• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Should Mel and Charlie overlap?

Should the Gals team up?

  • Girl-Power Together Unite?

    Votes: 3 50.0%

  • Never the Twain Shall Meet?

    Votes: 3 50.0%
  • Total voters
    6
Guy Gardener

Guy Gardener

Fleet Admiral
Admiral
Recently the 8th doctors Companion Charlotte got a little lost and hooked up with 6 (Reminicent of the season two primer of Californication where Mulder goes down on the wrong woman after getting turned around in the bathroom.). Obviously she's miraculously landed in the "Trial of a Timelord" Gap wherein the Doctors memory gets a little fuzzy and we also skip a little time as we juggle between two Sixes, one who had just disposed of peri and the other who was embracing the fun times of exploring the universe with a Thatcherite Computer programmer.

Bonnie is not completely irredeemable and she's done some audio adventures in the past, but wouldn't it be more than interesting if these two women were to henpeck the Doctor together as they took on Daleks and Cybermen?

Or not?
 
I just about lost heart with the universe the day some one said to me "Just wait for it, you're about to do something unpredictable." :(

So yes I was listening to BF111, The Doomwood Curse while i started this post. Although, Colin in the extras section had yet to utter a comment which went down a treat with the theme of this thread when he referred to his extensive list of supporting actresses as his "Stable of Fillies".
 
Last edited:
Oh, Colin.

Actually, I'm listening to The Doomwood Curse in the car presently. A little bit into Episode 1 so far, and I have of course entirely enjoyed the return of the Grel.

BAD FACT!
WORSE FACT!
EVEN WORSE FACT!
 
You've just described the one circumstance in which I would even consider watching Blossom.

I don't know if I'd want Mel and Charley to overlap, mostly because both their continuities with respect to the Sixth Doctor are convoluted enough already. However, if there were a really good storyline which made the added complication worth it, it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.
 
Guy Gardener said:
Recently the 8th doctors Companion Charlotte got a little lost and hooked up with 6 (Reminicent of the season two primer of Californication where Mulder goes down on the wrong woman after getting turned around in the bathroom.). Obviously she's miraculously landed in the "Trial of a Timelord" Gap wherein the Doctors memory gets a little fuzzy and we also skip a little time as we juggle between two Sixes, one who had just disposed of peri and the other who was embracing the fun times of exploring the universe with a Thatcherite Computer programmer.

Bonnie is not completely irredeemable and she's done some audio adventures in the past, but wouldn't it be more than interesting if these two women were to henpeck the Doctor together as they took on Daleks and Cybermen?

Or not?
Click to expand...


I have a feeling that the book which featurs both Evelyn and Mel rules this out, but even if it does it was written by Gary Russell while he was producing Big Finish, and as he's now moved over to the TV show, the current producers could always contradict, sorry, rethink his version if they wanted...
 
Big Finish already contradicted Instruments of Darkness while Gary Russell was still working there; the audio Thicker than Water features another first meeting between Mel and Evelyn. And Russell's novel Spiral Scratch contradicts them both, by (apparently at Justin Richards' request) having Mel fail to recognize Evelyn in a story set just before "Time and the Rani."

In any case, Instruments of Darkness itself doesn't pose much of a problem, as the premise is that Evelyn meets the Doctor again sometime after he's met Mel- they could just say that Charley left the Doctor and Mel before that point. It seems likely that there'll be some timey-wimey stuff accompanying Charley's departure anyway.

All that being said, I don't think a Charley/Mel pairing would be particularly effective, and I'd prefer to see Charley depart before too much longer. Her run with the sixth Doctor has already been extended into 2009, which is fine as they're very good together, but there does have to be a limit.
 
No there doesn't.

If there's a stable of fillies, then I say flog them till they die and then keep flogging them.

(Sorry.)

in the interview Colin also said it would be sad if he only did 6 or so stories with India, that he'd like to do at least 50 since they get along together so well. Another thing i didn't really consider about her whole situation is that she thinks that 8 is dead and that the bloke in front of her is dead man walking rather than that he's merely destined to just ditch her.

How macarb.
 
I just don't think there's that much more room for Charley to develop as a character- after nearly eight years and 30+ audios the charm has pretty well worn off. Pairing her with the sixth Doctor was inspired, but even that could easily fall into tedious routine if their story doesn't go somewhere in a hurry.

I'm not saying there needs to be a point at which Charley stops being used forever- we're still being subjected to Peri after all these years, so why should the audio companions be any different? They can still go back and do sixth/Charley stories once in a while after the storyline resolves.
 
I really only started listening to the audio adventures a couple months ago, so I've got a ton of old Charlie to still listen to. Not bored yet.

But they're going to milk this out for a couple episodes yet till we get some real meat about this paradox/blindspot these stories are being told in, and I can't wait, because she's met every one already, including K9, Romana the Brigadier, the Master and Davros.

Can you imagine her asking Davros for a favour when a time decimating paradox is exactly the definition of that beaker of death scenario: "Come on Davros, we'll just keep it our little secret... Pinky swear?"
 
Oh my, I just had the strangest epiphany while trying to force a nap on myself.

Charlie is Mel.

I'm not sure if the Timelords physically doctored her, or that they just altered the doctors memories and perceptions of her during and after the Trial of the Timelord, but they had to erase the hell out of her meddling in the Doctors timeline without turning everything ass over tea kettle and this just seems like as a likely a recourse as...

Now think about it, isn't it just amazing how anyone could be that annoying and that badly dressed and have hair that much like a predator? Isn't it more likely that "Melanie Bush" is some insulting caricature invention of some obnoxious time lord who doesn't think more of the Doctors human companions than a pet monkey than that she is a real person?
 
Brendan Moody said:
Big Finish already contradicted Instruments of Darkness while Gary Russell was still working there; the audio Thicker than Water features another first meeting between Mel and Evelyn. And Russell's novel Spiral Scratch contradicts them both, by (apparently at Justin Richards' request) having Mel fail to recognize Evelyn in a story set just before "Time and the Rani."

In any case, Instruments of Darkness itself doesn't pose much of a problem, as the premise is that Evelyn meets the Doctor again sometime after he's met Mel- they could just say that Charley left the Doctor and Mel before that point. It seems likely that there'll be some timey-wimey stuff accompanying Charley's departure anyway.

All that being said, I don't think a Charley/Mel pairing would be particularly effective, and I'd prefer to see Charley depart before too much longer. Her run with the sixth Doctor has already been extended into 2009, which is fine as they're very good together, but there does have to be a limit.
Click to expand...

You've read/heard some of this a lot more recently than I have, which is always helpful in being accurate! Thanks.
To be honest, though Charlie is working well with Colin Baker, I was slightly disappointed that we were plot-deviced out of the apparent ending to The Girl Who Never Was. If only because Anna Massey was so superb.
 
Well maybe you didn't hear the atrociously edited The Girl Who Never Was redux alternate ending where someone just stapled over the top of Colin's dialogue, our friend David Tenant screaming "What!~ What??? What?! WHat? What!!" ...After that, I found the REAL ending entirely satisfying.
 
I feel like Charley has fallen into caricature a little bit recently-- more "jolly hockey sticks" than she ever was. Her 1930sish was way overplayed in The Condemned compared to other audios, and the bit in The Doomwood Curse where she goes, "Gosh, you witnessed a BRUTAL MURDER? How terribly pip-pip!" was dreadful. There's some legs in this Colin Baker thing, but Brendan's right, it can't go on forever. And it's got to end timey-wimely somehow. (Is the eighth Doctor capable of remembering anything?)
 
Well she was supposed to die on that balloon. So 8 never rescued her for 6 to recover after 8 misplaced her. Timey whimey. As it stands then, is probably alternate 6, which means that he and Charley can do-over some of the adventures we've already seen him in if she wasn't there "originally" in a superseding but less dominant time line. of course this means that he will never become the same 7 or 8 to eventually rescue Charley on her balloon and she dies so that she... Of course since Sarah Jane could exist despite the face that Sutek had destroyed the planets face two decades before she was born, ipso facto you don't necessarily vanish if your own personal time line becomes a little impossible as long as it used to have happened.

O. Y'all do know what a Pollard is? It's a pruned tree. And y'all know what a Bush is?

Blatant, absolutely blatant!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top