Meet the Crew (feature)

Meet the Crew
Doctor:	Thirteenth Doctor
Companion(s):	Yaz, Dan
Key crew
Publisher:	Penguin Group
Writer:	Paul Lang
Release details
Printed in:	Doctor Who The Official 60th Anniversary Annual 2023
Release date:	1 September 2022
Doctor Who The Official 60th Anniversary Annual 2023
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Meet the Crew was the first full entry in Doctor Who The Official 60th Anniversary Annual 2023, published in 2022. It was a non-narrative feature narrated by the Thirteenth Doctor and introducing herself as well as her current companions at the time.

Summary

The Thirteenth Doctor gives introductions for herself, her TARDIS, Yasmin Khan, and Dan Lewis.

Characters

• Thirteenth Doctor
• Yasmin Khan
• Dan Lewis

Mentioned only

• "A giant dog"

Worldbuilding

• The Thirteenth Doctor acknowledges that "Doctor is usually a title, not a name". She muses that "being the Doctor is like having every job in the universe all at once, and not getting paid for any of them", and adds that, because she "take[s] being the Doctor very seriously", she'll "always do [her] best to help anyone in trouble — or just in need of a big hug!".
• Police boxes are defined as "a special blue phone box once used by officers to summon help, before they had radios or mobile phones".
• The Doctor describes Yasmin Khan as her "wingwoman" and "BFF", describing her as "generally being the absolute greatest" and stating she "do[es]n't know wht [she]'d do without [Yaz]". The Doctor also claims that Yaz has been "travelling with [her] long than almost anybody else".

Notes

• The Thirteenth Doctor suggests Yasmin Khan has been her companion for longer than most other companions she's ever had. This references Yasmin Khan's status in the real world as one of the longest-lasting companions in terms of season and episode count. In-universe, it is far less clear in most sources that she stayed with the Doctor for an unusual length of time.

Continuity

• The text written by the Thirteenth Doctor, serving as part of an in-universe counterpart of sorts for the annual itself, is implicitly part of the book mentioned in GAME: Flux Fixers ^[+]Loading...["Flux Fixers (game)"].
• *The Thirteenth Doctor casually refers to herself as "brilliant". The Tenth Doctor had previously declared "I'm brilliant" to Professor Yana with a similar lack of feigned modesty in TV: Utopia ^[+]Loading...["Utopia (TV story)"]; "Brilliant!" was also the Thirteenth Doctor's own first word in TV: Twice Upon a Time ^[+]Loading...["Twice Upon a Time (TV story)"].
• The Doctor recalls that "there are creatures who want to do terrible things, and they get annoyed when I try to stop them"; this echoes the Second Doctor's memorable declaration in TV: The Moonbase ^[+]Loading...["The Moonbase (TV story)"] that "there are some corners of the universe which have bred the most terrible things" and that these creatures "must be fought".
• The Doctor recalls how the TARDIS recently "felt a bit poorly" after an "encounter" with the Flux, eventually forcing the Doctor to enact an emergency reset. The encounter in question happened in TV: The Halloween Apocalypse ^[+]Loading...["The Halloween Apocalypse (TV story)"], with its effects on the Ship being seen for the rest of Series 13, culminating with the reset being enacted as the inciting incident of TV: Eve of the Daleks ^[+]Loading...["Eve of the Daleks (TV story)"]. The Doctor promises to "come back" to the matter of the reset in later narration, setting up PROSE: Dalek Time Twisters ^[+]Loading...["Dalek Time Twisters (short story)"], another entry in the Official 60th Anniversary Annual where she summarised the events of Eve of the Daleks.
• The Doctor describes Yasmin Khan as "the kind of woman who spends four years travelling the world to do you a favour, putting herself in terrible danger along the way" — a not-so-hypothetical situation which was indeed depicted in TV: Survivors of the Flux ^[+]Loading...["Survivors of the Flux (TV story)"].
• The Doctor recalls how Yaz was a "trainee police officer" when the two first met, as per TV: The Woman Who Fell to Earth ^[+]Loading...["The Woman Who Fell to Earth (TV story)"].
• Dan Lewis is described by the Doctor as her "newest pal"; his first adventure(s) with the Doctor, in TV: The Halloween Apocalypse ^[+]Loading...["The Halloween Apocalypse (TV story)"] and TV: War of the Sontarans ^[+]Loading...["War of the Sontarans (TV story)"], are briefly summarised.
• The Doctor notes Dan has "an annoying habit of working out how his friends feel about stuff before they even know themselves", referencing how in TV: Eve of the Daleks ^[+]Loading...["Eve of the Daleks (TV story)"] he ferreted out the Doctor and Yaz's mutual, but unspoken romantic attraction and tried to get each of them to admit to it, with both proving reluctant to take the next step.