One of my
all-time favorite companions, and the reason I always laugh when someone says
that companions from the past don’t work.
All-around, I think Jamie is such a well-realized character, really fun
and creative.
A piper
from the Scottish highlands, Jamie meets the Second Doctor, Ben, and Polly in
1745 just after the Battle of Culloden.
After a rousing adventure in which everyone nearly gets hanged and then nearly gets sold into indentured
servitude, the lad doesn’t really have a safe place to go, and so Polly gets
the Doctor to invite him onto the TARDIS – not safe, perhaps, but at least with
new friends to face the danger together.
“The
Highlanders” is Two’s second serial, and from then on, Jamie is a constant
figure on the TARDIS. He’s there for the
entire rest of Two’s tenure, through Ben and Polly’s exit, Victoria’s coming
and going, and the arrival of Zoe. He
has a different, enjoyable dynamic with each, but he’s always the best with the
Doctor himself. In no time at all, the
two are as thick as a pair of odd-couple thieves, larking about time and space,
getting into trouble, and amusing each other together. Jamie proves incredibly loyal very quickly,
and it’s soon clear that there’s nothing he won’t do for the Doctor.
What I
especially like about this is the fact that, when it comes down to it, Jamie
isn’t super-brave. He can be a tough one
to pin down on this front, because he’s just as likely to fling himself
headlong into danger as he is to advocate a hasty retreat. It makes more sense, though, once you start
to realize that his shows of bravery – sneaking into hostile territory, pulling
out his knife to face off against someone, agreeing to stay in a place with
known monsters lurking about – generally correspond with the Doctor or one of
his other friends needing his help. When
it’s up to him, he’d generally prefer to make a run for it while the getting’s
good, but when his friends continually insist on poking their noses into
trouble, Jamie’s not about to leave them.
I
mentioned fighting, and Jamie is frequently the main one to hold his own in
physical combat during this era. Between
this and the simple fact that, as someone from the 18th-century, he
doesn’t know a lot about things that
are common knowledge in the present and beyond, there’s a tendency to
characterize Jamie as all brawn and no brain.
In series 6, when he’s traveling with two geniuses – Zoe as well as the Doctor – this is particularly
highlighted, and Jamie’s throwaway response of “Oh, aye,” when he clearly has
no idea what either of them are talking about is an amusing running joke. But really, I don’t think it’s fair to call
him stupid. Not tremendously bright,
maybe, but more than anything, he’s just uneducated and out of his depth. Somewhere between Phillip J. Fry and John
Crichton, two guys from our time/place who are made to feel dumber than they
are when they’re thrown into a totally different environment where they don’t
understand anything. To be honest, most
companions should probably be bewildered a lot more often, and Jamie rolls with
it really well. He may not know what a
“flying beastie” (a.k.a. airplane) is, but he goes along with it and learns on
the move. With any aliens who are
interested in advanced minds, it’s no surprise that they go for the Doctor and
Zoe first, but it’s not for nothing that the Dominators take note of Jamie’s
“recent rapid learning” – the guy’s a quick study, by necessity.
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