Name:
Bliss
Main Aliases:
Kappa Zeta
Species:
Human
Place of Origin:
Affiliated With:
Luna University
Grandparents:
Grandfather
Mother:
Mother
Father:
Father
First Seen In:
Other Appearances:
Echoes of War
The Conscript
One Life
The Lords of Terror
Planet of the Ogrons
In the Garden of Death
Jonah
State of Bliss
The Famished Lands
Fugitive in Time
The War Valeyard
Palindrome
Dreadshade
Restoration of the Daleks
Companion Piece
Main Voice Actor:
Rakhee Thakrar
Bliss was a companion of the Eighth Doctor. They met onboard the starship Theseus, and soon found themselves caught in the crossfire of the Last Great Time War. When she finally returned home in the TARDIS, she found that her whole life there now never existed. She was an orphan of the Time War.
ORIGINAL TIMELINE
Through biodata analysis, Bliss’ ancestry was traced to the South Asia subcontinent on Earth. (The Conscript) She grew up on the planet Derilobia (The Lords of Terror) and was an alumna of Luna University. (Echoes of War)
Bliss studied robotics and computer science on Derilobia. She was kidnapped by the Nine, along with other companions of The Doctor, but, in this timeline, she had never met him. The Nine had received Bliss’s name from River Song, who was aware of when Bliss had travelled with The Doctor and was able to explain that the change to Bliss’s history was likely due to her being caught in a “complex temporal event” when she originally met The Doctor. Despite being confused at the situation facing her, Bliss was able to work with Charley, Liv Chenka and Helen Sinclair to escape her prison, reprogram the Nine’s drone guards and rescue River. Bliss claimed that she would be sure to run away from The Doctor if she met him after this, even if she had enjoyed working with the other three, but River erased her memory of this encounter once she returned Bliss home, and her memory of the event may have been erased by the Time War in any case. (Companion Piece)
THE LAST GREAT TIME WAR
MEETING THE DOCTOR
With her history rewritten, (Companion Piece) Bliss had become a student of quantum engineering around the outbreak of the Last Great Time War. It was Bliss’ idea to study the effects of the Time War up close, aboard the Theseus. It was there that she met the Eighth Doctor (The Starship of theseus, Echoes of War)
When a Time Lords agent crashed onboard the Theseus, it allowed the Daleks to enter the ship in search for the Time Lords. Once onboard, they went on to kill all passengers and crew. Bliss was part of a group of survivors that The Doctor rounded up in order to escape via his TARDIS. However, the TARDIS was not where The Doctor had landed it, so he led them back to a Dalek ship which had been left by them. (The Starship of theseus)
The Doctor tried to escape, but the ship was badly damaged and it fell down to the planet below. This planet was a jungle planet, yet fallout from the Time War badly affected it and it went through constant states of flux, with the jungle dying, and then growing back again over and over again. The Dalek ship was not empty as the group had thought, with it containing a Dalek who had lost its memory and therefore did not display normal Dalek personality traits. The Doctor quickly christened this Dalek in order for it to not discover its true species name, the possibility of it remembering what it is was too risky.
Dal discovered a temporal safe zone, and so began to lead the group on its way there. However, on the way, the group were attacked by primate-like creatures, and The Doctor was amongst those taken. Due to this, Dal elected Bliss as the new group leader, and they continued to press onwards to the safe zone. On arrival at the zone, the group found those who had been taken there. They discovered the creatures were benign, they had simply been affected by the fallout of the War and were trying to ask for help.
The Doctor found that the TARDIS had been damaged by the fallout, and so in an attempt at healing itself, it prevented all access to the console room. At this time, numerous TARDISes arrived in the zone, Cardinal Ollistra being a part of the group of Time Lords having just landed. Dal was destroyed, despite The Doctor’s effects and Bliss, with the rest of the survivors were taken via TARDIS to a nearby Gallifreyan Military Moon Base. (Echoes of War)
Held at the Gallifreyan base, Bliss was interrogated by Ollistra whilst The Doctor was being trained to fight in the war. After the Daleks began to attack the base, she met up with The Doctor, Rupa and Quarren, and was present when Ollistra threatened to shoot The Doctor once they had gotten to his TARDIS. (The Conscript)
Ollistra did not shoot The Doctor and instead asked for a way out of the base. The Doctor tried to leave the system, but he could not do anything until he left the boundaries of the system. The Dalek ships tried to block the TARDIS, by materialising in the same point in space across all time, preventing the TARDIS access out of the system. Bliss then pointed out the quantum theory that if The Dalek ship is simultaneously everywhere, then it’s also nowhere. Trusting her, The Doctor continued the path the TARDIS was taking and passed right through the ships. Ollistra then revealed the truth about Quarren, he was actually a Time Lord who made himself human because of his psychic powers. After Quarren turned himself back to human and before he wiped himself from history, he set in motion events to make Bliss The Doctor’s companion. (One Life)
A COMPANION IN THE WAR
The Eighth Doctor initially attempted to take Bliss back to her planet so that she could tell her mother and grandfather that she had survived the destruction of the Theseus, but Bliss’s dilemma about whether she would stay with The Doctor or return home was cut short when she learned that Derilobia had become a weapons manufacturing planet for the Time Lords, its history changed by the Time War so that it had been apparently invaded by the Daleks twenty years before what would have been Bliss’s present. Her life and family on Derilobia never existed. The Doctor learned that this was due to the actions of Carvil, a Time Lord who had lost his family to the Daleks and sought Derilobia’s mineral resources to create missiles to be fired at the Daleks, but rejected the idea that the sacrifice of an entire planet was necessary. The Daleks destroyed Derilobia after a Dalek agent sent them the coordinates, which forced Bliss to flee with The Doctor, although he promised that he would find some way to restore her homeworld. (The Lords of Terror)
TRAVELS IN THE TARDIS
EARLY ADVENTURES WITH THE DOCTOR
Not wanting her mother and grandfather to think that she was dead, Bliss asked The Doctor to take her back to Derilobia for a visit. However, they found that the Time Lords had altered the history of the planet and that Bliss’s family seemed to have been erased from history, making her an orphan of the Time War. She helped The Doctor defeat Carvil, telling him that he was far worse than the Daleks, and left in the hope that there might be a way to restore her family. Until then, she and The Doctor agreed to look after one another and help out far from the battlefields. (The Lords of Terror)
Bliss was followed by the Salvage Train and boarded it with The Doctor when it drove towards the TARDIS in the Time Vortex. With The Doctor’s help, she remembered Misbah and the Gossip Stone and took control of the train to take her back to Derilobia as she remembered it, arriving at the frozen moment of its erasure from time and realising that she could not stay. Before leaving the Salvage Train, she gave the Gossip Stone to one of the passengers and asked them to find Misbah. (Salvage)
Bliss and The Doctor visited Sto, where she convinced him to hear the Twelve out when she approached them with Doctor Ogron. On the planet, Bliss and Doctor Ogron attempted without success to get the Ogrons to fight against The Daleks, after which they instead decided to appeal to the Crab Gods. Bliss, The Doctor and the Twelve were later taken prisoner by a Dalek taskforce. (Planet of the Ogrons)
Imprisoned on Sangrey with their memories wiped, Bliss, The Doctor and the Twelve were periodically interrogated by the Daleks before having their memories of the interrogations removed. Bliss, known as Kappa Zeta, befriended The Doctor and came to believe that she might have once been an engineer. The trio eventually escaped and recovered their memories. Bliss rounded up the other prisoners to be taken to safety by the Time Lords, after which she was told she would be joining The Doctor and the Twelve in travelling to Uzmal. (In the Garden of Death)
Bliss, at The Doctor’s request, kept an eye on the Twelve whilst aboard the Bloodhound. She found that she could not remember exactly what she had been doing and what she had been escaping from when she met The Doctor on the Theseus. She was attacked by the Twelve when the Ourashima took over and later plotted the course towards it. (Jonah)
MAKING A DIFFERENCE
To make sense of her past and corrupted biodata, Bliss used the TARDIS’s telepathic circuits to find out exactly how she ended up on the Theseus. She observed several possible histories and learnt that Calla, as “Professor Deepa”, had rewritten her past several times over as part of a plan to lure The Doctor to her and give her access to a TARDIS. She found that she was happy to remember her possible pasts and not to fix one by returning to Derilobia, asking The Doctor if he could take her somewhere she could help make a difference. (State of Bliss)
On Iptheus, Bliss ate some of the ichor but, unlike The Doctor, was able to escape from the Enablers and investigate what was happening to the starving people of the planet. She was reunited with The Doctor after stealing a teleport from an Enabler and was cured of the ichor by Aeronwen after they managed to convince her to stop using it. (The Famished Lands)
In return for Tamasan’s promise to protect the Sea of Nemocene, Bliss and The Doctor joined her in travelling to Thellian in an Argodian escape pod to find out how the last of the Helixara survived time deletion. Bliss became lady-in-waiting to King Vashko and was exposed as an off-worlder by her ignorance of thellian culture, leading her to pretend that she, The Doctor and Tamasan were Argodians. She sympathised with Shonnath, feeling that she too was an aberration of the timelines. (Fugitive in Time)
CESSATION OF WAR
Bliss and The Doctor found that the Daleks had been erased from time, ending the Time War, although nobody was sure how. They continued to travel together long after leaving Thellian (The War Valeyard) and, at some point, met Hudson Sage on the Vespertine. (Vespertine)
After The Doctor had a vision of the Valeyard, Bliss went with him to a Time Lord waystation and learnt about the Valeyard’s mission and imprisonment on Grahv, something which sickened her. The two of them went to rescue him in Tamasan’s TARDIS and told him the truth, although he chose to remain there believing that he was The Doctor rather than risk his true personality reasserting itself. Bliss and The Doctor left through a portal, Tamasan’s TARDIS having been severely damaged. (The War Valeyard)
Bliss and The Doctor arrived in another universe and met Davros, learning from him of the return of the Daleks. They worked to stop the Time Strategist’s plan, with Bliss attempting unsuccessfully to execute Davros with a gunstick in order to prevent the merger of realities. Eventually, she and The Doctor were forced to flee through Davros’s portal. (Palindrome)
THE WAR RESUMES
Arriving on Gallifrey, Bliss and The Doctor found themselves suffering from amnesia and learnt from Rasmus and the General of the Time War, which nobody could remember happening. Bliss went with Rasmus to Hassion III to meet the foot soldiers taken prisoner by the Time Lords and came to remember her adventures with The Doctor, that she came from Derilobia and that the war had been against The Daleks. She later calmed the Dreadshade down and left with The Doctor, suddenly remembering the Time Strategist and his plans. (Dreadshade)
Bliss and The Doctor informed Tamasan and Rasmus of the Daleks‘ return and, at Bliss’s insistence, went to Cosca to save the Coscans from the Daleks appearing in the Gulf of Ithon. She worked closely with Rasmus, who gave her a communicator and, following the reborn Dalek Emperor’s capture of Davros and Bliss restoring the Coscans to their original form, he promised to find her a position. However, she believed that her place was with The Doctor and returned to the TARDIS, where she was introduced to Alex Campbell. (Restoration of the Daleks)
DISAPPEARANCE
The timelines shifted, affecting everybody but Hudson Sage, who was in a time lock. (Vespertine) The Doctor and Alex retained no memory of Bliss, but The Doctor felt as though somebody was missing from the TARDIS and allowed Cass Fermazzi to join him and Alex to try to fill the gap. Hieronyma Friend, who had records on The Doctor, hinted that she knew about Bliss and her disappearance (Meanwhile, Elsewhere) and The Doctor became aware of his missing companion when Alex learnt of her from Hudson’s memory recorder. He initially assumed that Bliss must be from his future, but Alex’s instincts told him that Bliss was in his past. (Vespertine)
When The Doctor, Alex and Cass landed on an uninhabited planet, The Doctor believed that there were four of them in the Ryall. Alex and Cass told him that that was not the case, but he was sure that somebody was missing and had been there a few minutes, or several years, ago. He reflected on how his life was full of contradictions and that some parts of his past had been undone and Cass said that they would have to live in “blissful ignorance”. She later admitted, however, that it felt as though somebody had been with them, out of the corner of their eyes. (Previously, Next Time)
PERSONALITY
Bliss was intelligent and enjoyed solving problems, always deconstructing and analysing situations as well as people. She saw the practical application in things (In the Garden of Death) and was gifted academically, (State of Bliss) having a thorough understanding of complex scientific theories. (Palindrome)
Interested in both men and women, Bliss had trouble choosing between Calla and Ryall and chose to put off making a decision for as long as possible. (State of Bliss) She could be sarcastic in serious situations (Palindrome) but was able to take a leadership role when necessary. (The Starship of theseus) In such situations, she had no qualms with using weapons (The Starship of theseus, Palindrome, etc.) and did not hesitate to attempt to execute Davros. (Palindrome)
Davros told Bliss that she was pragmatic, intelligent and had greater potential than many of the The Doctor’s associates. Rasmus was similarly impressed by her and offered to one day find a position for her, although she believed that her place was with The Doctor. She considered Rasmus a friend. (Restoration of the Daleks)
BEHIND THE SCENES
Although Bliss appeared in all of the The Eighth Doctor: Time War: Volume One stories, she wasn’t originally planned to be a companion. (VOR 125)
Bliss was intended to appear in the fifth volume of The Eighth Doctor: Time War. Rakhee Thakrar’s work schedule, however, necessitated Bliss being written out of the series. (Meanwhile, Elsewhere)