Top Five Big Damn Hero Moments: Peri Brown (Doctor Who)

Peri doesn’t always get the fondest recollections. Like Victoria and Mel, she can be quite the screamer which can translate to some viewers as useless. Her time on the show is also marked by a lot of objectification and an inordinate amount of creepy villains becoming licentiously obsessed with her. But despite all that, Peri can be brave and clever like any other companion, and her place on the TARDIS isn’t an accident. Here are my favorite moments from her (spoilers.)

Standoff with Kamelion (Series 21, Episode 16 – “Planet of Fire:  Episode 2”)

The Master has taken over Kamelion in order to steal an important component from the Doctor’s TARDIS, but Peri runs off with it. When the Master-Kamelion catches up with her and confronts her on a cliff side, Peri holds him back by threatening to destroy the comparator. She then encourages Kamelion to regain control, just long enough for her to slip away.

Standing Up to the Doctor (Series 21, Episode 23 – “The Twin Dilemma:  Episode 1”)

The Doctor’s regeneration into Six is notoriously rough, and in this episode, he tries to strangle Peri during a fit of post-regeneration psychosis. Afterward, he has no memory of the incident and tries to dismiss Peri’s description of it. It’s not precisely gaslighting, since he genuinely doesn’t remember doing this, but he does downplay what she says and insists that it can’t possibly be true. Peri doesn’t let that stand, however, and keeps at him until he understands the severity of what happened. Given the traumatic experience she’s just had at the hands of her recently-regenerated friend, it’s brave of Peri to confront the Doctor like this. What’s more, it establishes that, going forward, Peri won’t simply be run roughshod over, no matter how brash and dismissive the Doctor might be of her. Peri doesn’t always get a lot of love from fans, but let’s face it: it takes a lot for her to continually stand up for herself against Six.

Escaping the Kidnappers (Series 22, Episode 10 – “Timelash:  Episode 1”)

Okay, so technically, this is an “out of the frying pan, into the fire” situation, since Peri escapes one danger and runs straight into another, but I’m still counting it. A pair of toughs come along to take Peri hostage (in order to force the Doctor in line.) She quickly recognizes their shadiness, thinks on her feet to disable one with the aid of a toxic alien plant she was warned about earlier, and outruns the other. Even though her first instinct is to call for the Doctor, in this moment, Peri gets herself out of the situation she’s in.

Recovering the Doctor (Series 23, Episode 3 – “The Trial of a Time Lord:  Episode 3”)

Quick little example of the ol’ companion faith and tenacity. When Peri sees a robot carrying the unconscious Doctor, she tries to run to him immediately but is held back by Glitz and his sidekick while the tribespeople attack the robot. As soon as the coast is clear, though, she breaks free and runs to retrieve the Doctor from the wreckage, keeping at it after Glitz gives him up for dead.

Making Yrcanos See Sense (Series 23, Episode 7 – “The Trial of a Time Lord:  Episode 7”)

Peri has a time of it during her tenure on the show, that’s for sure. When she isn’t putting up with Six’s pomposity or getting drooled on by villainous leches, she winds up with the task of managing Yrcanos, a self-important war lord who’s intent on fulfilling his “destiny” of dying in glorious combat. So intent, in fact, that it doesn’t occur to him that his allies might prefer a strategy in which they don’t all die. While Yrcanos postures and rages, hellbent on jumping straight into the thick of things, Peri makes herself heard, forcing him to focus on one thing at a time and come up with an actual plan.

Character Highlight: Peri Brown (Doctor Who)

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.