In the
grand scheme of things, I get why Liz didn’t stick around very long as a
companion. A scientist, she covered the
same sort of ground as the Doctor, but without any Zoe-like super-smarts giving
her an edge. So, her scientific prowess
was too low to tell us anything the Doctor couldn’t, but too high to simply be
used passing test tubes and asking Excellent Questions. Shame, though. As a function of the narrative, she was maybe
a bit reduntant, but as a character, she was lovely.
Liz
first comes to UNIT as a bit of a Scully – she didn’t ask for the position,
she’s not too keen on working for the government, and she’s not prepared to
believe in any of this alien nonsense.
But while she starts out a skeptic, she’s not a buzzkill about it. Rather, she takes an amused look at the
proceedings around her, responding to everything with an ironic remark and
smiling eyes.
To
Liz’s credit, it really only takes her first Auton to get her to come
around. She’s not the type to see
something impossible and exclaim, “It can’t be true!” Having seen the evidence, strange as it is,
she accepts it, and then she rolls up her sleeves and gets stuff done. She adapts wonderfully well to the sci-fi
technobabble the Doctor spouts, even though it must be punching above her
scientific weight class, and whatever the Doctor needs her to do in the lab, she
usually manages to keep up just fine.
What
else? She’s a team player but not a
follower. While she’s loyal to the
Doctor, she’s not afraid to tell him when she thinks he’s wrong (not so much on
the science – more typically, about his habit of rushing in where fools fear to
tread.) By the same token, she settles
decently well into her role at UNIT, but she’ll give the Brigadier what for
when she needs to, and if the Doctor needs her to deceive or stall the
Brigadier in order to perform some sort of work-around that’s against protocol,
she generally sides with the Doctor.
I love
how cool she is under pressure. I mean,
sure, she’ll scream and run away when monsters are chasing her, but she stays
unflappable in the face of deadly viruses, capture, and the threat of
apocalypse, all of which is pretty impressive.
The absolute hands-down Liz Shaw BAMF moment comes in “The Ambassadors
of Death.” At this point, she’s been
kidnapped, held at gunpoint, and locked in a basement with a bunch of
radioactive aliens. She’s gathered
information, recruited an ally, escaped and been recaptured once, and is
plotting further ways to get out or make contact with the Doctor. After standing up to the bigger, tougher,
armed, non-handcuffed villain, a guard growls at her, “Don’t try anything.” Liz’s cool-as-a-cucumber reply? “It’s all right. I won’t hurt you.” I love
it!
It kind
of makes me sad that she was a companion during the UNIT years. It’s not that she doesn’t mesh well with
Three – they’re great together – but she’s the companion for the only completely earthbound season in
the show’s existence. Yes, there’s a
parallel world in “Inferno,” but only the Doctor goes there, not her. Liz never gets to travel in time and
space. Given her enduring skepticism
about the TARDIS, it’s doubtful she ever even sees the inside of the ship. That’s sad to me. I’d have loved to see her traveling with the
Doctor; I think she’d have had a blast, satisfied more curiosity than she knew
what to do with, and been great at it.
What could have been…
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