Name:
Sylvia Trench
Species:
Human
Place of Origin:
Earth
Appearance:
Main Actor:
Niamh Marie Smith
Sylvia Trench was travelling through Italy on the Orient Express in 1962 and wondering whether to send a handwritten love letter to another woman to go back on a break-up, which she carried on a copy of Murder on the Orient Express, when the Fifteenth Doctor appeared in her room, having come through a time portal from the Time Hotel. After realising he had the “wrong room”, he left without explanation, but later returned in order to use the pull of the train to wrench Villengard’s star-seed containment unit free of a stone shrine in another time zone. He stopped to read and critique the love letter; he initially criticised it, believing it to have been sent by someone else to Sylvia, but changed his tune after she corrected him, and, being particularly impressed when she confessed her would-be paramour was not a “he” but a “she”, advised her to go ahead and send it. Later, gazing up at the star which (unbeknownst to her) had bloomed from the star-seed, she thought better of it and tore up the letter, obviously relieved at her choice. (Joy to the World)
BEHIND THE SCENES
Only named in the credits of Joy to the World, this character shares a name with the James Bond character Sylvia Trench.
The James Bond Sylvia Trench was portrayed by Eunice Grayson but overdubbed by Nikki van der Zyl. She was notably the person to whom Sean Connery’s Bond first introduces himself as “Bond… James Bond” on-screen. She debuted in Dr. No, a film released in 1962 — also the year that the Doctor Who Sylvia Trench appears in within Joy to the World.