Liz Shaw, full name Dr. Elizabeth Shaw, is a fictional character played by Caroline
John in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who and
its spin-offs. A civilian member of UNIT (United Nations Intelligence Taskforce),
an international organisation that defends the Earth from alien threats, she was
a companion of the Third Doctor and a regular in the programme in the 1970 season.
Character history
Liz first appears in Spearhead from Space, having been drafted from the University
of Cambridge by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart as a scientific advisor to UNIT. Sceptical
at first of UNIT's ambit to defend against alien invasion, she changes her mind when
she encounters the newly-regenerated Doctor and becomes involved in defeating the
plans of the Nestene Consciousness and its animated plastic Autons.
Liz is an accomplished scientist, an expert on meteorites with degrees in several
disciplines, including physics and medicine. Her extensive training, however, is
still pale in comparison to the Doctor's own knowledge of the universe and scientific
principles far beyond that of Earth's.
Liz continues to work with the Doctor and UNIT through encounters with the Silurians,
the so-called Ambassadors of Death and the Inferno project. She eventually resigns
from UNIT and returns to Cambridge, but there was no "farewell scene" on screen for
Liz, her departure simply being announced by the Brigadier at the beginning of Terror
of the Autons. She reportedly told the Brigadier that all the Doctor really needed
was someone to pass him his test tubes and tell him how wonderful he was; this feeling
probably contributed to her decision to return to her own research.
Uniquely of all the companions, she is never seen to actually travel in the TARDIS,
as her time with the Doctor coincides with his exile to Earth imposed by the Time
Lords and the removal of his knowledge of time travel.
