Peri Brown

**Perpugilliam "Peri" Brown** (born 1966) was a companionof the Fifth and Sixth Doctors.

She was an American college student who accidentally joined the Fifth Doctor during his visit to Lanzarote in 1984. She then elected to remain with him for the rest of her vacation time. She remained with the Doctor after his regeneration into his sixth incarnation, but found it harder to get along with him because of his now brash and arrogant persona.

## Biography

### Adventures with the Fifth Doctor

#### First meeting

Vislor Turlough saved her from drowning, and she subsequently met the Fifth Doctor. The shape-shifting android Kamelion, controlled by the Master at the time, assumed the form of Peri's stepfather Howard and later that of the Master himself. He then seized control of the TARDISto take her to the planet Sarn to meet the real Master. After the destruction of Kamelion and the defeat of the Master, Turlough returned to his homeworld, Trion, and Peri joined the Doctor on his travels. (TV: *Planet of Fire*)

#### After Lanzarote

After contracting spectrox toxaemia and then getting accidentally involved in local politics on the twin planets of Androzani Major and Androzani Minor, Peri was abducted by Sharaz Jek. Upon her escape, she began to die from the disease. The Doctor saved her, but not having enough bat's milk, an antidote, to save himself, regenerated into a very different, new and unstable persona. (TV: *The Caves of Androzani*)

### Adventures with the Sixth Doctor

Peri immediately challenged the sixth incarnation to prove he was still the Doctor. He got her to believe it was still him despite his new face and personality. Despite having stabilised physically, he suffered initial personality and mental issues which caused him to lapse into extreme paranoia. He challenged her on her unusual name and believed her to be an evil spirit. At the height of his paranoia, he tried to strangle Peri. When he caught his reflection in a mirror, he was horrified at his behaviour. He decided to exile himself on Titan III as punishment until he had attained appropriate humility, but soon got involved with stopping Mestor and his gastropods. On Titan III, he met another Time Lord, his old friend Azmael, who he last met in his fourth incarnation. (TV: *The Twin Dilemma*)

The Doctor and Peri worked to stop the Neomorph Cybermen from trying to destroy Earth with Halley's Comet and save Mondas, which was destroyed by the First Doctor and keep the Web of Time from being damaged by their carelessness. (TV: *Attack of the Cybermen*)

After the TARDIS ran out of Zeiton-7, the Doctor landed on Varos in the late 23rd century for more to resupply the TARDIS. The society on Varos nearly forced him to participate in their deadly "games" when he attempted to free those trapped in the Punishment Dome. The Doctor and Peri stopped Sil, the swindler behind the "games", and obtained Zeiton-7 for the TARDIS. (TV: *Vengeance on Varos*)

Tracing a time distortion to 19th century England, the Doctor and Peri found the Master and a female renegade Time Lord called the Rani working together for one of her monstrous experiments and for the Master's plan to accelerate Earth technology beyond its normal level. The Doctor sabotaged the Rani's TARDIS and had her and the Master thrown off into the Time Vortex. (TV: *The Mark of the Rani*)

After the Doctor and Peri went on a fishing trip, the Doctor felt a time slip in his subconscious where he saw his second incarnation being executed. Upon Peri's suggestion to see a doctor, he went to Space Station Camerato see the station's head of projects Joinson Dastari. When they arrived, they found there had been a massacre there, with no signs of life. In the service ducts, they found Jamie McCrimmon, who claimed that the Doctor he was travelling with, the Second Doctor, had been executed by the Sontarans during a battle on board the space station. After letting Jamie rest, the Sixth Doctor deduced that the Second Doctor's supposed death was an illusion created by the Sontarans. The Sixth Doctor used telepathy to track the Second Doctor to a hacienda near Seville, where he was being held captive while Dastari tried to isolate the symbiotic nuclei in a Time Lord's cells so that the Sontarans could be given the secret to time travel. Peri Brown distracted the new occupants of the hacienda, including Dastari and the technologically augmented Androgum Chessene, at the front entrance, while the Sixth Doctor and Jamie found a way into the cellars through a secret passageway.

Knowing there was another Time Lord present, Chessene changed the plan into having Dastari alter the Second Doctor into Chessene's Androgum consort. Chessene also betrayed the Sontarans. The effect on the Second Doctor was not permanent, however, as the condition was not stabilised. The Sixth Doctor, Peri, and Jamie followed the Second Doctor to Las Cadenas restaurant in Seville. Dastari and Chessene had the Doctors and their companions brought back to the hacienda. Dastari then freed the Second Doctor and Peri upon realising his mistake in augmenting a primitive Androgum and was shot by Chessene for betraying her. With Peri's help, the Sixth Doctor deceived Chessene into using the faulty prototype TARDIS, and Chessene was killed by molecular disintegration. (TV: *The Two Doctors*)

The Doctor and Peri accidentally became caught in a time corridor and arrived at Karfel, where the sinister Borad ruled. The Doctor, discovering that the Borad was, in reality, a scientist he had known named Megelen, stopped him from mutating Peri into a form biologically compatible with his own and, with the help of new companion H. G. Wells, sent the dictator through the Timelash. (TV: *Timelash*)

The Doctor and Peri went to the planet Necros, where the "Great Healer" was trying to kill him. The Great Healer was, in fact, Davros, who had arranged for the Doctor to be killed at a funeral home. Davros was eventually taken to Skaro to have a trial by the Dalek Emperor. (TV: *Revelation of the Daleks*) Afterwards, the Doctor took Peri to Blackpool, where they encountered the Celestial Toymaker. (TV: *The Nightmare Fair*)

### Amicable travels with the Sixth Doctor

When Peri tried to convince the Doctor to take a holiday, they went to Tranquela, where she encountered Locas and learnt that she had a resemblance to his recently deceased fiancée Marina. She later went travelling with him using his abilities but they were arrested for landing in the armoury. She discovered Dwarf Mourdant was in orbit around the planet. (TV: *The Ultimate Evil*)

After arriving in Singapore in 1986, the Doctor and Peri met the Brigadier, who was on holiday. The three soon began to investigate when local people and tourists began to fall ill with a more aggressive version of yellow fever. After investigating, the Doctor, Peri and the Brigadier discovered the Master and the Rani working with the Nestene Consciousness, which had developed a more deadly version of the yellow fever virus, in an attempt to wipe out the humans by infecting local people and tourists, via Autons and plastic mosquitos. The Doctor eventually blew up the Nestene's base; killing it, and causing the virus to die out, but the Master escaped with the Rani in her TARDIS. (TV: *Yellow Fever*)

Shortly afterwards, the Doctor encountered Anzor, a Time Lord who had bullied him at the Academy, who used his Type 60 TARDIS to force the Doctor's TARDIS into a locked orbit above the planet Magnus. Anzor had been summoned to Magnus because the natives wanted to learn the secret of time travel for an advantage over their foes, and tortured him after his refusal to cooperate. The Doctor soon discovered his old enemies the Ice Warriors had taken over the planet and with help from Sil planned to rotate the planet's axis to make it cold so that they could live on it. The Doctor defeated them by using their own weapons against them. (TV: *Mission to Magnus*)

### Leaving the Doctor

The Doctor and Peri traced an alien signal to the village of Pease Pottage, where they found that villagers had been vanishing only to show up an hour later with a thorn in their head. After some investigating, and with help from computer experts Melanie Bush and Aaron, the Doctor and Peri discovered a cult known as the Children of January, made up of a race of bee-like aliens known as the Z'ros. These Z'ros had been exiled from their home dimension for attempting to rule it for themselves and now they planned to take over Earth. The Doctor however thwarted their plan. Afterwards, Peri told the Doctor that she would be staying on Earth, as she'd fallen in love with Aaron, she then suggested that he take Mel with him. The Doctor offered Mel the chance to travel with him, to which she accepted,. (TV: *The Children of January*)

## Personality

Peri was often exasperated with the Doctor's sixth incarnation (TV:*Vengeance on Varos*), but still cared for him. (TV: *Attack of the Cybermen, The Two Doctors, Revelation of the Daleks*, etc.. )

Although she typically relied on the Doctor, she showed that she was intelligent, such as when she figured the poison must own a cure, (TV: The Caves of Androzani) She showed such courage when standing up to enemies. (TV: *Planet of Fire, Attack of the Cybermen, Revelation of the Daleks*) She also showed compassion on many, even on aliens and on some opponents such as Lytton. (TV: Attack of the Cybermen) She mourned the death of Kamelion even though he was an android, (TV: Planet of Fire) and also felt remorse on killing a mutant victum of Davros. (TV: *Revelation of the Daleks*)

Peri seemingly began to develop fond and romantic feelings for the human computer expert Aaron, whom she eventually decided to stay with. (TV: *The Children of January*)

## Physical Appearance

### Hair and grooming

Peri had dark, shiny hair which she usually wore short and straight, but later wore long and curled.

### Clothing

She often wore shorts with a low-cut top whilst travelling with the Doctor, (TV: *Planet of Fire*, *Attack of the Cybermen*, *The Two Doctors*, etc.) but donned a royal yellow gown in 19th century Killingworth (TV: *The Mark of the Rani*) and a blue ensemble on Necros. (TV: *Revelation of the Daleks*) In her later adventures, she wore more conservative clothes such as a flaxen and black blazer, a mustard yellow blouse and slacks, (TV: *The Nightmare Fair*)

## Other Information

### Parodies and Pastiches

* A 1986 episode of *The Lenny Henry Show included* a sketch with Henry as a just-regenerated Seventh Doctor battling the Cybermen and their leader Thatchos, a Cyberman version of Margaret Thatcher, complete with bouffant hair and purse. The sketch also included a parody of Peri.

## Behind The Scenes

### American accent

While Peri is supposed to be an American, her English accent often slips and her American accent wanders between different regional accents. She sometimes uses phrases and pronunciations that Americans would not use, such as "lift" instead of the American "elevator".

Indeed, the *Attack of the Cybermen* DVD commentary maintained that it was mandated that Peri only use British slang to avoid confusing the audience. This may have worked for the *British* audience but, as Peter Davison pointed on on the DVD commentary for *Planet of Fire*, it had the opposite effect on American viewers. They could spot Bryant's fake American accent — or, really, *any* British actor's attempt at American — with ease. This was one of the principal reasons that Davison fought hard against adding an American companion to the show. This idiosyncrasy of language did not end with the TV series, as it can be heard in several audio dramas also.

According to Nicola Bryant on the DVD commentary for *Planet of Fire*, there was an active effort to cover up the fact that she was not, in fact, American. She recounted there how John Nathan-Turner insisted she use her American accent when making public appearances or appearances that could have been monitored by the press. At least during the recording of her earliest serials, like *Planet of Fire*, she was even required to use the American accent when she broke character between takes.

It's unclear how long this obfuscation lasted, but evidence for the subterfuge can be heard on a clip from *Breakfast Time* broadcast the day the first episode of *The Twin Dilemma* aired. During the interview, the interviewer asserted that as a "little girl in America" Bryant used to watch *Doctor Who*and dream of being a companion. Bryant, who used only a very mild English accent during the interview, failed to correct the interviewer or to even look as though the interviewer had made an error. Near the end of the 1984production block — which is to say after the recording of Season 22, but probably slightly before its airing — Bryant gave a radio interview in which she used her natural British accent. (AUDIO: *Doctor Who at the BBC Volume 3*)

## List of Appearances

### Doctor Who

#### Season 21

* *Planet of Fire*
* *The Caves of Androzani*
* *The Twin Dilemma*

#### Season 22

* *Attack of the Cybermen*
* *Vengeance on Varos*
* *The Mark of the Rani*
* *The Two Doctors*
* *Timelash*
* *Revelation of the Daleks*

#### Season 23

* *The Nightmare Fair*
* *The Ultimate Evil*
* *Yellow Fever*
* *Mission to Magnus*
* *The Children of January*