Tamsin Drew
Name:
Tamsin Drew
Place of Origin:
Dulwich
First Seen In:
Appearances:
Nevermore
The Book of Kells
Deimos
The Resurrection of Mars
Lucie Miller
To the Death
Big Bang Generation
To the Death
Main Voice Actor:
Niky Wardley
Tamsin Drew was a companion of the Eighth Doctor. A failing actress, she joined him in the TARDIS to escape a life of auditions she did not want to do and to see the universe.
After a period of time travelling with The Doctor, she became disillusioned with him due to his coldness in the face of the deaths of others whilst favouring the lives of his friends. The Monk convinced her that he was a negative force in the universe and she joined him, eventually ruing her choice due to his lies and his role in the Dalek invasion. She was killed by The Daleks due to being “surplus to requirements”.
Tamsin came from Dulwich. (Situation Vacant) She had ballet lessons as a girl (Deimos) and was scrum-half in her school’s rugby team. For a time, she lived in a dingy flat in Suffolk. (The Book of Kells)
She attended drama school, where she did a Circus Arts module. She did contortionism but later remarked that the invention of mochaccinos hindered her abilities. (Situation Vacant) She hated improv and disliked sardines due to an interaction with Darren Green. She did her driving test at least five times, reversing into something on her fourth or fifth attempt. (The Book of Kells)
Upon leaving drama school, Tamsin became an actress. She did an advert for leg wax which she was later embarrassed about. (Situation Vacant) For “one glorious summer”, she worked at the London Dungeon pretending to be “a Cockney drab who gets done to death by Jack the Ripper”. (Deimos)
She felt that her career as an actress was failing due to her age, finding herself increasingly auditioning for “mummy” roles instead of girlfriend ones. (Situation Vacant)
MEETING THE DOCTOR
In 2010, Tamsin answered an advertisement for a time traveller’s companion, tired of her disappointing career, under the alias of Juliet Walsh, a strong, career-driven woman. She found herself auditioning, with Theo Lawson, Asha Qureshi and Hugh Bainbridge, for the role of the Eighth Doctor’s new companion, unaware that the advert had been made by theMonk and that the four were rejects. “Juliet” was the first of the possible companions to be eliminated and Tamsin went home upset. However, she had taken the jacket of a scientist who controlled many robots and was attacked by one, causing The Doctor to step in and saved her.
Asha, Theo and Hugh were all found to have malicious reasons for wanting to join The Doctor. After they were sorted out, “Juliet” revealed herself to The Doctor as Tamsin Drew and he decided to take her with him. He remarked that although he did not much like Juliet, he might like Tamsin. (Situation Vacant)
COMPANION TO THE DOCTOR
Tamsin was given a bedroom in the TARDIS. (Relative Dimensions) The Doctor gave her a tourof the TARDIS, showing her the gym, greenhouse and sauna among other rooms. The tour took three hours.
The Doctor and Tamsin’s first adventure was to the devastated world of Corinth Minor, where they met war criminal Morella Wendigo, the planet’s only inhabitant. Although initially nervous about visiting an alien world, Tamsin proved helpful to The Doctor and made use of her training in Circus Arts to make an escape whilst The Doctor was unable to. (Nevermore)
The pair arrived at Kells Abbey in 1006 after the TARDIS was drawn there. The Doctor was surprised to meet an old foe, The Monk, who was trying to steal the Book of Kells in order to repair his TARDIS. Tamsin tricked The Monk into leaving with a fake circuit by switching the real one out. (The Book of Kells)
The Eighth Doctor and Tamsin arrived on Deimos Moonbase, which had become a museum containing Ice Warrior artefacts and the atmospheric re-ioniser that was part of a failed terraforming project to create a breathable atmosphere on Mars for humans. A group of nine Ice Warriors led by Lord Slaadek had been awakened prematurely (Deimos) by theMonk to change the course of history. (The Resurrection of Mars)
Tamsin helped Gregson Grenville plant mining explosives to stop the Ice Warriors before boarding the rocket with everyone else. However, Grenville failed to make it and was killed, appalling Tamsin who believed that The Doctor should have tried to save him. (Deimos) She fell out with The Doctor after he seemingly believed Lucie Miller’s life to be more important than Grenville’s. (The Resurrection of Mars)
COMPANION TO THE MONK
Tamsin met The Monk, who took her in his TARDIS to show what The Doctor’s interference with the Ice Warriors would have caused. The Monk took Tamsin to the aftermath of the Ice Warriors’ attack on Halcyon around the 33rd century, convincing her that The Doctor was responsible for the billions of deaths there and subsequently showing him apparently collaborating with the Ice Warriors in killing 600 people on a passenger rocket.
Returning to the base, Tamsin met Lucie and told The Doctor she had “had enough” of what she considered him only looking out for his friends and the Web of Time whilst condemning the fate of Halcyon in the future to the Ice Warriors. She left with The Monk, looking to find “some old friends who also [had] a score to settle with The Doctor” to “combine their talents”. (The Resurrection of Mars)
The Monk took Tamsin to Skaro after he received a message from The Daleks. However, he told Tamsin to stay in the TARDIS as they could be “volatile”. She remained in there whilst he stabilised The Dalek Time Controller. (To the Death)
Tamsin and the Monk went to 22nd century Earth, where they collected and catalogued human artefacts while the planet was being invaded by The Daleks. She had been told by theMonk that they were collecting art for humanity when it recovered and that the Daleks were helping humanity as “medical missionaries”. (Lucie Miller) Her motivation was a desire for the people of Earth to retain their artwork and culture after the invasion, unaware that the Monk intended to sell them. (To the Death)
DEATH
After Tamsin learnt of the Monk’s involvement in the invasion and that he had been lying to her, she helped The Doctor try to stop The Daleks. Shortly after, The Daleks surrounded her, The Monk and the Doctor. She was upset with The Monk, and called him “despicable”, denouncing his protests that the situation was ‘complicated’ as the defence of a child trying to apologise for making a mistake rather than taking responsibility for their own actions. While The Monk was spared for aligning with The Daleks and the Doctor was considered a valuable prisoner, The Daleks disregarded Tamsin as “surplus” and immediately exterminated her.
The Monk mourned Tamsin’s death, as he had developed strong feelings for her. Seeing this, The Doctor berated The Monk for allowing her to be the first of billions to die because of his actions in aiding The Daleks and for not realising what he had done had guaranteed her eventual murder. (To the Death)
LEGACY
When the Eighth Doctor was about to regenerate on Karn, he remembered Tamsin among his past companions. (The Night of the Doctor)
The Monk was so upset by her death he tried to write The Doctorout of history in order to take revenge on him. (The Secret History)
The Twelfth Doctor saw Tamsin, among other companions, when Bernice Summerfield was hit by temporal energy in the Pyramid Eternia. (Big Bang Generation)
APPEARANCE
The Doctor implied that Tamsin sometimes wore glasses and joked that she was blind. (The Book of Kells)
PERSONALITY
Tamsin often made references to pop culture, such as Animals Do the Funniest Things, and liked animals such as cats (Nevermore) but was afraid of rats. She hated improv (The Book of Kells) and was nervous when she first visited an alien planet. (Nevermore) She proved to be poor at subterfuge and clumsy whilst panicking. (The Book of Kells)
She was accused of having a lack of either intelligence or a sense of humour (Nevermore) and the Doctor once joked that nobody could be as stupid as Tamsin. Despite this, she was able to outsmart The Monk. (The Book of Kells) Morella Wendigo claimed to be bored of Tamsin within seconds. (Nevermore)
Tamsin believed that all lives were equal and that the lives of one’s friends should not be prized over the lives of strangers. She was willing to allow the Ice Warriors to re-ionise Mars and risk Earth in order to save the Halcyon and left The Doctor as she believed that the Monk would use time travel to make changes for the better to the universe. (The Resurrection of Mars) She helped The Monk save Earth’s artwork so that humans would not lose their culture. (To the Death)
SKILLS AND ABILITIES
Tamsin had some skill in escapology and contortionism (Nevermore) and, whilst not particularly skilled at subterfuge, was able to switch out The Monk’s circuit for a separate page from the Book of Kells without anybody noticing. (The Book of Kells)