10 Characters Wasted On Death (Part One)

Guest contributor Connor Hamilton counts down 10 characters who died too soon.

In this article I take a look at 10 of my favourite characters whose presence on the show was cut short due to their untimely deaths. While I agree with some of these deaths to a certain extent, in that it helped the episode be more intense, or that it inspired the Doctor to fight back, I still feel these characters were so great that even their short amount of time on the show was entertaining and inspiring enough to make it on my list. I must apologise in advance however, all 10 I have selected are female, as personally looking back, no short term male characters that died had a huge impact on me. However please feel free to let me know any male characters you wish had survived their deaths in the comments below.

10. Lorna Bucket

Lorna is sadly one of the very forgotten fighters of the battle in A Good Man Goes To War. She fought for the Doctor and his companions after joining the Church as a cleric in hope she’d meet the wonderful man who’d saved her years prior to their reunion. Lorna was killed in battle and upon her dying moments, the Doctor spoke to her, thanking her for her efforts before lying to her in her last few moments, that he remembers an adventure with her as a child. However after dying he asked who she was to the other survivors, hinting to us that he either didn’t remember or that he was presumably yet to encounter young Lorna in the Gamma Forests. Vastra described her as brave, and she was most definitely committed, joining a church whose sole purpose was to track down and kill the Doctor, just so that she could meet the man again. She seemed like the perfect sort of companion for the 11th Doctor and sadly I find her efforts in the battle, despite finally meeting the Doctor, as overshadowed, by basically everything else that happened in the episode. She was the Forgotten Warrior of Demons Run.

9. Harriet Jones

Death By Extermination In ‘The Stolen Earth’

Fighting Slitheen in Downing Street! Confronting Sycorax On Christmas Day and giving herself up to the Daleks when Earth was at its most vulnerable. From Day One, Harriet was a favourite of mine, her wacky personality and her commitment to the Doctor made her such a good character. I didn’t want her to be a companion as such, but almost like Kate Stewart is at the moment, more of a reoccurring character when Earth comes under attack. I always look back and think the Doctor was ever so harsh to Harriet in ‘The Christmas Invasion’, however that regret hit the Doctor soon after he heard of her sacrifices, knowing that even after he dismissed her and presumably caused the downfall of her time as Prime Minister, she still stuck by him and gave up her life so he could succeed. Her death was actually very unnecessary and could have been avoided in my opinion. While it was a very good death, threatening the Daleks before losing her life, I really wish she was still around today. She was a fantastic character and I still feel like her death may have occurred just for the sake of knowing what happened to the character in the end, which was not necessarily the ending that Harriet deserved, but was definitely the death the show needed. That episode needed shock factor and Harriet’s death was a huge shock to myself and presumably others.

8. Yvonne Hartman

Upgraded Into A Cyberman In ‘Doomsday’

Yvonne Hartman may be a very weird character to want to survive, however I really liked her and her whole arrogant attitude towards the Doctor and aliens. Being Head of a Corporation set up by Queen Victoria, to capture anything alien on Earth and keep it preserved, to keep the world safe, is a pretty cool job, and Yvonne seemed like the perfect woman for the role. Again, I don’t know if I’d necessarily like to have seen her character as a companion, but if she was one I wouldn’t complain. I’d just prefer her to be, like Kate and Harriet, reoccurring characters when the world is in danger. Her death felt totally unnecessary and it was used for the sake of letting Jackie escape and for not having to find another way for her to survive Torchwood. I totally understand that and of course it’d be awkward to find another way for Yvonne to suddenly no longer be around for the whole ‘Rose falling into the void scene’, however sending her to go live in the Parallel World was a possibility I wouldn’t have been against, and so she could have fled the scene with Jackie and the others. Overall her death was for the sake of getting rid of real world main character survivors. This was because realistically had she survived, letting us know what happened to her and where she disappeared to when Rose almost died, would be atrociously out of place. Imagine the ending of Doomsday with the producers practically forcing a little scene in explaining how she may have survived, it wouldn’t have worked. So sadly while she was wasted on death and would have been a great character to keep, her death was necessary just to whittle down the number of people left in real world Torchwood to just the Doctor. Besides, on a positive note, without her death we would never have gotten that incredible scene of her as a Cyberman, uttering the words “I did my duty for queen and country.”

7. Lynda (With a Y) Moss

Death By Extermination in ‘The Parting Of The Ways’

Lynda was such a sweet character. I have a lot of time for the actress too and her death was the first one on the show that really upset me. Her death’s purpose was much like Yvonne’s in ‘Doomsday’: for the sake of whittling down the number of survivors. I wished for years there was a way she’d survived, and that when Jack returned she’d return too, both still alive on the Gamestation, finding the Doctor once again. However as this scenario didn’t play out, I was very disappointed. Her death was necessary for the sake of making Jack, Rose and the Doctor the only survivors. However if they had a way of keeping the character alive and letting her travel, my previous theory would have been the best solution. That being said, her death was extremely good and in a way, despite it not initially being his ACTUAL death, was a better scene than Jack’s in that episode. With the Daleks coming from both directions to kill her, she trusted the Doctor and sadly died, cornered off as one Dalek shattered a window and exterminated her. Lynda was ‘sweet’, however that didn’t keep her alive for very long. I wished she had become a companion, however from Rose’s facial expressions to practically everything Lynda said in ‘The Parting Of The Ways’, you could just tell the two would not have gotten on travelling together

6. Lucy Saxon

Death By Sacrifice in ‘The End Of Time Part 1’

Lucy was quite a side character in Series 3, right up until she shot down her husband Harold Saxon, aka the Master, to put an end to his life after all of his horrific killings. Lucy’s death came in ‘The End Of Time Part 1’ when she threw the opposite of the potion of life, that contacts of her family had helped concoct, at the resurrecting of the Master. In doing so she murdered herself but merely damaged the Master. However I can’t help but feel Lucy should have survived the episodes, not to go on as a companion but to perhaps set up her own organisation against alien threats, or to join UNIT or Torchwood. I would have much preferred if as she attempted to killed the Master, the Doctor managed to save her just in time, and have the episode with her aiding the Doctor and Wilf in their attempts to stop the Master again. This was something I majorly wanted. However you have to look on the bright side, and like Yvonne’s famous dying words, Lucy also had a fantastic line to utter, just before throwing the potion to kill the Master and herself she yelled, ‘Till Death do us part…Harry!’, which was one of my favourite quotes I’ve heard in Doctor Who. It definitely gave me goosebumps.

These are just 5 of my Top 10 favourite characters, but there’s more to come soon…

Do you agree with places 10-6, or would you have chosen different characters, let me know and say in the comments who you think will appear in my Top 5.