
The TARDIS crew discovered that they had an accidental passenger. However, returning her to her rightful time and place became a secondary concern, once the Doctor became aware that the Master was attempting to create instability in the universe by manipulating Logopolis. Tegan became embroiled in the Doctor's cause once she discovered that the Master had in fact killed her aunt. When she became 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, which could 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 subsequent regeneration. (DW: Logopolis).
After this, she did not abandon the Doctor, even though she was ostensibly in her proper time and place. Perhaps seeing that she would be facing some sort of charge for criminal trespass, she decided to throw her lot in with Nyssa, Adric and the newly-regenerated Doctor. She and Nyssa became critical to the effort to stabilize the Doctor's difficult regenerative process. Amongst other accomplishments, she became a temporary pilot for the TARDIS, and saved it from being destroyed when it tried to travel past the Event One horizon. Her success was tempered by the fact that the Master had manipulated the outcomes. (DW: Castrovalva)
On the planet Deva Loka, Tegan accidently fell asleep at "the place of shared dreams", which was very
dangerous as it allowed the Mara to take over her body after torturing her with nightmares to weaken her will to resist it. She was freed from the Mara once 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 subconcious. (DW: Kinda) She later displayed at least a basic appreciation for cricket and a talent for dancing the Charleston while being an accidentally-invited guest at Cranleigh Hall along with the Doctor, Adric and Nyssa. She later fought to prove the Doctor innocent of being the murderer of one the mansion's staff. (DW: Black Orchid).
During a trip to the 26th century that let the Doctor take a walk to ease his stress after an argument with Adric, Tegan was accused by some soldiers along with the Doctor and Nyssa of killing archeologists. However, it turned out to be androids controlled by the Cybermen and 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 greatly saddened by his death and furious with the Doctor's refusal to go back in time and rescue Adric. (DW: Earthshock)
Tegan was left behind at Heathrow Airport in her home time due to a misunderstanding (DW:Time-Flight). Later, after losing her job with the airline, she returned to the Doctor's side to search for her lost cousin, Colin Frazer, in Amsterdam. (DW: Arc of 'Infinity)
On Manussa, the remnants of the Mara that once possessed her had been giving Tegan prophetic dreams about the cave from where the jewel it drew power. Despite the Doctor's best attempts to help her surpress the monster, Tegan submitted to its will again and was forced to help it feed on the negative emoitons of those present at a ceremony recalling the creature's first defeat. However, the Doctor performed the "snakedance" and found the "still point" within himself, destroying the Mara for good as he had no negative emotions for it to feed on. As a result, Tegan was permanently freed from its possession. (DW: Snakedance)
Back on Earth, Tegan met two different versions of the retired Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart who 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. (DW: Mawdryn Undead).
Nyssa's decision to stay on Terminus to care for the victims of Lazar's disease affected Tegan emotionally (DW: 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 away from evil and reject the Black Guardian. (DW: Enlightenment)
Tegan was soon taken to the Eye of Orion to relax, but soon had to help the Doctor and his first three selves complete the Game of Rassilon in place of the corrupt Lord President Borusa. Tegan once again met the Brigadier, along with Susan Foreman and Sarah Jane Smith. After the Doctor was given office as Lord President in Borusa's place, Tegan was surprised that the Doctor wanted to still be on the run from the Time Lords. (DW: The Five Doctors)
Eventually, the carnage around the early phase of the Dalek civil war proved too much for her to bear. She bid an emotional, and somewhat accusatory, farewell to the Doctor and Turlough in London in 1984 and ran off before the Doctor could respond. Even so, she seemed to reverse her decision. She ran back to where she thought the TARDIS would be, only to find that the Doctor had already departed with Turlough and Kamelion. (DW: 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. In September 2006, Tegan was briefly reunited with the Fifth Doctor, who discovered that she had been diagnosed with an incurable brain tumour and consequently had a year to live at most. (BFA: The Gathering)
According to research conducted by Sarah Jane Smith, however, Tegan was still alive as of 2010, campaigning for Aboriginal rights. (SJA: Death of the Doctor)
Personality
Tegan was stubborn, loud and direct, once describing herself as "just a mouth on legs." (DW: 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. (DW: Castrovalva). She was also more likely to detect a threat to the Doctor's safety than her fellow companions. (DW: Castrovalva, DW: 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 morally indignant at the Doctor's apparent unwillingness to save Adric's life (DW: Earthshock) and genuinely saddened when Nyssa left (DW: Terminus).
On Deva Loka, Tegan argued with Adric after he suggested she was too weak-minded to defy the Mara and therefore the ensuing chaos was her fault. (DW: Kinda) However, she also showed concern for Adric's wellbeing when he was captured and tortured by the Master. (DW: Castrovalva)
Although she seemed to despise violence (DW: Resurrection of the Daleks), she would resort to it under certain circumstances. When the Master threatened the Doctor, Tegan immediately threw a knife at him. (DW: The King's Demons)
Despite the strong front that she adopted, she was actually quite insecure. This manifested itself most strongly in her inability to firmly decide whether she wanted to stay onboard the TARDIS. Even when she seemed most resolute in her determination to go, she quickly reversed herself. On both occasions when she left the TARDIS, it was the Doctor's act of dematerialising the TARDIS — and not her own unwavering desire to leave him— which firmly separated the two. (DW: Time-Flight, DW: Resurrection of the Daleks) Seeing through Tegan's false bravado, the Doctor often encouraged her to find her inner strength with the words, "Brave heart, Tegan" (DW: Earthshock, DW: Warriors of the Deep), which he saw her saying as he regenerated (DW: The Caves of Androzani).
Known Family
- Vanessa - aunt (DW: Logopolis)
- Andrew Verney - maternal grandfather (DW: The Awakening)
- Colin Frazer - cousin (DW: Arc of Infinity)
Other information
- Tegan was able to speak one of the many indigenous Australian languages fluently. Given that Kurkutji had been taken from Earth over 20,000 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. (DW: Four to Doomsday)
- She was also a talented artist. (DW: Four to Doomsday)
- Before leaving Earth, Tegan had seen Blake's 7. (MA: Cold Fusion)
- At the age of three, Tegan didn't like ice cream. (DW: Kinda)
Behind the scenes
- As of 2011, Tegan is the only companion to appear as a regular in four successive seasons of Doctor Who, joining at the very end of Season 18, staying for the entirety of seasons 19 and 20, and then departing during the second half of Season 21.
- Actor John Barrowman, who plays Captain Jack Harkness in both Doctor Who and its spin-off Torchwood, has a dog named after Tegan.
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