Nyssa

Nyssa, as she appears in The Visitation

Kassia (stepmother)

**Nyssa**, also known as **Nyssa of Traken**, was a companion of the Fourth and Fifth Doctors.

A genius scientist, Nyssa assisted the Doctor in his fourth incarnation before joining him, Adric and Tegan as a travelling companion after becoming the last of her kind. Following Adric's death, a period of time alone with the Doctor and travelling alongside Turlough, Nyssa left the TARDIS to assist in the curing of those with Lazar's disease.

## Biography

### Early life

Nyssa was born on Traken circa 1961 (TV: *Logopolis*) as the daughter of Consul Tremas. (TV: *The Keeper of Traken*)

As Trakenite nobility, Nyssa learnt the manners and behaviours expected of her, including dance, which she considered herself quite good at. (TV: *Black Orchid*) Due to her father's position, Nyssa spent most of her time amongst older people and was starved of company of her own age. (PROSE: *Doctor Who and the Keeper of Traken*)

At some point, Tremas entered into a romantic relationship with Kassia. (TV: *The Keeper of Traken*)

Nyssa inherited her father's love of science. (PROSE: *Doctor Who and the Keeper of Traken*) She was a genius, with bioelectronics (TV: *Castrovalva*) and cybernetics as her strong points. (TV: *Four to Doomsday*) However, she knew very little about telebiogenesis. (TV: *Castrovalva*)

### Encounter with the Fourth Doctor

Nyssa attended Tremas and Kassia's wedding, after which she met the Fourth Doctor and Adric. Unbeknownst to her, the Decayed Master planned to exploit the tremendous power of the Keepership, which her father was to inherit, by manipulating Kassia. Nyssa helped the Doctor and Adric prevent the Master from gaining the power of the Source but was unable to prevent him from killing Kassia.

Afterwards, Nyssa and Tremas bid farewell to the Doctor and Adric. Nyssa told her father that he had to put everything back together again following the Master's actions but did not witness her father being killed and taken over by the decayed Time Lord, (TV: *The Keeper of Traken*) although she did think she heard a distant echo of mocking laughter. (PROSE: *Doctor Who and the Keeper of Traken*) She sent a message to the TARDIS telling the Doctor of the Master's escape and Tremas's disappearance. (PROSE: *Logopolis*)

### Travels in the TARDIS

#### Joining the Doctor

After the Trakens' message had been received by the Doctor, Nyssa met the Watcher who took her to Logopolis to find the Master, as she wished to know what he had done to her father. She was reunited with the Doctor and Adric and met Tegan Jovanka before the Master enslaved her mind and used her in his complex plan to conquer N-Space. The Doctor was able to break the Master's control over her and she learnt that he had killed and taken over her father's body.

Whilst the Doctor, Tegan and the Master went to Earth in the latter's TARDIS, Nyssa and Adric remained in the Doctor's TARDIS on Logopolis. The Watcher helped Adric pilot the TARDIS and take them to Earth. However, during the journey, Nyssa witnessed the apparent destruction of the entire Traken Union thanks to an entropy wave, leading her to believe that she was the last of her kind. She witnessed the Doctor's regeneration into his fifth incarnation, (TV: *Logopolis*) after which she helped get him back to the TARDIS. (TV: *Castrovalva*)

#### With Adric and Tegan

Nyssa helped the Doctor get to the Zero Room, which she accidentally jettisoned in order to save the TARDIS from being destroyed in Event One. Arriving at Castrovalva for the Doctor's benefit, Nyssa found it was a secondary trap by the Master to get rid of the Doctor by using Adric to make block transfer computations. However, they managed to escape Castrovalva with Adric and the Doctor stabilised. (TV: *Castrovalva*)

On Monarch's spacecraft, Nyssa was, unlike Adric, appalled by the Urbankans' plans and was determined to oppose tyrants following her encounters with the Master. Because of this, she was taken away to become an android. She was rescued by the Doctor and Bigon but, after the TARDIS dematerialised, she fainted. (TV: *Four to Doomsday*)

After Nyssa collapsed a second time, the Doctor built a delta wave augmenter. Although she claimed that she was alright, she admitted that she was having difficulty concentrating and used the augmenter, sleeping for days and eventually waking up apparently fully recovered. (TV: *Kinda*)

In 1666 London, Nyssa found evidence of the use of an alien weapon inside Sir John's house and headed to the TARDIS to build a sonic booster to defeat the Terileptils' android, something that she did with some assistance from Adric. She successfully used it to destroy the android, after which the pair tried to use the TARDIS to travel back to the house, where they were reunited with the Doctor and Tegan and attempted to extinguish what would become the Great Fire of London. (TV: *The Visitation*)

In 1952, Nyssa met and befriended her doppelgänger, Ann Talbot. Ann supplied her with a costume identical to her own, allowing the two to play a trick on the guests at Cranleigh Hall as nobody was able to tell them apart, confusion which Nyssa was able to prolong thanks to Tegan having taught her how to Charleston. However, their resemblance led to George Cranleigh kidnapping Nyssa by mistake, although he eventually released her upon realising his mistake. (TV: *Black Orchid*)

Following another argument between the Doctor and Adric, Nyssa spoke to the both of them. She remained in the TARDIS with Professor Kyle after they saved her from Cyberman androids and destroyed a lieutenant when the Cybermen entered the ship. With the Doctor and Tegan, she watched Briggs' freighter crash into Earth with Adric aboard. (TV: *Earthshock*) She asked the Doctor if the TARDIS could go back and save him, but the Doctor refused.

The crew returned the freighter's personnel to their own time and, instead of landing at the Great Exhibition as the Doctor intended, landed at Heathrow. Nyssa, the Doctor and Tegan investigated the disappearance of a Concorde and found themselves transported to 140,000,000 BC where Nyssa's psychic powers came to the fore. Upon defeating the Master once more, Nyssa and the Doctor left Tegan at Heathrow in a hurry to avoid providing an explanation to Douglas Sheard, unaware that Tegan wished to remain with them. (TV: *Time-Flight*)

#### Alone with the Doctor

Whilst stopping an invasion by the Nestene Consciousness at a warehouse in the 20th Century, Nyssa stumbled onto a part of the Consciousness inside of a storage container. She was attacked by both the Autons and the Cybermen, the latter of which had come from the future to destroy the Doctor's timeline, but was saved by Bernice Summerfield. After she helped the warehouse workers to escape the ongoing battle between the Autons and the Cybermen, she joined the Doctor in rendezvousing with his Third, Fourth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth incarnations. She helped to keep the Cybermen back, and played an integral role with the Fourth and Sixth Doctors of evacuating the church before the time capsules exploded. She departed shortly after with the Fifth Doctor. (TV: *Destiny*)

#### Tegan returns

In the Arc of Infinity, after listing off all the things that the Doctor had to repair in the TARDIS, Nyssa witnessed Omega link himself to the Doctor's biology and later stood up to the High Council on Gallifrey in an attempt to save her companion's life, holding Borusa at gunpoint. She and the Doctor escaped Gallifrey and travelled to 1983 Amsterdam where they were reunited with Tegan, who helped them stop Omega from returning and rejoined them aboard the TARDIS. Nyssa told her that she had missed her and that it was wonderful to have her back. (TV: *Arc of Infinity*)

Using a reference book, Nyssa found that Tegan had given them the coordinates for Manussa and later asked the Doctor if it was really necessary to hypnotise her. They learnt that Tegan was being influenced by the Mara and went in search of the scenes of her dream, in the course of which Nyssa lost Tegan in a marketplace and was unable to find her. Nyssa stole Ambril's key to free the Doctor after he was imprisoned and fell victim to the Mara's power before the Doctor defeated it. (TV: *Snakedance*)

#### With Tegan and Turlough

After the TARDIS encountered interference from a transmat capsule aboard a spacecraft, Nyssa and Tegan found Mawdryn's burnt body and assumed that it was the Doctor going through another regeneration. They soon realised that this was not the case and were infected by Mawdryn's disease, making it impossible for them to travel through the Time Vortex without rapidly ageing or de-ageing and forcing the Doctor to help Mawdryn. Whilst the Doctor was prepared to give up his remaining lives to save Nyssa and Tegan, they were restored by the Blinovitch Limitation Effect caused by Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart.

Vislor Turlough joined the TARDIS crew on their travels, something that Nyssa and Tegan were both unsure about. (TV: *Mawdryn Undead*)

### Departure

Nyssa was trapped in her room when the destabilised TARDIS attached itself to *Terminus* and she was forced to pass through onto the space station to survive. The Doctor found her and the two explored the station, with Nyssa contracting Lazar's disease and eventually being left by the Vanir for the Garm, who successfully cured her.

Appalled by the treatment of those who suffered from Lazar's disease and being aware that she could synthesise, and even improve upon, hydromel, Nyssa chose to stay aboard *Terminus* in order to help the Garm and the Vanir cure the disease and make the station a proper hospital independent of Terminus Inc. She gave the Doctor a kiss on the cheek as she said farewell, telling him that she was adamant that she would stay, and told Tegan that she would not die easily as, like Tegan, she was indestructible. (TV: *Terminus*)

## Personality

Nyssa was pleasant and friendly. (PROSE: *Doctor Who and the Keeper of Traken*) Her gentle and trusting nature meant that she was not adept at detecting deception, (TV: *Mawdryn Undead*) but she was skilled at negotiating an effective balance between strong personalities. (TV: *Earthshock*)

Despite her gentleness, Nyssa was willing to use and threaten violence where necessary, destroying on separate occasions a Terileptil android (TV: *The Visitation*) and a CyberNeomorph (TV: *Earthshock*) in addition to threatening to shoot Time Lord guards, (TV: *Arc of Infinity*) and physically engaging an Auton. (TV: *Destiny*)

Nyssa generally did not use a surname, referring to herself only as Nyssa. (TV: *Castrovalva*, *Four to Doomsday*, etc.) The Doctor introduced her to the Time Lords as "Nyssa of Traken". (TV: *Arc of Infinity*)

## Appearance

Nyssa was a slender (PROSE: *Doctor Who and the Keeper of Traken*) girl with brown curls, a pale face, serious, round eyes (PROSE: *Logopolis*) and fine features. (PROSE: *Kinda*) She had an unearthly quality of remoteness and aristocracy. (PROSE: *Castrovalva*)

During her earliest travels in the TARDIS, she wore a flowing, gauzy dress (PROSE: *Doctor Who and the Keeper of Traken*) but later started to wear a plum-coloured velvet trouser-suit with elaborately puffed sleeves. (PROSE: *Four to Doomsday*, *Earthshock*) She eventually stopped wearing Traken clothes, wearing a blouse with a striped skirt and knee-length shorts on Manussa (TV: *Snakedance*) and a blue mini-dress until her departure on *Terminus*. (TV: *Terminus*)

## Behind the Scenes

* Nyssa was originally meant to have appeared only in *The Keeper of Traken* as a supporting character. She was, therefore, the sole creation of writer Johnny Byrne, to whom royalties had to be paid when the character was used. Like the Brigadier and K9, she is a rare example of a series regular to whom the BBC does not enjoy sole copyright.
* Peter Davison was known to have preferred Nyssa over any of his other companions. He intervened on several occasions when John Nathan-Turner attempted to write the character out of the series.
* Like the Fifth Doctor, Adric and Tegan, Nyssa was given a "costume" rather than a basic "look" by producer John Nathan-Turner. Nyssa's original costume narratively originated on Traken. It suggested her highborn status. It consisted of a maroon velvet jacket, a diaphanous, iridescent skirt and multi-pastel, high-heeled shoes. It was accessorised with an ornamental hair comb and a woolly purse. This look persisted through the end of part two of *Castrovalva*. However, long before this episode was filmed, it was determined the actor needed more practical clothing for the physical demands of her now-co-starring role. She exchanged her skirt for a pair of maroon trousers, lost the purse and began wearing lower-heeled shoes. According to production notes on the DVD release of the preceding story, *Logopolis*, the second iteration of Nyssa's "royal Traken" look was inspired by a rehearsal in which actress Sarah Sutton wore Nyssa's top, but her own corduroy trousers. She also lost her hair comb. She completely abandoned the "royal Traken" look in *Snakedance* and changed her look every story thereafter until her departure in *Terminus*. Famously, her costume for her final story was mostly just the slip she had been wearing under her *Mawdryn Undead* dress.
* Discounting the ambiguous status of various UNIT personnel, Nyssa is the first companion to be introduced in one story and established as a companion in another.
* She is the first companion to kiss the Doctor on-screen.
* She was written out of the show when John Nathan-Turner felt that the character had run her course. This upset both Peter Davison and Sarah Sutton.

## Appearances

### Season 18

* *The Keeper of Traken*
* *Logopolis*

### Season 19

* *Castrovalva*
* *Four to Doomsday*
* *Kinda*
* *The Visitation*
* *Black Orchid*
* *Earthshock*
* *Time-Flight*

### Season 20

* *Arc of Infinity*
* *Snakedance*
* *Mawdryn Undead*
* *Terminus*