Is Peri a
companion for the ages? No – she’s
pretty far down the list in my rankings, nowhere near the upper echelons like
Leela or Jamie or Barbara. But honestly,
I think she’s okay. The first time I
watched the Five and Six eras of the show, I was a bit pleasantly surprised,
since I’d heard some unflattering remarks about her from other Whovians. She’s not one of the best, but she’s not one
of the worst, either, and more than anything, I think she’s a little hamstrung
by external stuff that blows back on her in unfavorable ways (spoilers for the
Fifth Doctor story “The Caves of Androzani.”)
An
American botany student, Peri is tagging along with her stepfather on an
archeological trip to the Canary Islands but wants more excitement. She tries to go off to join some friends on a
holiday to Morocco but ends up on the TARDIS instead (don’t you just hate/love
it when that happens?) After an
accidental, semi-stowaway situation on Sarn, she has just one solo adventure
with Five before his – some would say unfortunate – regeneration into Six, with
whom Peri spends the rest of her time on the show.
Now, Six
has improved for me somewhat upon rewatch, but he’s still my least favorite
Doctor; Peri didn’t exactly win the companion jackpot. In a way, she and Six remind me somewhat of
Clara and Twelve, only with the most problematic stuff tending the other
way. With these two, it’s usually Peri I
wind up feeling sorry for, not the Doctor, although I would say she generally
holds her own pretty well. She stays
with him even after the post-regeneration nastiness that goes down in “The Twin
Dilemma,” and as he settles into his new, more derisive personality, she mostly
takes his remarks with a sigh and an eyeroll, occasionally giving him what for
when she’s really had it.
In terms
of adventures, Peri doesn’t have the best luck, either. It’s not the danger, the unpredictability, or
the Doctor’s erratic TARDIS navigation – that’s all just part of the
standard-issue companion deal. No, she’s
unfortunate to be the companion at a time when the writers were apparently just
mad for villains of the lascivious creep variety. I don’t know if it had anything to do with
writing Peri specifically (she was often costumed in such a way that said, “Hi,
I’m Peri! And of course, you’ve already
met my boobs,”) or if it was just a common trend for Who writers at the time, but she gets saddled with several
exceptionally-gross baddies with designs on her, to the point where you feel
relieved when it turns out somebody “just” wants to cook and eat her.
So,
there’s a lot in the not-so-good column, but like I said, Peri herself isn’t
all that bad. Although I’d say she gets
a little more than her fair share of, “Oh no, what do we do, Doctor?”
hand-wringing, that’s not all she does.
She can keep her cool in a
tough situation, and she can think well on her feet. Again, she only puts up with the Doctor’s
less appealing attitudes to a point, and she displays caring for others, even
in instances where it’s not always straightforward. I like whenever the show remembers her interest
in plants and uses it come up with a solution, or even just lets us see her
curiosity in alien flora. In all, I’d
say she’s a mid-range “standard-issue” companion (meaning less dimension than
the most well-loved,) but a lot of unfortunate stuff gets attached to her and
makes her seem less than she is.
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