Bev Tarrant
Biography
Bev Tarrant was a member of an illegeal salvage team sent to investigate a mysterious ziggurat on Kar-Charrat, which was actually a Dalek hibernation unit. (BFA: The Genocide Machine) While the rest of her team were killed, she met the Seventh Doctor and Ace during the mission, and survived the encounter with the Daleks, and the destruction of the Kar-Charrat library. She heads off on her own, and makes a living as an art thief, until her latest job ends up stranding her on Duchamps 331, a dustball of a planet after her ship's hyderdrive burned out. Once gain encountering the Doctor and Ace when they visit the planet on another adventure, she helps them defeat the Doctor's old foe, the Master, before leaving with them aboard the TARDIS. (BFA: Dust Breeding)
She travelled with them for an unknown amount of time, before eventually being 'dumped' in the 26th century, and resuming her old ways as a thief. She made her way through the galaxy this way for almost a decade, striking up various brief partnerships with other thieves, until she took one particular job that had unexpected consequences. While visiting the planet Bellotron to steal a burial urn, though, she is captured and examined by Rutans, one of whom copies her, and uses her identity in its own effort to use the urn for it's own ends. During that escapade, she meets Professor Bernice Summerfield, and they both discover that the other knows of the Doctor, so Bev is invited back to the Braxiatel Collection, where Bernice is currently working from. (BSA: The Bellotron Incident)
Bev ends up as a member of staff, serving at first as a P.A. to Irving Braxiatel himself, before eventually replacing him as Director of the Collection when the Time Lord is forced to leave. (BFA: The Tartarus Gate). During the brief invasion of the Collection by the Fifth Axis, Bev helped group together and lead a resistance movement, then caused enough trouble to keep the Axis off guard before they were eventually overthrown and forced out. Her tenure as Director was fraught with problems and many of the staff members not feeling she was up for the job, which was not entirely her own fault, since the Collection was tied to Braxtiatel in ways no one really understood. She tried to step into his shoes and negotiate a truce between the warring Draconians and the Mim, but was unsuccessful, eventually forced to accept the help of the Collection's founder.