Relationship Spotlight: Jamie McCrimmon & the Doctor (Doctor Who)

Can you really go wrong with the Second Doctor and Jamie?  They’re a fun comedy duo, make a surprisingly-effective team, and are just so genuinely fond of one another.  When I think as an aromantic asexual about the Doctor’s relationships with their companions, this is one of the ones that, to me, exemplify the best kind of platonic partnerships.

Two has several companion configurations throughout his tenure on the show, but Jamie is his constant.  Introduced during the new Doctor’s second serial, Jamie was originally conceived as a one-shot character, but the show’s last-minute pivot to make him a companion really shaped the Two era.  Once his first few serials are out of the way (since the show hadn’t at first planned for Jamie to join the TARDIS, they initially just had to slot him into scripts that were already written,) his bond with the Doctor quickly becomes his most defining feature, and while Two of course cares deeply for all his companions, what he has with Jamie is something special.

Much of their dynamic is down to Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines’s chemistry as actors, especially their shared agenda of slipping extra bits of comedy into scenes.  Knowing that the show’s budget was so small that they literally couldn’t afford to cut more than three or four times in any given episode, Troughton and Hines planned out little bits of unscripted shtick that they could sneak in when the camera couldn’t afford to stop rolling, and that brought us so many delightful Doctor-Jamie moments.  The way they bicker like an old married couple.  The way Jamie clings wildly to the Doctor in frightening situations (which, for any companion, come up a lot.)  That fun banter they do with Jamie bring a little slow on the uptake but pretending he isn’t.  There’s a slight vaudevillian air between them, somewhere in their comic timing and the nature of the routines themselves, that’s really entertaining to watch.

More than that, the Doctor and Jamie have a strong understanding between them that allows them to work well together when they need to.  For every moment when the Doctor rattles off some technobabble and Jamie dazedly replies, “Oh, aye – what?”, there’s another when the two exchange a wordless glance in a crisis that communicates what they need to do to get out of it.  They get each other, and that gives them a sort of telepathy when it really counts.

And through it all, the devotion they display to one another is its own kind of touching.  Now, I know these two are a popular ship, and I get it, but for me, it’s enough that they’re close friends who would do anything for each other.  Jamie’s deep loyalty to the Doctor always gets to me – from the way he fights tooth and nail on the Doctor’s behalf to the way his fraidy-cat tendencies usually go out the window whenever the Doctor really needs him – and most villains quickly clock that the surest method of hold the Doctor at bay is to threaten his friends.  In this, Two is very like his predecessor and all who come after him, but there’s something extra-dismayed in his frantic cry of “Jamie!” whenever his highlander friend is in trouble.

I know that seeing these two in action again in “The Two Doctors” fits dubiously into the canon, and we’re just supposed to ignore that they both look almost 20 years older than they technically should, but I don’t care.  It’s wonderful to see them again, and I love the unspoken thought of the two of them still traveling together.

Top Five Big Damn Hero Moments: Jamie McCrimmon (Doctor Who)

I’ve mentioned, on more than one occasion, that Jamie is one of my favorite classic Who companions, so it’s of course fun to talk about instances of him being brave/tough/clever.  With companions who tend to respond more physically to threats, it can sometimes be hard to identify their best moments without sounding repetitive – i.e., Jamie fights the soldiers, Jamie fights a Kroton, Jamie fights an Ice Warrior.  However, for my favorites, I was able to find a variety of cool Jamie moments that demonstrate a number of different abilities.

Working Together with Kemel (Series 4, Episode 40 – “The Evil of the Daleks:  Episode 4”)

Sketchy racial politics aside (Jamie is attacked by an unspeaking “swarthy manservant” while searching for the kidnapped Victoria,) I like what goes on here.  Jamie, when confronted, intitially fights Kemel, but when the fight puts Kemel in risk of falling to his death, Jamie decides to save Kemel instead.  Jamie recognizes the potential for an ally in Kemel, and though their ability to communicate with one another is limited, they quickly come to understand each other, their mutual interest in rescuing Victoria, and the benefit of working together.  That partnership proves crucial, as each saves the other’s life more than once throughout the ordeal; Jamie is often one to jump into a fight, but here, he’s better served by trusting his instinct to befriend his opponent rather than finish him off.

Getting into Salamander’s Good Graces (Series 5, Episode 18 – “The Enemy of the World:  Episode 2”)

Obviously, this is a coordinated infiltration with multiple moving parts, and it’s safe to say that Jamie is probably not its brainchild; Astrid most likely sees to that.  However, it’s a good plan – staging an attack on Salamander’s life for Jamie to thwart, letting him show off his skills and defense knowledge, which gets him a job working for Salamander – and Jamie carries it off well.  There’s a lot riding on him to be convincing.  Even apart from the plan, if Salamander doesn’t buy it, Jamie is likely dead.  But Jamie does a fine job playing his part, no small feat for someone who doesn’t always improvise well.

Fighting the Quarks (Series 6, Episode 4 – “The Dominators:  Episode 4”)

This is a good example of Jamie doing what Jamie does best.  He has for once, managed to temporarily get himself out of trouble, but seeing his friends in danger, he immediately sets about trying to help, endangering himself in the process.  Here, he diverts a Quark away, drawing its fire to him and leading it to a vulnerable spot where he and Cully can drop a boulder on it.  A smart plan that feels pretty rooted in Jamie’s skill set, and again, a good example of him putting his friends’ safety before his own.

Intercepting the Bomb (Series 6, Episode 5 – “The Dominators:  Episode 5”)

And a second Big Damn Hero moment for “The Dominators” – this is a good serial for Jamie.  While this moment is played a bit for laughs, with the Doctor declaring, “It’s so simple, only you could have thought of it!”, it is a good notion, and again, it relies on Jamie’s skill set of more practical thinking compared to the Doctor and Zoe’s genius.  The Dominators are boring a hole in the surface of the planet to drop a seed device that will set off the internal volcano, and neither the Doctor or Zoe can see any way to stop it.  It’s Jamie who comes up with the “simple” but effective solution:  dig an underground tunnel perpendicular to the Dominators’ borehole and intercept the seed device on its way down.

Saving the Doctor (Series 6, Episode 28 – “The Seeds of Death:  Episode 6”)

Aw, bless.  Here’s Jamie leaping into danger again for the sake of his friends.  This time, he does it in a pretty big way.  The Doctor has been sent up to the moon base by T-mat, where the Ice Warriors have him held captive.  Jamie convinces Zoe to program the T-mat to send him up as well, where he arrives moments before the Doctor is due to be executed.  Jamie physically tackles one Ice Warrior while the Doctor uses his solar device against another.

Favorite Characters: Jamie McCrimmon (Doctor Who)

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 18^th-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.