doctor who companion fashion

Doctor Who Girls: The Seventies (Part I)

1970s, doctor who, doctor who companion fashion, jon pertwee

Caroline John as Liz Shaw (1970). Possibly the best pins in Who History, Caroline John was the natural successor to Wendy Padbury’s brainbox character of Zoe. Except Liz (great name, non?) was a modern day woman who just happened to be a brilliant scientist in her own right.

Brought in as UNIT’s replacement for The Doctor initially, she would end up ‘assisting’ him (in his exile on Earth) for four stories in Jon Pertwee’s debut season as The Doctor. She was the perfect foil for his slightly pompous, dandy Doctor, being as she was rather down-to-earth and of a relatively equal intellect (for an earthling anyway).

She also ran around in some seriously scanty skirts, fabulous knee high boots and even a floppy hat in The Ambassadors of (ping!) Death. Thus showing that the length of a gal’s skirt is not relative to the size of her brain. And also, yet again, proving that Doctor Who was no place for maxi skirts.

Overshadowed by her successors, and sidelined somewhat by her brief tenure by The Doctor’s side (she never even got a jaunt in the Tardis, poor love!) Liz Shaw is one of my favourite companions – for she was an intelligent, independent woman who neither needed, nor fell in love with, The Doctor.

Dear, lovely intelligent Liz Shaw. So of course the producers decided to continue in their inspirationally modern slant on the screaming companion character in the newly liberated Seventies. Right? Wrong. Say hello to Jo Grant (1971-73), and her knickers.

I’ve already blogged about Miss Grant as a Fashion Icon, thanks to her prediliction for dressing in head to toe Biba. Jo was wonderfully ditzy, seemingly rather dim and considerably younger than her predecessor. The implication was made that her promotion into UNIT was thanks to some healthy nepotism, but she was certainly a bright spark when it was needed. Although always with a giggle and a flutter of those spidery Biba eyelashes.

The Doctor certainly seemed to enjoy her company, although I would dispute that he preferred his companions to be a little bit screamy and stupid. He was certainly frustrated by her silliness, and charmed by her hidden depths, which would imply that he really does prefer a bit of spunk and spark in his companions. Jo was rather too much the adoring girl though, which often brought out the most patronising aspects of her mentor’s character.

All this aside, and I’m not even sure where I stand on Miss Grant – except that I would happily stand on and squish her in an attempt to get into her wardrobe and steal most of her gear, she was certainly adorable, always fabulously attired and occasionally quite brilliant. I won’t go into specific episodes because each and every one is a gem where Jo’s clothes are concerned, and each and every one is a Biba gem at that!

They returned to a slightly more sophisticated young woman for the next occupant of the Tardis wardrobe. This time dressed in Biba rivals Lee Bender for Bus Stop, Sarah-Jane Smith (1973-76 and beyond) was a fiesty reporter/journalist type who would stride headfirst into situations and enjoyed an occasionally snippy dialogue with her first Doctor. This first generation Sarah-Jane was my favourite and, unlike most people, I truly loved (and never questioned) that she was paired with Pertwee in The Five Doctors in 1984. Alas though, it eventually went horribly wrong with The Doctor’s regeneration and the introduction of a certain Mr Harry Sullivan.

Originally, the replacement for Jon Pertwee had been intended to be an older actor in the same vein as William Hartnell’s interpretation of the character. So producers had hired Ian Marter to play a new male companion (the first since Jamie left in 1969), because they felt they needed a virile young man to do….well, virile young man things. Nevermind that they already had Elisabeth Sladen as a strong female character, of course they needed a chap for chap things. In the end, as we now all know, they hired a young Tom Baker for the role who was perfectly capable of running around and in no need of a Harry Sullivan. So with effectively a ‘spare’ companion, they had to relegate poor Sarah Jane to mere screaming, girly companion character to give Harry enough to do (and provide enough of a contrast to the two male leads).

Doctor: If I touch these two wires together, I can go back to having just one sexy, confident and intelligent female companion.

Harry: I say Doctor, steady on now old chap….I mean…..golly…..gosh…..that’s really rather beastly….

Sarah Jane: *wibble* *scream*

Doctor: There’s just no debate is there?


Now I love Harry and his excessive poshness. But thankfully he was let go by the end of this debut Fourth Doctor series, and Sarah Jane was finally able to regain her place as The Doctor’s main squeeze. Although she never did quite recover from this volte face in her characterisation, and remained perhaps a little too girly and screamy for my liking. Luckily, Sladen has had another chance (or three) at the role (most recently in her own series spin-off from ‘Nu-Who’) and has returned to the stronger character I so adored in her first series with Pertwee.

Style-wise, she must be applauded for never wearing a mini skirt and thus breaking with classic Who tradition that, regardless of how long skirts may be outside the Tardis, the companion always deems a mini skirt to be suitable quarry-sprinting attire. She donned a very cutesy print maxi dress in The Masque of Mandragora, one of Victoria’s alleged cast-offs (peculiarily Edwardian for Miss Waterfield but we’ll let that go) in The Pyramids of Mars and who on earth could forget the Andy Pandy striped dungarees from her departure story, The Hand of Death?

Let’s just pretend her rescue from a little tumble down a slight incline in The Five Doctors never happened shall we?

Part II coming soon (where we see the true meaning of the phrase “One for the Dads”, see where Servalan’s cast-offs ended up and try to work out why on earth a fully grown woman in a school uniform would be such a popular companion?).

Doctor Who Girls: The Sixties

1960s, british boutique movement, doctor who, doctor who companion fashion, john bates, mary quant, ossie clark, zandra rhodes

Some of you may or may not know of my slight….slight obsession with vintage Doctor Who. Yes indeed, coupled with my love of Blakes 7, The Avengers and Sapphire and Steel I think that gives me fairly impressive geek credentials, no? A lot of it is childhood nostalgia, particularly in the Eighties series which I grew up with but also for the occasional Seventies story which my brother would acquire via third generation videotapes recorded from Australian TV, but even the episodes I didn’t grow up watching hold a magical quality for me. Not least because The Doctor was always adept at finding himself aided by a gorgeous companion wearing seriously groovy gear from her own time. Even the few exceptions to this (Leela – Warrior Princess and Romana – Time Lady) look very much ‘of’ the time in which the stories were made.

So I’ll start by introducing you all to the notable young ‘Who girls of the Swinging Sixties.

It began with the Queen of the Ankle Twist, Susan (Right: Carole Ann Ford 1963-65) and her Mary Quant outfits. Susan was The Doctor’s granddaughter and a schoolgirl of exceptional talents. The actors often wore their own clothes due to budget limitations and Carole Ann Ford has said that a lot of her gear was Mary Quant. The show began in 1963 and in many ways is an interesting time capsule for the dramatically changing fashions of the time and I think Carole was the archetypal Quant girl with her elfin hair and boyish figure. The clothes were fairly simple, little jumpers and cropped trousers or pinafore dresses and roll neck sweaters.

Her immediate successor was a young girl from the future named Vicki (Left: found on the planet Dido, I kid ye not!), played by Maureen O’Brien (1965), who somehow seems to have found the off-screen Tardis boutique and was usually dressed in a similar manner to Susan. Nothing extraordinary, just your very average girl about town for the time. Although it was 1965 and the advent of the mini skirt, her hemlines remained very modest as you can see in the picture to the left.

The ridiculously named Dodo (Jackie Lane 1966) was the next gal Billy Hartnell ‘picked up’, running straight into the Tardis from Swinging Sixties London of 1966. Yes indeed, Dodo was conceived as a trendy young thing designed to appeal to the more fashionable young audience. Sadly, she didn’t last long and remains something of a joke to most serious Who fans, but she wore some very groovy little numbers (as we can see on the right from The Celestial Toymaker [Sorry, I had to have a picture of the divine Peter Purves in his youth *licks lips*] she’s working the op-art look!) and deserved more of a send-off than the disappearing act she manages in The War Machines….

…..Which itself introduced us to Polly. Ahhhh, now that’s more like it! Polly (Anneke Wills 1966-67) was a modern London girl with long legs, long blonde hair and big dolly girl eyes. Her introduction was possibly the first time that there was a bit of a something for the dads, with her mini skirts and beauty she was more sexy and womanly than any of her predecessors had ever been. She was also, unfortunately, ill-used mainly for tea-making (Polly put the kettle on?) and screaming in her brief tenure in the Tardis and sadly most of her episodes have been wiped/burned (a fate which has befallen most of the Sixties girls to some degree or another). Polly was the companion who eased the viewers into the regeneration of Hartnell to Patrick Troughton, but eventually left him to return to her own time.

High Priestess of the Piercing Scream, Deborah Watling, entered the Tardis as Victorian orphan and Dalek survivor, Victoria (1967-68). Her transition from crinoline to mini skirt was swift and amusing but fairly inevitable. And she really went for it, from the modest little dress she dons in Tomb of the Cybermen to the super micro hippy girl mini dress she is happily traipsing around in by The Web of Fear, via a gorgeous tweed jacket and knickerbocker ensemble in The Abominable Snowmen. Victoria gets a hard time for her girlishness and screaming (utilised to defeat a monster in her departure story Fury from the Deep) but I think her portrayal of a fish out of water is very poignant and she would certainly benefit from having more stories in existence today.

Finally we come to Zoe (Wendy Padbury 1968-69) who, in contrast to Victoria, was a brainbox girl from the future. Zoe has achieved legend status mainly from her infamous silver catsuit in The Mind Robber and the arse contained within it, but she was also known for running around the universe in some eye-wateringly short mini skirts. The maxi was beginning to creep in by this point, out in the real world, but Doctor Who would not embrace the long skirt for a good while yet.

My favourite Zoe outfit is a toss up between the [what looks like a John Bates] mini dress from The Dominators and what may well be a Celia-print Ossie Clark ensemble from The Invasion. [They mention shopping at Quorum in the commentary for this episode, but her friend is wearing a fantastic Zandra Rhodes lipstick print Fulham Road Clothes Shop ensemble so it’s perfectly possible Zoe’s is as well, I just can’t see it clearly enough to tell!]

Zoe was sent back to her own time and her memory wiped, let’s just hope she managed to keep some of her outfits!

Katy and Crowthers

1970s, british boutique movement, doctor who, doctor who companion fashion, personal collection, vintage fangirl squee
Katy and Crowthers
Now I’ve managed to get my pesky scanner to start working again, I hope to get back on track blogging for you a lot more than I have been of late. Oh, and listing more gorgeous items too of course! But I must admit I often become absorbed by the piles and piles of magazines and photos I’ve accumulated and keep meaning to show and tell for you all.

I remembered I had finally got around to photographing a piece in my private collection (wonders will never cease!) which is a superb example of why labels aren’t always important to a collector.

I had often wondered who designed the dress I’d seen worn in a tiny publicity photo of Katy Manning (Jo Grant in Doctor Who: the companion who seemed to live and breathe the Biba Girl ideal). Eventually I saw the dress by chance on eBay one day and noted it was by the lesser known boutique Crowthers, who were in the habit of some very nifty Ossie and Biba knock-offs (but then, who wasn’t at that time?). I put it on my watch list, safe in the knowledge that no one knew what it was, it wasn’t a big name label and was unlikely to go out of my price range. Well, I was wrong. I think people just fell in love with its boutique-y gorgeousness, I’m fairly certain no one else was geeky enough to know about Katy wearing it.

Katy and Crowthers

So I sulked. For a bit. Well, maybe more than a bit. [Shhhh!! Don’t tell anyone how much of a brat Miss Peelpants can be when she’s thwarted!] But now armed with the knowledge that it was by Crowthers, I could keep looking for it and hope that lightning might strike twice. And – thank heavens – it did. Plus, courtesy of a good Doctor Who-fan-friend of mine, I was also able to nab a higher res. image of Katy wearing it. Hurrah!!

Katy and Crowthers