Dodo Chaplet Dorothea Anne " Dodo " Chaplet ( PROSE : " Who Killed Kennedy " ) was a companion of the Doctor near the end of his first incarnation . He took to her within seconds of their first encounter , citing her physical similarity to his granddaughter . ( TV : " Bell of Doom " ) Dodo had limited contact with other companions , only spending significant time with Steven Taylor . She met and hit it off with Polly Wright briefly in London on 20 July 1966 , and was with her when Polly first encountered Ben Jackson . Neither Ben nor Polly had yet seen the TARDIS when Dodo chose to stop travelling with the Doctor , sending word of her decision to him via Polly . ( TV : " The War Machines " ) Despite not being American , Dodo travelled widely in the United States . She visited Florida and New York City in March and April 1965 ( PROSE : " Salvation " ) and Arizona in October 1881 . ( TV : " The Gunfighters " ) However , most details of Dodo ' s life — her childhood , the reasons she started and stopped travelling with the Doctor and even her possible death — were shrouded in a confusion created by several highly contradictory and speculative accounts . Biography . Early life . Dodo was born in 1949 . ( PROSE : " Salvation " ) Her grandfather was French . Having just visited France in the era of the St Bartholomew ' s Day massacre , on hearing Dodo ' s surname and her French ancestry , Steven speculated that Dodo was a descendant of the apparently doomed Anne Chaplet . This would mean that Anne had survived the massacre of the Huguenots , the St Bartholomew ' s Day massacre , on 24 August 1572 . ( TV : " The Massacre of St Bartholomew ' s Eve " ) For a school project , Dodo researched her family tree and found evidence that she was descended from Huguenots who left France to escape persecution , suggesting that Steven ' s theory may have been correct . ( PROSE : " Who Killed Kennedy " ) Dodo went to live with her great - aunt Margaret before joining the First Doctor on his travels . Their relationship was likely strained . Dodo said that she would not be missed . ( TV : " The Massacre of St Bartholomew ' s Eve " ) She expressed delight that she was not going back home any time soon . ( TV : " The Ark " ) She was not a good student and likely never made it to sixth form , much less university . ( PROSE : " Salvation " ) She neither spoke nor understood French , largely because she skipped her French lessons in school to learn how to kiss behind the school gymnasium . ( PROSE : " The Man in the Velvet Mask " ) Beyond these statements , accounts of her youth widely differed on details . According to one account , she grew up in one of the poorest parts of London . When her parents died , she moved in with an aunt ( possibly not her great - aunt Margaret ) who was wealthier than her parents and was a social climber . This afforded Dodo exposure to a wide variety of social experiences in her young life . She had difficulty believing that the squalid existence into which she had been born and the world to which her aunt aspired were part of the same reality . To cope , she continually reinvented herself according to her immediate situation , claiming to have " acted all [ her ] life " . Thus , her accent was situational . ( PROSE : " The Man in the Velvet Mask " ) An alternative account of her youth claimed that Dodo ' s parents did not both die when she was young . Rather , her mother died in an accident . Her father suffered a mental breakdown and had to be hospitalised , but was still alive at the time of Dodo ' s first encounter with the Doctor . Neither were they poor . This account of her life maintained that her parents were wealthy enough to take her to the Florida Everglades . This trip gave her a deep appreciation of the variety of life on Earth and a wish to see more of the world . Nevertheless , after the death of her mother , Dodo went to live with her great - aunt , Margaret . Amongst other things , she forced Dodo into elocution lessons . Dodo developed a " natural " and a " posh " accent . Life with her formal great - aunt also caused her to see herself in two ways : " Dorothea " , the proper young lady Margaret wanted her to be , and " Dodo " , the plain kid at school she probably really was . ( PROSE : " Salvation " ) Her father was a football fan . ( AUDIO : " This Sporting Life " ) Nickname . How she got the nickname " Dodo " was no clearer than anything else in her youth — other than it clearly being a diminutive of her given name " Dorothea " . According to one view , it was given to her by her classmates . At some time after she went to live with her great - aunt , she switched schools mid - term . Her new classmates ridiculed her northern accent , thinking her ill - educated . They nicknamed her after the dodo , an extinct , stupid bird . Instead of rejecting the name , she tried to change people ' s perception of the name by becoming " cool " . ( PROSE : " Salvation " ) As an adult , she intimated to James Stevens that she didn ' t know where it came from — though her memory was notably unreliable . ( PROSE : " Who Killed Kennedy " ) Meeting the Doctor . Like later companion Tegan Jovanka and her Aunt Vanessa , Dodo was one of only a few people to ever attempt to use the TARDIS as an " actual " police box . As a young adult in the 1960s , Dodo saw a small boy knocked down by a car . Seeking help , she saw a police box on Wimbledon Common and entered it . Instead of a policeman , she found the Doctor . ( TV : " The Massacre of St Bartholomew ' s Eve " ) Another account speculated that Dodo ' s great - aunt also made her spend time helping an elderly neighbour do his shopping and other menial tasks . One night , an alien ship crashed nearby . Its pilot killed the neighbour and assumed his physical form . When Dodo learned what had happened to him , the alien kept her prisoner . When she escaped , she rushed across Wimbledon Common , heading for what she thought was a police box — but was , in fact , the TARDIS . According to this view , then , Dodo met the Doctor because she was fleeing from an alien , with her story about witnessing an accident an attempt to cover up the truth in case she had run into the alien ' s ship by accident . ( PROSE : " Salvation " ) Initial trip . Just as he had done with Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright , the Doctor dematerialised the TARDIS without giving his new passenger a choice in the matter . This time , however , the cause was different ; two approaching policemen would have forced their way into the TARDIS had the Doctor not taken off . Steven protested , but wasn ' t able to counter the Doctor ' s logic . ( TV : " Bell of Doom " ) Dodo ' s first trip in the TARDIS was in space , not time . They went to New York City in 1965 , where they met and defeated the compatriots of Joseph , the alien who had briefly kidnapped her back in London . ( PROSE : " Salvation " ) Other travels . After New York , the TARDIS crew found themselves on the Ark . At first , Dodo thought they were at Whipsnade Zoo . She told the others that she had been there as a child , and displayed some knowledge of nature . Unfortunately , she had a cold , the virus of which was inadvertently passed on to the humans and Monoid s in the Ark . As they had no resistance to it , it became a plague . Dodo , a caring person , was distraught that she had caused this terrible event . ( TV : " The Ark " ) The Doctor , Steven and Dodo met Questor in the living jungle of Tropicalus , whom the Doctor defeated in a battle of wits . ( COMIC : " Death to the Doctor ! " ) Dodo ' s caring nature was probably what made her dislike cheating and other unfair behaviour . Whilst this annoyance could be seen many times , it was most visible when the travellers met the Celestial Toymaker . It was his games , attitude , and Cyril ' s cheating which frustrated Dodo . ( TV : " The Celestial Toymaker " ) Whilst travelling with the Doctor , Dodo had one of her lifelong wishes granted . She was keenly interested in the Wild West and said she had always wanted to meet Wyatt Earp . When the travellers arrived in the America n West , the Doctor introduced Dodo as " Miss Dodo Dupont , wizard of the ivory keys " . During their time in this era the Doctor noted that Dodo was " fast becoming a prey to every cliché - ridden convention in the American West . " ( TV : " The Gunfighters " ) After the Doctor , Steven and she landed in Russia where they spent a time relaxing after their adventures . One of the local gentry asked her to be a companion to his daughter , provided she taught her the piano . ( AUDIO : " Mother Russia " ) He travelled to Africa during the Boer Wars to find a crashed spaceship which was carrying a dangerous criminal . ( AUDIO : " Tales from the Vault " ) Despite this and the sad events on the Ark , Dodo ' s interest and excitement were still evident as the travellers continued on their journey . She was not frightened to investigate on her own , and on the next planet she wandered off while the Doctor and Steven were busy with the Elder s and the Savage . Steven had commented on this occasion : " If it wasn ' t allowed , Dodo would be first in the queue ! " She had a look around the Elders ' City and discovered the laboratory of Senta , which was used for the life - force transference that kept the Elders alive . ( TV : " The Savages " ) After Steven ' s departure , she travelled alone with the Doctor for an indefinite time . During this period , she recognised that the Doctor was becoming increasingly frail . At one point , he explicitly said she would have to leave the ship as Steven had done ; he had to face the next phase of his life alone . During this melancholy period , when Dodo often had to nurse the Doctor , they arrived in a kind of alternate timeline in France , and defeated a man intent on unleashing a virus that could have taken over the world . While on this " alternate Earth " Dodo believed she contracted the virus by losing her virginity to a known carrier — although it was not definitively known if she had the condition diagnosed . When asked , she said that she wanted to keep the virus as a reminder of the world that had been lost when the timeline righted itself . ( PROSE : " The Man in the Velvet Mask " ) While accompanying the Doctor to a planet that was in the grip of a crystalline parasite , Dodo wondered , not for the first time , if she was cut out for adventure . ( PROSE : " There are Fairies at the Bottom of the Garden " ) At some point thereafter , she and the Doctor arrived in London on 20 July 1966 and discovered the sentient computer WOTAN and its War Machine s . WOTAN conditioned her to betray the Doctor . The Doctor broke her conditioning and sent Dodo to the country to recuperate . Dodo never returned . She sent a message with Polly Wright , saying that she had decided to stay in London . ( TV : " The War Machines " ) Undated adventures with the Doctor . At some point , Dodo , along with all the other companions , was scooped out of time by Adam Mitchell and held captive until all eleven Doctors arrived . She was later freed and returned to her own time . ( COMIC : " The Choice " , " Endgame " ) She and the Doctor visited Scrabster Harbour in 1947 , with the Sixth Doctor later reflecting that Dodo had trouble finding her sea - legs . ( AUDIO : " Masters of Earth " ) The Doctor and Dodo once travelled aboard the " Golden Hind " . ( AUDIO : " Maker of Demons " ) Life after the Doctor . Accounts of Dodo ' s life after leaving the TARDIS differed . At some point , Dodo was taken to the Black Archive by UNIT to have her record as a companion of the Doctor taken . Her memories of the visit were subsequently erased and she was sent on her way . ( TV : " The Day of the Doctor " ) By one account , Dodo suffered severe and recurrent psychiatric problems as a result of having been controlled by WOTAN . Shuttled from hospital to hospital , she was eventually sent to the Glasshouse , where she was interrogated brutally by its director , the Master , about the Doctor . Turned out into the street , the homeless Dodo eventually met and fell in love with journalist James Stevens , at that time investigating UNIT . While Stevens was being interviewed on a live television broadcast , Dodo was murdered by Francis Cleary , a former UNIT soldier , Glasshouse patient and another of the Master ' s hypnotically controlled pawns . Only after her death did Stevens learn that she had been carrying his child . The Doctor attended the funeral in their second or seventh incarnation and attempted to offer solace to Stevens . After hearing of Dodo ' s death , the Third Doctor told Stevens that he still saw Dodo as being his responsibility . ( PROSE : " Who Killed Kennedy " ) Another account suggested that she hadn ' t been murder ed by the Master ' s agent . She had gone on to a mundane career as a secretary . The torpor of her life made her regret her decision to leave the Doctor and long , in adulthood , to again travel in the TARDIS . She thought that she ' d be better able to appreciate such travels , now that she was " older and wiser " . It was during a particularly nostalgic moment that she accidentally bumped into Sarah Jane Smith , though neither recognised the other as a friend of the Doctor . ( PROSE : " Ships " ) Legacy . Steven named the youngest of his three daughters Dodo in her honour . ( AUDIO : " The War To End All Wars " ) The Tenth Doctor named the last Dodo " Dorothea " after her . ( PROSE : " The Last Dodo " ) Danny Pink ' s body was kept at the Chaplet Funeral Home . ( TV : " Death in Heaven " ) . Skills and abilities . Dodo could read pentagrams and play the piano . ( TV : " The Gunfighters " ) Behind the scenes . Will the real Dodo Chaplet please stand up ? Because she only had four - and - a - half stories on television , Dodo is one of the companions least featured in other media . Unfortunately , almost all of these other appearances conflict . " The Man in the Velvet Mask " differs from " Salvation " on what Dodo ' s childhood was like . " Salvation " differs from " Bell of Doom " over why she first approached the TARDIS in Wimbledon Common . " Mask " , " Who Killed Kennedy " and " Ships " all disagree over what might have killed her in the 1960s or 1970s — or even whether she died in those decades . To be sure , other companions have stories which differ over the odd biographical detail . We can wonder , thanks to " The Sarah Jane Adventures " story " Death of the Doctor " , whether Liz Shaw " actually " died in the novel " Eternity Weeps " . However , the degree of difference between individual Dodo stories is unusually high and approaches that of the conflicting descriptions of the life of Ace , who effectively has several largely irreconcilable alternate timeline s . Did Dodo die from syphilis ? There is a widespread belief in fandom that Dodo ' s fate in the novels is that she contracted syphilis . This view was taken by the long - running podcast , " Radio Free Skaro " , some of whose hosts vociferously maintained in episode 177 that she " died of syphilis " in " Who Killed Kennedy " . Even David Bishop , the author of " Kennedy " , said in his notes to the e - book version of his novel that Dodo contracted " an illness interpreted by some as a form of space herpes " . All that ' s pretty wide off the mark , however . The idea that she died of syphilis is a common conflation of " Who Killed Kennedy " , where she ' s simply killed by , and " The Man in the Velvet Mask " , where she contracts the genetically - engineered Minski ' s virus through sexual contact . However , she doesn ' t die from it , nor was it even " possible " for her to do so , according to the Doctor . Minski ' s virus wasn ' t anything close to a venereal disease and could have been contracted by drinking water or consuming food contaminated by it . Perhaps more to the point , the word " syphilis " doesn ' t occur once in either novel . Dodo does have two sexual tragedies in " Kennedy " , however ; she admits to having killed her would - be rapist in unarmed combat and she is murdered while pregnant .