Vislor

Vislor Turlough (also spelled Vizlor Turlough) or simply Turlough was a fictional character played by Mark Strickson in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. He was a companion of the Fifth Doctor, being a regular in the programme from 1983 to 1984.

Character history

When Turlough first appears in the serial Mawdryn Undead, he is a student at the Brendon Public School, but it becomes apparent that he is not what he seems. He is contacted by the malevolent Black Guardian, who offers to take him home if he kills the Doctor. He also appears familiar with concepts of time travel and matter transmission. At the end of the serial, Turlough asks to accompany the Doctor. Despite Tegan and Nyssa's suspicions, the Doctor accepts Turlough as part of the TARDIS crew.

During the course of the next two serials, Terminus and Enlightenment (collectively known, together with Mawdryn Undead, as the Black Guardian Trilogy), Turlough finds himself unable to decide whether or not to carry out his assignment from the Black Guardian, but eventually rejects him in favour of loyalty to the Doctor. Although always slightly cowardly, with excellent instincts of self-preservation and a streak of ruthlessness, his relationship with the Doctor and Tegan improves with time (Nyssa having departed at the end of Terminus). He is one of the few companions capable of operating many of the TARDIS's systems, being able to run a diagnostic in The Five Doctors and program the TARDIS to retrieve the Doctor in Planet of Fire. Initially expressing a desire to return home, he continues travelling with the Doctor and Tegan until Tegan leaves at the end of Resurrection of the Daleks.

In the very next serial, Planet of Fire, it is revealed that Turlough is a native of the planet Trion, having become a political exile to Earth following a civil war. Also revealed for the first time in this serial is Turlough's first name, Vislor. At the end of the serial, Turlough discovers that political prisoners are no longer mistreated on Trion and decides it is time to return home. His experiences after his return to Trion are chronicled in a spin-off novel by Tony Attwood, Turlough and the Earthlink Dilemma (1986).

An image of Turlough appears during the Fifth Doctor's regeneration scene in The Caves of Androzani. Strickson has also voiced the character of Turlough alongside Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor in the audio plays produced by Big Finish Productions. Strickson has humorously commented that, not knowing what to do with him, the writers of the television series would often have the villains capture or lock him up, leading to Turlough ending up in various "states of bondage".

Turlough was the Doctor's last male on-screen companion until Adam Mitchell in the 2005 series