Dan Lewis
Daniel Lewis, or Dan for short, was a companion of the Thirteenth Doctor. He joined Yasmin Khan in the Doctor's TARDIS as they faced the Flux, an unforeseen threat to the very structure of the cosmos.
Dan lived a simple life in Liverpool before being thrust into the Doctor's world. He remained open and inquisitive, and challenged Karvanista when he was taken away from home, to outer space. He was interested, most of all, in other people. On the other hand, he could be a little bit careless. For example, Diane obviously expected him to be late for a date, calling him the "late Dan".
Biography
Life in Liverpool
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Dan was born an Aries, (TV: Welcome to the TARDIS...) to Eileen and Neville Lewis (TV: War of the Sontarans) in 1980. (TV: Legend of the Sea Devils)
As an adult, Dan lived in the Anfield district of Liverpool at 37 Granger Street and supported Liverpool F.C.. (TV: The Halloween Apocalypse)
Around 2006, Dan was engaged and due to be married. However, two days before the wedding, his fiancée changed her mind. She informed him that she "couldn't bear spending the rest of her life with [him]" and "thought she could do better". Dan had truly loved her. (TV: Once, Upon Time)
Following the 2021 Dalek civil war, Dan's friend read out Dan's horoscope, which foretold that he would find surprises later that year, that the colour blue and the letter D would be important and that thirteen would be his lucky number. He was told to be prepared for action and to remember that, no matter what, it would not be the end of the world. After his friend finished, Dan closed the rear doors of his Ford Transit, turned, and smiled. (TV: Welcome to the TARDIS...)
Dan volunteered at Jenning Street Food Bank, but refused to take home soup for himself when offered, even though he had no food at home. (TV: The Halloween Apocalypse)
Dan surprised his friend Diane with a skinny latte as she was leaving work. The pair went on a walk around Liverpool. When she asked him why he wasn't married, he told her about what had happened with his fiancée. (TV: Once, Upon Time)
Dan regularly took groups round the Museum of Liverpool in an unofficial capacity, against the wishes of Museum management. Though Diane had a close personal relationship with Dan, Alan threatened to ban him from the site permanently. (TV: The Halloween Apocalypse)
Meeting the Doctor
On Halloween night, 2021, Dan was in his home on Granger Street in Anfield, when three children came to his house, trick-or-treating. He gave them the last of his sweets, and they left. A few seconds later, a man came to Dan's home, asking for sweets; Dan turned him away, both because he was an adult, and because he was not even dressed up.
Later that night, Dan was kidnapped by Karvanista, who intended to rescue him from the Flux. He found himself on Karvanista's ship.
Meanwhile, the Thirteenth Doctor and Yasmin Khan followed Karvanista's trail to Dan's house, which was miniaturised when they triggered technology he had planted there.
The Doctor and Yaz came to rescue him, confronted Karvanista, and took Dan aboard the Doctor's TARDIS. (TV: The Halloween Apocalypse)
Embroiled in the Flux crisis
The Doctor piloted the TARDIS to examine the Flux, which Karvanista had claimed to be saving Dan from. The force turned towards the ship and kept closing in, with Dan hoping they were safe as they were sealed in. The Doctor desperately unleashed vortex energy as the Flux approached, (TV: The Halloween Apocalypse) which resulted in the trio being flung through time to the Crimean War where they found Sontarans in the place of Russia. Dan was then flung through time again as a result of the vortex energy, finding himself back in modern Liverpool which had been occupied by Sontarans.
With the aid of his parents, Dan escaped the Sontaran patrols and he decided to infiltrate the Sontaran ships there, armed only with his dad's wok. In a spaceship he made contact with the Doctor in the past, warning her of Sontaran plans he'd overheard en route, and was rescued from Sontaran guards by Karvanista. Working together they arranged the destuction the Sontaran fleet of timeships that were posed to invade all of Earth's history and managed to escape using a waste chute.
When the Doctor returned, Dan accepted her offer to join her as she departed to find Yaz. They were diverted to the planet Time where Swarm and Azure were waiting for them in the Temple of Atropos. The pair revealed to the Doctor and Dan they'd put Yaz and Inston-Vee Vinder in the places of two Mouri, and prepared to expose them to the full force of time. (TV: War of the Sontarans) The Doctor shoved Dan onto a Mouri pedestal, while she leapt onto another and used her sonic screwdriver, trapping Dan, Yaz, Vinder and herself in a time storm. Protected in his time stream by the Doctor, Dan relived a day he went on a walk with Diane, and discussed his past relationships. However, Dan noticed some inconsistencies, such as time passing in the blink of an eye. Fidgeting out of his time stream, Dan found himself somewhere else. He ran into Joseph Williamson while running away, though he wasn't quite sure from what he was running. While Dan was safe, trapped in a memory, the Doctor replaced the missing Mouri and safely returned Dan to the temple. Swarm showed Dan a glimpse of Diane, who he had kidnapped and imprisoned in a Passenger form. Vinder and later the Doctor promised to help Dan save her. (TV: Once, Upon Time)
Both Dan and Yaz were studiously operating the TARDIS when the Thirteenth Doctor sent a distress call about the arrival of the Flux. Dan then called out to the Doctor, saying that he and Yaz needed her help. (TV: The Flux is Coming...) Dan later watched in horror as a Weeping Angel came out of Yaz's phone and took control of the TARDIS. (TV: Once, Upon Time)
After the Doctor rebooted the TARDIS to get rid of the Weeping Angel, she, Dan and Yaz arrived at the village of Medderton on 21 November 1967. Whilst helping to look for a missing girl named Peggy, Dan and Yaz were touched by another Weeping Angel and were sent back in time to Medderton in 1901. They were later joined by Professor Eustacius Jericho, who had also been touched by a Weeping Angel. Dan and Yaz, via an energy barrier showing what was happening in 1967, witnessed the Doctor being surrounded by Weeping Angels and turned into one after being recalled to the Division. Dan had to stop Yaz from going through the energy barrier to get to the Doctor as doing so would have resulted in her death. (TV: Village of the Angels)
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Dan, Yaz and Jericho spent three years in the 1900s following instructions from the Doctor, who had left a holographic message in Yaz's pocket in case they were separated, to find clues to a potential coming battle for Earth. (TV: Survivors of the Flux) During this time, Dan realised that Yaz harboured romantic feelings for the Doctor, although they did not discuss the matter, and Yaz didn't know that Dan knew. (TV: Eve of the Daleks) In 1904 they learnt the date of the future event was 5 December and consulted a seer for further details, who advised them to "fetch their dog". Taking that as a clue to contact Karvanista they travelled to the Great Wall of China where they painted a message large enough for the Lupar to see from space in 2021, asking him to come rescue Dan.
Aboard a ship leaving China, they were attacked by a man, who committed suicide rather than be interrogated by them, and encountered Joseph Williamson briefly, who Dan had previously met during the time storm. Realising Williamson's tunnels might be a way of moving through time, they travelled to Liverpool and entered them, finding Williamson again who explained his tunnels went throughout history. To their shock, a group of Sontarans suddenly invaded the Tunnels. (TV: Survivors of the Flux) After Yaz stopped tne Sontarans by opening a door leading to "death", Dan, Yaz, Jericho and Williamson went through the door to 2021 where they met Kate Stewart, leader of the Human resistance against Sontaran occupation, and were reunited with the Doctor, who was currently split in three forms.
Dan aided the Doctor with Yaz and Jericho in travelling back to 1967 to recruit Claire Brown to help infiltrate Sontaran experiments on psychics in Chile and rescuing another version of the Doctor and Karvanista. Dan later reunited with Diane after the Doctor saved her and Vinder from Swarm and Azure's Passenger. After the Doctor's plan to use the Sontarans and Passenger to stop by the Flux succeeded, Dan, Yaz and the Doctor bid farewell to Karvanista and Kate and Claire. Dan met with Diane however, because of her experiences in Passenger, she turned down his offer to try to have a drink together again. Dan then met up with the Doctor and Yaz, who offered him to join them in the TARDIS, which he happily accepted. (TV: The Vanquishers)
After the Flux
Now travelling for pleasure as a trio, Dan, the Thirteenth Doctor and Yaz went to see a pantomime of Cinderella, which took a turn for the adventurous after the Doctor tried something during the interval to make the show more exciting, only to accidentally summon real versions of various pantomime characters to the theatre. Though Dan had to duel Captain Hook (while Yaz fought off the Crocodile), the Doctor was able to put things to right using one of the three wishes from a magic lamp, and things returned to normal, allowing the time travellers to witness the second half of the real show. Dan suggested that the Doctor use the second one of her three wishes to give ice cream to all the children in the audience. (COMIC: It's Behind You!)
A week after Dan began travelling with her and Yaz, the Doctor engaged a self-reset process that rendered her TARDIS temporarily unusable in order to purge it of the Flux's residue. As an unintended side-effect, she and her companions, now including Dan, became trapped in a time loop at ELF Storage in Manchester, alongside the building's owner Sarah and her eventual love interest Nick. A small Dalek execution squad infiltrated the building, trying to find and exterminate the Doctor, leading to the group being exterminated over and over again, resetting the time loop each time.
During these loops, Dan had a soulful conversation with Yaz, revealing that he had noticed that she had romantic feelings for the Doctor. When she confirmed it and told that she "didn't know what to do", he urged her to speak her mind to the Doctor, also advising the Doctor — who he knew was aware of these feelings — to stop avoiding the conversation and feigning obliviousness. Eventually they devised a way to escape the building before midnight while destroying the Daleks with explosives in the storage.
Afterwards the Doctor set the trio on a quest for the lost treasure of the Flor de la Mar (TV: Eve of the Daleks) which took them to 1807 China, where a coastal village was being attacked by a crew of pirate Sea Devils. Dan wandered off with Ying Ki and ended up recruited at sword-point by pirate queen Madam Ching to temporarily become part of her crew. Eventually, Dan, Ki and Ching were reunited with the Doctor and Yaz as they foiled the Chief Sea Devil's mad scheme to flood the entire Earth, with Dan using a Sea Devil sword to kill half a dozen Sea Devil pirates in one blow. After the adventure wrapped up, Dan worked up the courage to call Diane, who confessed that she'd been missing him too. (TV: Legend of the Sea Devils)
Landing in 2022, the Doctor, Yaz, and Dan investigated a series of disappearances, seemingly centring on ghost tours at Hydra Hall. The Doctor and Dan visited the hall, meeting its owner, Vera Parker, while Yaz went ghost party hunting. Dan took a phone call from Yaz who said she'd found a Roman legionary party at the hall, so they hurried to the hall, finding it seemingly restored to top condition with apparitions of Roman soldiers nearby. As they approached, the hall returned to normal, with them finding Yaz's smashed phone on the ground and a young boy, Sidney Bird, from 1942.
Whilst the Doctor kept looking round, Dan took Sid to Vera and deduced from the boy's recollections of the Hall that the cellar may be holding some kind of portal and went to investigate alone. He found the portal with the Doctor, Yaz, and the missing people on the other side. With the Doctor sonicking the portal open, Dan and Yaz help her get everyone across, however the portal closed before she could join them. The Doctor managed to reopen it and reunited with them. (COMIC: Hydra's Gate)
At some point, Dan was given a TARDIS key. (COMIC: The Everlasting Summer) The Doctor took her friends to visit the edge of reality, however, there she became infected with a psychic virus which erased them. After restoring the people erased by the virus with the help of Cleo Proctor, the Doctor planned to find her friends. (AUDIO: Salvation)
Upon landing at a beach for a picnic with the Doctor and Yaz, Dan picked up a pair of Preventacles from the Doctor's TARDIS, mistaking them for regular sunglasses. These future-predicting glasses caused him to first witness Yaz supposedly drowning, when in reality she would be attempting to swat some wasps a few minutes later. Dan then a man nearly falling off a cliff, which was an event he went on cause when racing up to the man on the cliff's edge. After the Doctor explained what the glasses were doing Dan discarded them on the beach, unaware they were predicting that the time travellers would soon battle a giant wasp. (COMIC: Fear of the Future)
Afterwards, the group investigated the Gardens of Everlasting Summer on a hunch of the Doctor. When escaping a group of giant wasps as the Preventacles predicted, Dan briefly took protection of a beeling he nicknamed Stripe, but was partially aged in a time storm when returning him to the TARDIS. The Doctor later discovered that the gardens' custodian, Jinpar, was artificially rewinding time to keep the long-lived residents living in a perpetual state of summer, and convinced him to stop and revert Dan, where he left Stripe with the now-placated wasps. (COMIC: The Everlasting Summer)
At some point, the TARDIS made an emergency landing in the Third Doctor's old UNIT HQ laboratory. Dan initially stayed inside the TARDIS while the Doctor and Yaz investigated, but later got out in time to be present when the Doctor, who was suffering from memory troubles due to the temporal crisis, remembered where she'd seen the room before and figured out the cause of her memory troubles. (GAME: Lost in Time)
Departure
Following his near-death experience during an encounter with the CyberMasters, Dan felt unsafe travelling in the TARDIS and chose to remain in Liverpool. He later met with another former companion, Graham O'Brien, where they joined a support group for other people who had travelled with the Doctor, including Yaz, Ian Chesterton, Jo Jones, Tegan Jovanka, Melanie Bush, Ace and Kate Stewart. (TV: The Power of the Doctor)
Psychological profile
Personality
Dan considered others' needs often before his own, volunteering at his local food bank and giving out treats for Halloween while he did not have food for himself at home. According to Wilma, whom he volunteered with, his continued refusal to take food home was a matter of pride. (TV: The Halloween Apocalypse)
Liverpool was central to Dan's identity. He knew much about the city, and felt strongly about its rivalry with Leeds. He even distrusted Yasmin Khan, at least in jest, for her association with Sheffield, which was "too close to Leeds". (TV: The Halloween Apocalypse) He had a similar reaction, when he found out that he arrived in Manchester. (TV: Eve of the Daleks)
When faced with the unknown, Dan tended towards quick, rational conclusions, and had no trouble asserting his reality. He reasoned that an adult trick-or-treater should not be given candy, that Karvanista must have been play-acting in costume, and should leave his home, and later, when faced with the reality of Karvanista's spaceship, that he must have captured Dan in particular for a reason. (TV: The Halloween Apocalypse)
Nonetheless, he remained open to new possibilities, and adapted quickly, even joking that he had a friend with a TARDIS which was even "bigger", moments into first encountering dimensional transcendentalism. (TV: The Halloween Apocalypse)
Dan owned a wild sense of humour. He wisecracked while decoying a Dalek Executioner. (TV: Eve of the Daleks)
Skills
As part of the crew, Dan knew how to operate the controls of the TARDIS control console, to some extent. (TV: The Flux is Coming...) He also showed talents with swordsmanship. (TV: Legend of the Sea Devils)
Behind the scenes
- The role of Dan was written specifically for John Bishop.[1]
- John Bishop considered his casting to "be a dream come true", as he would have never believed it when he was younger.[2]
- As Dan Lewis is said to be an Aries, this would place the character's date of birth from 20 March to 21 April, if the Zodiac of the real world holds true in the Doctor Who universe.
- Dan appeared in the invalid webcast A Message.
- An art card of Dan Lewis was included in DWM 570.
The art card of Dan Lewis in DWM 570. - Dan Lewis' apparent dislike for Leeds, and nearby Sheffield, in The Halloween Apocalypse is most likely banter, stemming from the historic rivalry between Lancashire and Yorkshire. Dan is a born Liverpudlian, and Scouse and the city of Liverpool was historically part of Lancashire before the reform of county boundaries in 1974; both Leeds and Sheffield are typical Yorkshire cities. In Eve of the Daleks, he reacted in a similar manner, when he found out that he was in Manchester, due to the historic rivalry between Liverpool and Manchester.
- It's Behind You!, published on 9 December 2021, was the first appearance of Dan in both a non-televisual story and in the comic medium. It was also his second full story, following the serial Flux.
- The first episode of ITV's The John Bishop Show, which launched a week following Eve of the Daleks, features John Bishop amusingly reacting to fan art depicting Dan and Karvanista as lovers. The fifth episode saw Bishop briefly play the role of Dan, brandishing a wok to that effect.
Evil Dan
After The Halloween Apocalypse first aired, "Evil Dan", an internet meme humorously depicting Dan as a nihilistic, gluttonous villain in fan-edited videos, rapidly became popular on YouTube and Twitter.[3] In the week following the broadcast of War of the Sontarans, Bishop retweeted one of the videos and said that he loved it.[4] In a heartwarming response to a fan letter he received, he told the fan he wrote to about finding Evil Dan funny, but wasn't sure about the explicit pictures he saw of Dan and Karvanista together, nor was Bishop's wife.[5]
Two days after The Vanquishers aired, James Lee, a CGI artist for BBV Productions, posted an unofficial parody video on his YouTube channel using his Cyberon CGI models (as also used in Cyberon is Back!! and More Than Human...) under the title of Evil Dan vs Cyberon, which inserted "Evil Dan" into the climax of the original BBV Cyberon film.[6]
Footnotes
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