Tegan Jovanka
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 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 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. She returned to work as an air stewardess in 1985.
Biography
Early life
Tegan was born in the city of Brisbane on 22 September 1960. (BFA: The Gathering) In her youth, she spent time in Caloundra, north of Brisbane. (PDA: The King of Terror) 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. (BFA: Hexagora) She moved to London to pursue a career as an air stewardess in 1981. (DW: Logopolis)
Her mother, the daughter of Andrew Verney (DW: 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. (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 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 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 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. (DW: 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. (DW: 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. (DW: Kinda) She later displayed at least a basic appreciation for cricket and a talent for dancing the Charleston 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. (DW: 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. (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 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. (DW: 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. (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 from evil and reject the Black Guardian. (DW: Enlightenment)
Tegan was 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 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. (DW: The Five Doctors)
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 seemed to regret 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 she had been diagnosed with an incurable brain tumour and had at most a year to live. (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 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 that the ensuing chaos was her fault. (DW: Kinda) However, she also showed concern for Adric's well being when he was captured and tortured by the Master. (DW: Castrovalva)
Although she despised violence (DW: 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. (DW: The King's Demons)
Despite the strong front that she adopted, she was 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 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. (DW: Four to Doomsday)
- She was 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)
- In terms of her personal politics, Tegan described herself as "an Aussie republican" and "downright Bolshie." (BFA: The Children of Seth)
- The renegade Time Lady Iris Wildthyme had 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, subsequently describing her to the Doctor as "that shrill Australian woman." (BFA: Excelis Dawns)
Behind the scenes
- As of 2012, 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 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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