Steven Taylor | Doctor Who World

Steven as in The Time Meddler

Facts

Name:

Steven Taylor

Tenure:

22 May 1965-18 June 1966

First Seen In:

The Chase (regular)

Last Appearance:

The Savages (regular)

Numberof Series:
1

Appearances:

11 stories

Main Actor:

Peter Purves

Gallery

click on images to enlarge

Biography

Thanks to TARDIS Wikia

PRIOR TO MEETING THE DOCTOR

Steven was born on 10 February. (Return of the Rocket Men)

Steven grew up during a war (The Chase) on a Hiveblock on Earth (The Empire of Glass). After visiting the ruins of New York City (a legacy of the 22nd century Dalek invasion), he enlisted in the military. He served as helmsman on a battleship and later as a solo combat pilot, going from one spaceship or space station to another. He held the latter post as a form of reprisal for reporting the killing of a homeless person on Roylus Prime, which he visited on shore leave. (Salvation)

He studied basic anatomy as part of his pilot training. (The Suffering)

On a mission, Steven crashed on the planet Mechanus in the jungle. He wandered around for days, trying to avoid the hostile plant life. He was captured by the Mechanoids and taken to their city. There, he spent two years as a prisoner, alone but for a toy panda mascot he called HiFi. (The Chase)

ADVENTURES WITH THE DOCTOR

While a prisoner, Steven built a woodenconstruction rather like a climbing frame to keep himself active. It let him climb up to the roof for fresh air. It was in his room in the Mechanoid City that Steven met The Doctor and his companions and soon after, the daleks. He asked, “Who won the war?” and introduced himself as “Steven Taylor, Flight Red Fifty”. He helped the others escape from the city, though he returned to retrieve HiFi. Steven fell from a great height when the Daleks destroyed the Mechanoid City. Luckily, he stumbled through the jungle and found the TARDIS and entered it as The Doctor and Vicki Pallister were saying goodbye to their former companions, Ian and Barbara. Before The Doctor and Vicki returned to the TARDIS, Steven passed out in a dead faint. (The Chase)

When Steven recovered, he found the TARDIS had re-materialised in England in 1066. The Doctor explained briefly how the TARDIS worked and that the TARDIS would blend in with its surroundings. Steven’s natural sarcasm showed as he commented, “That rock over there looks just like a blue box”. Despite his sharp wit, Steven was good-humoured. He was also independent, and had good leadership skills. He had also brought HiFi with him, but left it in the TARDIS. (The Time Meddler)

In the city of Troy, Steven temporarily adopted the name”Diomede”.

He was wounded in the shoulder by a sword thrust and suffered blood poisoning. A temple handmaiden called Katarina, whom the travellers had met earlier, nursed him back to health and helped him return to the TARDIS. (The Myth Makers)

Once he had recovered, Steven faced some of the worst experiences of his life. Katarina and two new allies, siblings Bret Vyon and Sara Kingdom, all died violently in the midst of a complicated series of events which ranged from the planet Kembel in 4000 through time and space. Minutes after the death of Sara Kingdom, Steven asked The Doctor, in the waste that the Time Destructor had made of Kembel, if he considered the loss of so many lives worthwhile to defeat The Daleks. (The Daleks’ Master Plan)

After The Daleks and Mavic Chen had been defeated, the TARDIS materialised in London in 1966. There they encounter the Fulgurites, who were involved in the trafficking of humans across the galaxy for slave labour with the full knowledge of the British government. The Doctor and Steven put an end to the Fulgurites’ activities with the assistance of a young city trader named Oliver Harper, who joined the TARDIS crew. (The Perpetual Bond) Oliver travelled with The Doctor and Steven briefly. He met his death at the hands of the Vardans on the asteroid Grace Alone while saving his companions’ lives. (The First Wave)

When the travellers arrived in Paris in August 1572, Steven was disgusted by The Doctor’s abandonment of his Huguenot friends, in particular the young Anne Chaplet. He was so dis illusioned that he left the TARDIS when it had returned to London in 1966, but returned to warn The Doctor that two policemen were approaching. He met Dodo, who was possibly, he thought, a descendant of Anne Chaplet, proving she had lived. (The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve) When Dodo Chaplet joined The Doctor and Steven, he picked up her cold virus, as he had no immunity to it. (The Ark)

He thought that the 10 Downing Street look terrible when they arrived there. After Vicki realised that they were going through exactly the same rooms over and over again, he noticed that one of the rooms in the space of half an hour a room which had pink wallpaper now was painted white. He realised that if the fungus that was inhabiting the house then they couldn’t be certain they wouldn’t spread it through time and space. (Upstairs)

they later travelled to England in 1912 where they came into contact which an alien skull. This skull managed to get to possess Vicki which made Steven very concerned. The Doctor and Steven investigated the skull and found out that it came from an alien woman who wanted to make all men suffer the treatment she got on her planet. He also had to find the ingredients The Doctor need to forge the skull as its discovery was important in the history of humanity. (The Suffering)

they landed in London in 1762 where they were locked out of the TARDIS. He had to get a job in order to pay for their lodgings. He helped in The Doctor’s experiments to open the TARIDS using lightning. (The Founding Fathers)

The TARDIS crew helped a stranded Lapino, a member of a species that fed on emotions, gather enough emotional energy to send a message to his home planet. To produce emotions, the Lapino threatened to kill Vicki and Steven. The Doctor instead arranged for them to fall under the illusion that they were Cinderella and her prince. Vicki and Steven later remembered little of the event. (Planet of the Bunnoids)

The travellers arrived in Prague in 2348, where they participated in the celebration of the 1000th anniversary of the Charles University and prevented a scientist named Jane Childress from erasing the human evolution. Steven and Vicki were turned into monkeys but soon were restored to their human form. (The Long Step Backward)

The TARDIS materialised on the lunar station on Phobos, a moon of Mars. Steven commandeered a rescue ship and saved a Jarnian named Hazam from his exploding spacecraft. They crashed onto the planet’s surface and were stranded in a sandstorm, the oxygen in their spacesuits running out. They were picked up by another rescue ship sent from the station. (Mars)

After celebrating Christmas the TARDIS crashed into another ship. They landed on a dessert island where he helped to explore the island with the crew of the other ship. He was later shot by Natalie Lang. After Natalie took control of the TARDIS he found himself in Berlin. He was captured by the police and interrogated. (The Anachronauts)

LEAVING THE DOCTOR

Steven ended up disguising himself to save a younger version of himself from being killed at the hands of the Rocket Men. After this he began to wonder if his time with The Doctor was nearing its end. (Return of the Rocket Men) Eventually, the experiences that Steven had on his travels led him to decide to use his skills and training to help rebuild a civilisation. When Chal invited him to help the Elders and the Savages live together, he accepted the challenge and left the TARDIS. (The Savages)

LATER LIFE

Many years after he had left the TARDIS, he was transported to an alternative version of the Death Zone on Gallifrey by Borusa. Once there, he was soon reunited with not only The Doctor, by then in his fifth incarnation, but Ian and Sara, whom he learned had been essentially brought back from the dead. He also met The Doctor’s later companions Polly and Nyssa. Steven and his fellow former companions assisted The Fifth Doctor in defeating the Daleks and the Sontarans, who had likewise been brought to the alternative Death Zone using a Time Scoop. As a Sontaran scout ship had landed on the Elders’ planet several years earlier, Steven was aware that a Sontaran could be incapacitated by striking their probic vent. Before The Fifth Doctor was transported to the Capitol with a transmat recall device supplied by The Master, he promised his former companions that he would check up on them soon. Once The Doctor had gone, Steven was the first to acknowledge that, in spite of his best intentions, they would most likely never see him again.

As The Doctor told his former companions that their memories could be hazy after being returned to their respective native eras by the Time Lords, it is unclear how much of his experiences in the alternative Death Zone Steven remembered. (The Five Companions)

UNDATED EVENTS

At some point, Steven was taken to the Black Archive by UNIT to have her record as a companion of the Doctor taken. His memories of the visit were subsequently erased and he was sent on her way. (The Day of the Doctor)