The word “companion” is routinely used in the real world as a description of supporting characters in Doctor Who. But I recently found myself wondering how often, and in what contexts, it’s heard aloud in the programme itself. Or at least in the twentieth century programme. By the time Doctor Who came back in 2005 meta-text had begun to take over text. In scenes in Aliens of London, the first story made for new century Doctor Who, the Doctor tells the police that “I sort of, er, employed Rose as my companion”, and it’s clear the drama itself expects the audience to understand this as a kind of in-joke. Just as the policeman’s reply “Is this a sexual relationship?” seems to echo old fan debates and questions asked by the less salubrious newspapers since about 1975.

Before that, way back in the first story made for old century Doctor Who, there’s a celebrated, much misquoted, moment where the Doctor says “Fear makes companions of all of us, Miss Wright”. He’s referring to the series’ original four regulars the (to invoke another bit of fan argot) “TARDIS crew” and he’s talking about how they have bonded together over the course of the first story; but the sense in which he’s using the word there is clearly not quite that in which a real life magazine or newspaper would use it, as it makes the Doctor as much a companion of Barbara’s as vice versa.

It’s a fortnight later, in the second episode of the first Dalek serial, that we find the first unequivocal use of the term in the way we think of it. Rather wonderfully, it is coined by a Dalek who tells the Doctor that “You and your companions need a drug to stay alive.” Now, claiming that Terry Nation sort of did create Doctor Who, really, is virtually a hobby of mine, and in a sense I would be delighted to gift him credit for this too. Especially as in the serial’s final episode the Doctor refer to Ian as “one of my companions, the young man”. Which is equally unequivocal. But I think it’s a bit more complicated than that.