A little companionship

Now that the new Doctor has been chosen — and I’m cautiously optimistic about that choice, by the way — speculation on who will be his new companion has already begun. Most, if not all, of this speculation will prove to be wrong — did anyone suggest Matt Smith before his name was announced on Saturday? Did anyone even know who he was? — but that’s no reason for me not to make my own wild and totally inaccurate guesses, just like I did last week. It’s not yet known whether David Tennant will be joined by a companion (or two, or twelve) in his last few outings as the Doctor, but I’m not going to concern myself with that right now. These, instead, are my predictions for the companion that will join Mr. Smith on his adventures in the TARDIS. They are:

1. David Tennant. A former Doctor as companion. It’s as madcap as it is unprecedented, but there are ways they could make it work. I mean, there is that half-human Doctor who ran off with Rose in the fourth season finale, “Journey’s End” — although maybe the less seen of him the better, hmm? Still, it would be a nice way of weaning fans off of Tennant and on to the new guy.
2. Russell T. Davies. Either as another character or, in a bizarre postmodern twist, as himself. Either option would work equally well — which is to say not at all — but either way, it would finally let Davies himself moon over the Doctor in unrequited love, which has clearly been a dream of his since he was but a boy. Unrequited, I should say, until that fateful winter night when, on the run from the Cybermen and having drunk just a little too much mulled wine, the two of them… Well, I’ll just let you slash writers in the audience figure out the rest of that.
3. Julia Sawalha. Maybe best known as Saffron in Absolutely Fabulous — at least on this side of the pond — she was Rowan Atkinson’s companion, Emma, in Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death. Which, as it just so happens, was written by a certain Steven Moffat. Full circle perhaps?
4. A Dalek. Named Skippy. Again, think of the irony! British children love their irony!
5. Any of the Doctor’s former companions. Or maybe all of them, through the magic of CGI and careful digital editing. Most of them are probably still alive if any new dialogue needs to be recorded. Elisabeth Sladen already has her own spinoff and working relationship with the BBC — and she looks phenomenal for a woman of 60, I might add! And if not her…well, there were several decades of companions to choose from! I ask only this: please, no Adric.
6. The ones who got away. Any of the characters who were almost, but never quite companions — or for whom a life mucking about in space and time just wasn’t in the cards. Your Sally Sparrows, your Adam Mitchells, your Astrid Peths, your Madames de Pompadour…any of a dozen different returning favorites, given a second go-around. Hey, it happened with Donna Noble.
7. Professor River Song. I’m actually not kidding about this one. As portrayed by Alex Kingston in the fourth season two-parter “Silence in the Library”/”Forest of the Dead,” the character’s most interesting feature is that she will, at some point in the Doctor’s future, get to know him extremely well. And in his audio commentary to “Silence,” Steven Moffat suggests he’s quite interested in revisiting the character at some point. Would she be his next companion, Matt Smith’s first? Too much is still unknown about what kind of Doctor he’ll be, where exactly Davies’ four movies will leave the series off, and what Steven Moffat has going on inside that head of his. But at this point, she’s just as likely as Lily Allen, don’t you think? Not that I don’t like Lily Allen…

Incidentally, it’s been pointed out that Matt Smith, the new Doctor, appeared in The Ruby in the Smoke and an episode of Secret Diary of a Call Girl, both starring Billie Piper. That’s not really relevant to this discussion, but it is an interesting little factoid.