Tegan Jovanka
I think she's finding the idea of leaving more painful than she thought . . .
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, Turlough, Kamelion, and, briefly, the Brigadier. She also once played the Game of Rassilon on Gallifrey, during which she met the First, Second, and Third Doctors, along with Susan and Sarah Jane.
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.
Biography
Early life
Tegan was born in the city of Brisbane, Australia on 22nd September 1960 (BFA:The Gathering). She moved to London to pursue a career as an air stewardess (DW: Logopolis).
Travels with the Doctor
On 28th February 1981, Tegan Jovanka was being driven to the airport by her Aunt Vanessa. After their car broke down, Tegan decided to go to get help from what she thought was an ordinary police box but was really a TARDIS. Atounded by the console room like many others before her, she ventures off into the depths of the TARDIS and finds herself lost in it. later a group of police men found the shrunken, dead bodies of Tegan's aunt and another policeman as The Master had killed her aunt with his Tissue Compression Eliminator. Tegan found her way to the control room, somewhat annoyed. She asked to know where her aunt is, and the Doctor, realising that Tegan's aunt was the dead woman in the car, skirted the question. after the TARDIS had shrunk Tegan helped the Doctor by holding the notes with calculations up to the TARDIS so the Doctor is able to read them through the scanner and correct the fault. This is when the Doctor admitted to her; her aunt was dead. The Doctor, the Master and Tegan later escaped from Logopolis in the Master's TARDIS. She saw the the Doctor fall from the Pharos Project radio telescope and regenerate into his fifth incarnation (DW: Logopolis).
After this she, together with Nyssa, another newcomer to the TARDIS , helpled Doctor to rest during his time of crised following the regeneration. On the planet Deva Loka, Tegan was taken over by the Mara. (DW: Kinda) She was deeply upset by the death of Adric in 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 TARDIS to search for her lost cousin, Colin Fraser, in Amsterdam (DW: Arc of Infinity).
On Manussa, the Mara once more possessed her the Doctor once more defeated it, finally, he claimed (DW: Snakedance) Tegan regarded the TARDIS' newest occupant, Turlough with justified suspicion (DW: Mawdryn Undead, Terminus (TV story)). Nyssa's decision to stay on Terminus to care for the Lazars affected her emotionally (DW: Terminus). She had a brief romance with Marriner, an Eternal she realized had no less interest in her than in using her thoughts and feelings to live vicariously through her. During the same adventure, she saw Turlough turn away from evil and reject the Black Guardian (DW: Enlightenment (TV story)).
Eventually, the carnage surrounding the early phase of the Dalek civil war prove too much, and she bids an emotional good-bye to the Doctor and Turlough (who by this time had reformed) in 1984 London (DW: Resurrection of the Daleks).
Life after the Doctor
After leaving the TARDIS for the second time, Tegan apparently abandoned her more youthful dream of becoming an air stewardess. Instead, she returned to Brisbane and took over her father's company. In 2006, Tegan was briefly re-united with the Fifth Doctor, who discovered that she had been diagnosed with an incurable brain tumour (BFA: The Gathering).
Other possibly non-canonical information
One account shows that, while working again as an air stewardess circa 1985, Tegan was accidentally transported by the Doctor into his TARDIS where she helped him and Gareth Jenkins (DW: A Fix with Sontarans).
Personality
Tegan was stubborn, loud, and direct. She described herself as "just a mouth on legs" (DW: Earthshock). While she often bickered with her fellow travelers, 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, Mawdryn Undead) Of her fellow travelers, she was likely closest to Nyssa, whose nature was in many ways the precise opposite of her own. Though morally indignant at the Doctor's apparent unwillingness to save Adric's life (DW: Earthshock), she was genuinely saddened when Nyssa left. (DW: Terminus)
Despite the strong front she adopted, she was actually quite insecure. This manifest 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 dematerializing the TARDIS — and not her own unwavering desire to go — which firmly separated the two. (DW: Time-Flight, Resurrection of the Daleks) Seeing through Tegan's false bravado, the Doctor encouraged her to find her inner strength with the words, "Brave heart, Tegan." (DW: The Caves of Androzani and others)
Other information
- Tegan was able to speak one of the many Indigenous Australian languages fluently and to make sketches (DW:Four to Doomsday).
- Other than Aunt Vanessa (DW: Logopolis) and Colin Fraser (DW: Arc of Infinity) and an uncle named Andrew Verney, who lived in the small English village of Little Hodcombe (DW: The Awakening).
- Before leaving Earth, Tegan had seen Blake's 7 (MA: Cold Fusion).
Key life events
to be added
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