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The Doctor doesn't always travel with the best, as this lot sufficiently proved.
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00:00It's been said that the Doctor only travels with the best. However, as Riversong was so fond of
00:05reminding everyone, the Doctor lies. So, with that in mind then, I'm Ellie with Who Culture,
00:09here with the 10 most useless Doctor Who characters.
00:13Number 10. Susan Foreman
00:15Now, this might be a controversial choice, but in retrospect, the Doctor's granddaughter is a bit
00:20useless. When Doctor Who was first conceived by Sidney Newman in the early 60s, he envisioned a
00:26740-year-old senile alien time traveller, who whisked two schoolteachers and a teenage girl across all
00:32of time and space. In essence, this is what happens in the very first episode, but with one key
00:37difference. Susan. In the finished version of Doctor Who's pilot episode, Susan isn't a contemporary
00:42teenage girl. She's the Doctor's granddaughter, and therefore also an alien time traveller with
00:47superior knowledge. The problem is that many of the people who wrote for Susan mostly forget this
00:52key detail, and wrote her as an ineffectual teenage girl. Therefore, rather than continuing to dazzle
00:58and intrigue her schoolteachers Ian and Barbara with her advanced knowledge of science, history,
01:02and technology, Susan instead rolls her ankle at regular intervals. She also frequently loses her
01:08head in the face of various intergalactic terrors, as if she hasn't been travelling to alien worlds with
01:13her grandfather for ages prior to the show starting. It's hardly surprising that Carol Ann Ford left the
01:18role at the start of Doctor Who's second season. She was replaced by Vicky, an orphan from the future
01:22who was generally written as a far more savvy character, one who essentially became the Doctor's
01:28surrogate granddaughter.
01:299. Mickey Smith.
01:31Mickey Smith, or Mickey the Idiot, is a character so useless that he lost a fight with a wheelie bin.
01:36Originally written by Russell T Davies as mundane, ordinary, and cowardly, Mickey represented everything
01:42that Rose Tyler wanted to leave behind. In Doctor Who's 2005 pilot episode Rose, Mickey is so
01:48useless that he can be convincingly replaced by a plastic replica who can barely string a coherent
01:52sentence together. Seeing what Clark brought to the character as a performer, Russell T Davies gave
01:57Mickey more depth as Doctor Who continued into its second series. However, he's still pretty
02:02pointless. He risks detection by screaming at a cupboard full of rats in a school reunion, and while
02:06the Ninth Doctor is impressed by Mickey in World War III, he's only really been following the Doctor's
02:11orders the whole time, rather than thinking for himself. It's only when he's presented with a
02:16parallel universe doppelganger that Mickey decides to stand up for himself, becoming an action hero
02:21and resistance fighter against John Loomix's Cybermen. It's this more heroic version of Mickey
02:26that appears in the Series 2 and Series 4 finales, where he fights again against the Daleks and the
02:31Cybermen. However, it doesn't change the fact that for the first few years of his time on Doctor Who,
02:36he was pretty darn useless.
02:388. Victoria Waterfield.
02:40After Fraser Hines' historical companion Jamie McCrimmon became a big success, the Doctor Who
02:45production team attempted to repeat the feat by introducing another historical companion,
02:50Victoria Waterfield. The only problem was that she didn't have any notable skills beyond screaming
02:55and just having a terrible time of it. The original plan was to make Pauline Collins'
03:00Samantha a full-time companion, but she turned down the role. Investigating her brother's
03:04disappearance in The Faceless One, Samantha proved herself to be a much more independent and
03:08forthright companion than Victoria. When she's introduced in Evil of the Daleks, Victoria is
03:13literally a damsel in distress. This comes to define the character throughout her time with
03:18the second Doctor and Jamie. While Deborah Watling is an incredibly likeable actor, she's rarely given
03:23any substantial material to sink her teeth into, and whenever she does take some initiative,
03:28she ends up in deadly danger and needs to be rescued by the Doctor or Jamie. Victoria's screaming
03:32became such a key part of her character that it played a crucial role in her final story.
03:37Attempting to defeat an outbreak of deadly, sentient seaweed, the Doctor realises that sound
03:42is the perfect weapon, and so he weaponises the screams of his companion. It's an ending that's
03:47either a celebration of or an insult to Victoria, depending on your outlook.
03:527. Katerina
03:54When futuristic space orphan Vicky left Doctor Who, the production team decided to go in the
03:59opposite direction for her replacement. Enter Katerina, a handmaid from ancient Greece who joined the
04:05TARDIS to tend to Stephen's wounds. However, either the limitations of a historical companion
04:09or the writer's imaginations led to her being swiftly, brutally written out of the show.
04:15In some ways, Katerina was one of the most realistic Doctor Who companions. Her complete
04:19inability to wrap her head around the fantastical worlds she travelled to with the Doctor and Stephen
04:24is reflective of how contemporary audiences may lose their own minds when confronted by the
04:29far future. The problem is that it doesn't make for particularly good drama. The far future is
04:33one thing, but wouldn't Katerina respond in a similar fashion if the TARDIS landed in the
04:38present day? This propensity to be dazzled by the future made her a fairly useless travelling
04:43companion. She may have healed Stephen's wounds from the previous story, but the rest of her
04:47scenes find her dazzled by futuristic technology, leaning on the fantastical myths of ancient Greece
04:52to make sense of everything. Poor Katerina is so unfamiliar with the future that when held hostage,
04:57she opens an airlock door, ejecting herself and her captor into the vast emptiness of space.
05:03Number 6. The Justice Department Tasked with punishing history's greatest monsters with their
05:08Tesselector, the Justice Department is actually pretty bad at its job. The Doctor Amy and Rory
05:13meet them when Melody Pond, or River Song, takes them back to Berlin to kill Hitler. However,
05:18the Tesselector has arrived at the wrong point in time and could have easily changed the whole course
05:22of history. The Justice Department shows the failings in Stephen Moffat's rather glib take
05:27on the killing Hitler dilemma. While the Doctor smartly orders Rory to put Hitler in a cupboard so
05:31that Doctor Who doesn't have to deal with him, the presence of the Justice Department does highlight
05:36the impotence of the Doctor and others in stopping Hitler's crimes. While it appears that
05:41Hitler will be punished later on, the Justice Department is moments away from killing him before
05:45they realise they have the wrong date, which is hardly the level of due diligence you'd expect
05:49from law enforcement. It's a good job that Hitler's guilty of the deaths of millions,
05:54but with such a glaring oversight, it doesn't give much hope for them as Time's judge, jury,
05:59and executioner. They did prove to be of some use, however, when their Tesselector aided the
06:03Eleventh Doctor in faking his own death, so they're not completely useless.
06:08Number 5. Krasko
06:09Rosa is one of Doctor Who's best historical stories. It shows that recent history can be just as dangerous
06:15to the TARDIS team as medieval times or hostile alien planets. It also has one of the show's
06:21absolute worst villains in the form of Krasko, a racist time traveller who's dressed for an
06:26amateur dramatics production of Grease. Krasko represents the problem with modern Doctor Who's
06:30need for a villain. The racism of the time is a dangerous antagonist as it is, without hammering
06:35the point home via Krasko. While the idea of commercial time travel being used to spread racist rhetoric
06:41is a strong one, especially given the trajectory of how humans have used the internet, Krasko is such
06:46an ineffective presence that the character loses his thematic heft. While it's certainly a huge
06:51powerful moment in history and provides strong character work for the TARDIS team, Krasko is a
06:56Doctor Who villain who's essentially beaten by some people sitting on a bus. Krasko's uselessness and
07:01small-scale messing with the local bus timetables could be seen as a takedown of the petty small-mindedness
07:06of racists. But it fundamentally doesn't work in terms of Doctor Who villainy.
07:114. Turlo
07:12Anyone who says that Adric is the fifth Doctor's worst companion is willfully ignoring Turlo.
07:18Adric is a passable TARDIS pilot who's really good at maths, while Turlo is an overgrown schoolboy
07:23who starts his time in the TARDIS by trying to murder the Doctor on the instruction of the Black
07:27Guardian. And yet, despite the multiple opportunities presented to him throughout his first serial
07:32Mordrin Undead, he relents. Charitably, Turlo's reluctance to kill the Doctor in Mordrin Undead
07:38could be compared to Hamlet. But writer Peter Grimwaid is no William Shakespeare, and actor Mark
07:43Strickson is no Laurence Olivier. Once Turlo finally rejects the Black Guardian in Enlightenment, he goes
07:48from being a useless assassin to being a useless Doctor Who companion. He's more cowardly than Mickey,
07:54more prone to fright than Victoria, and generally spends most of his time smugly winding up Tegan.
07:59It's also not entirely certain that he's given up on his mission to kill the Doctor either.
08:04Memorably, in Warriors of the Deep, Turlo pronounces that the Doctor has drowned to death
08:08mere seconds after the unfortunate Time Lord hits the water. Speaking of drowning, Turlo does save
08:13Perry from a watery grave at the start of his final story, so he's not 100% useless. That being
08:18said,
08:19looking back across his time with the Doctor and Tegan, it's hard to discern exactly what Turlo
08:23brought to the TARDIS, aside from a nice sketch of the Eye of Orion.
08:27Number 3, Adam Mitchell. Adam Mitchell had one job, to be an expert on the alien technology held in
08:34Henry Van Staten's underground facility, and he wasn't very good at it. Then, once the Dalek gets
08:38loose in the facility, he even leaves Rose for dead. And yet, the Doctor still agrees to Rose's
08:43request to let him travel with them. Didn't the Doctor learn his lesson with Turlo? Adam doesn't
08:48improve when he takes his first trip in the TARDIS to Satellite 5, putting the Doctor and Rose's
08:52lives at risk. While those two investigate the strange goings-on at Satellite 5, Adam swans off
08:57and gets his brain upgraded in a craven attempt to profit from future knowledge. The guy's a total
09:02liability. Now, while this knowledge may have actually helped him in his role with Henry Van
09:07Staten, it actually informs the editor and the Jagrafess about the Doctor and Rose. As a result,
09:12Adam experiences the righteous fury of the Doctor, who throws him out of the TARDIS. Quite right, too.
09:18As a self-obsessed and cowardly figure, Adam is a fundamentally useless Doctor Who character,
09:23who only makes things worse for those around him.
09:25Number 2. Chameleon
09:27Chameleon is essentially the fifth Doctor equivalent of when the eleventh Doctor shaved his head out of
09:32boredom, or when the twelfth Doctor constructed a clockwork squirrel. The legend goes that the
09:36chameleon prop caught the attention of 1980s Doctor Who producer John Nathan Turner, who was focused on
09:42taking the show into the future with a properly robotic companion. The only problem was the
09:47automated prop's substantial limitations. K-9 may have struggled to traverse anything other than a
09:52smooth studio floor, but Chameleon struggled to achieve even that, and was regularly propped up
09:57against a wall. These limitations were further exacerbated when, tragically, the only person who
10:02knew how to operate Chameleon, Mike Power, was killed in a boating accident. This needn't have been a
10:07problem, however. Chameleon may have been a robot, but he also had the ability to assume any form.
10:12For notoriously publicity-hungry producer John Nathan Turner, this could have been an ideal
10:17opportunity for a rolling cast list of special guest stars in the role of Chameleon. Instead,
10:23the robot was stuffed into a TARDIS cupboard and rarely seen again. He made one last appearance in
10:27Planet of Fire when he was taken over by his original owner, the Master. So that's yet another
10:33fifth Doctor companion who conspired against him. Come back, Adric! All is forgiven!
10:38Number 1. Sniperbots. I mean, the clue's in the name. Sniperbots. Sniperbots. Robots whose whole
10:45purpose is to be exceptional snipers. Created by the Stenza, the Sniperbots appeared in both the
10:50Ghost Monument and the Battle of Ransgor Av Kolos, and were completely, utterly useless in both
10:56appearances. It's something of a sci-fi cliché that the villains can't shoot straight, but it's
11:01particularly galling in this case. These robot assassins are supposed to be the best snipers
11:06in the universe, but they can't even withstand a challenge from Ryan Sinclair. Despite Ryan's
11:10difficulties with coordination and riding a bike, he can gun down a whole army of specially
11:15designed snipers because he's played Call of Duty. Take that, Stenza weapon specialists.
11:20It's hardly surprising that the Sniperbots are useless, especially given that the Stenza also
11:25created the evil sentient bandages which warn the Doctor about their hidden past. When the Sniperbots
11:30return for the Battle of Ransgor Av Kolos, a Doctor Who story that writer Chris Chibnall
11:34doesn't even like, they are once more swiftly dispatched by Ryan and Graham with a well-timed
11:39duck. Of the Stenza's many crimes against the universe, their Sniperbots should get them
11:44hauled up in front of the court for breaching the Trade Description Act.
11:47And that concludes our list. If you think we missed any, then do let us know in the comments
11:52below. And while you're there, don't forget to like and subscribe, and tap that notification
11:56bell so you never miss a Who Culture video again. Also, head over to Twitter and follow
12:00us there, and I can be found across various social medias just by searching Ellie Little
12:04Child. I've been Ellie with Who Culture, and in the words of Riversong herself, goodbye,
12:09sweeties.
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