Character Highlight: Mickey Smith (Doctor Who)

*Disclaimer: Ugh, I hate it when predators/abusers are in stuff I love. Hearing the sexual harassment allegations against Noel Clarke was gutting – I feel for all the women that he hurt, and it makes me mad that I can no longer just enjoy Mickey as an ancillary companion.*

 

(Slightly) new feature today in that it’s distinct from the usual Favorite Characters post.  While I can’t positively adore everyone in the Whoniverse (pretty darn close, though,) the completist in me wants to get around to all the companions, Doctors, Torchwood/Sarah Jane team members, and major supporting players at some point down the road, and characters who don’t make the upper echelon need a platform.  Mickey’s not one of my favorite companions, but he’s still worth writing about.  (Some Mickey-related spoilers.)

To be fair, Mickey is horrendously hampered by his first appearance on the show.  Like Rory, he’s introduced as the boyfriend of the companion.  However, while Rory spends his first episode noticing hinky alien goings-on and asking Excellent Questions, Mickey gets “eaten” by a trash can, is replaced by a ludicrously fake Auton duplicate (the Autons have evidently stepped up their game quite a bit by the time they tangle with Eleven,) and ends the episode literally clinging to Rose as he cowers in fear.  Seriously, if she’d been wearing a skirt, he’d be hiding behind it.  He’s the doofy boyfriend who’s not cut out for all this alien stuff, who’s nice enough but not in the Doctor’s league.  And Nine’s frequent jibes as Mickey, willfully calling him by the wrong name and telling him he’s an idiot, just make both of them look bad.

So who could come back from all that?  Mickey Smith, that’s who!  During his time on the show, Mickey becomes a character to take seriously as both a person and a companion.  The first step is making him more than a pit-stop on Rose’s journey to the Doctor.  In Mickey’s second episode, he and Jackie take equal part in demonstrating the fallout of Rose’s gallivanting in time and space – because the TARDIS brings her home late, she finds out she’s been missing without a trace for a year, much of which Mickey spent under the suspicion of murdering her.  We all know life with the Doctor can affect the people who travel with him, and sometimes things go very wrong, but we don’t often see evidence of how the companion’s choices can ripple out and affect the people back home.  Even apart from knowing his girlfriend had been whisked away to who-knows-where-or-when by a time-traveling alien, Mickey dealt with repeated police inquiries, whispering and harassment from suspicious neighbors, and the helpless position of knowing the truth but being unable to tell anyone.  That’s some seriously messed-up stuff.  Later in series 1, he takes Rose to task for keeping him in a holding pattern while she dashes about the universe; traveling with the Doctor is obviously her choice and it’s hugely valid, but he doesn’t deserve to be treated like a toy she plays with when it suits her, and he tells her as much.

Likewise, we see Mickey grow as an alien-fighter, Earth-side and intergalactically.   The trembling figure from the pilot goes on to face a Slitheen with nothing but a cricket bat, put his computer knowhow to world-saving use, and help rescue an entire school from child-eating Krillitane.  When he joins the TARDIS crew, he asks to come in lieu of an invitation, and it’s not for Rose – it’s for him.  He wants to see the universe and be part of it all, and while his time as a companion is short, he makes the most of it.  He revels at seeing his first spaceship and navigates the trickiness of a parallel world, and he takes at least a few levels in badass, combatting both Cybermen and Daleks at different points in his tenure on the show.  He’s a little held back by his firm placement as a secondary companion (almost more Rose’s companion than the Doctor’s,) and there’s not much to his relationship with the Doctor, but what little we see of his journey is definitely worth seeing.