Harry Sullivan (Doctor Who)

See Harry Stack Sullivan for the American psychologist and psychoanalyst

Harry Sullivan is a fictional character from the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who and is a companion of the Fourth Doctor. Played by Ian Marter, the character appears as a regular during the programme's twelfth season in 1974–1975.

Character history

Harry is a doctor in the Royal Navy, who is attached as medical officer to the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, the military organisation to which the Doctor acts as scientific advisor. He is first mentioned (though not seen) in Planet of the Spiders, when the Brigadier thinks the Third Doctor has gone into a coma. The Brigadier calls "Doctor Sullivan" and asks him to come to the Doctor's laboratory, but tells him not to bother when Sergeant Benton wakes the Doctor by offering him a cup of coffee. In the next serial, Robot, after the Doctor's third regeneration, Sullivan is called in to attend him, and ends up travelling aboard the TARDIS with the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith (played by Elisabeth Sladen) for several subsequent adventures.

Harry is rather old-fashioned and stereotypically English in his attitudes. He often employs slightly archaic language — for example, referring to Sarah affectionately as "old thing". He is nonetheless depicted as possessing great bravery and a "can-do" attitude, adapting well to the many strange situations in which he finds himself. He can, however, also be quite clumsy and unsubtle, leading the Doctor to once declare, in a moment of frustration, that "Harry Sullivan is an imbecile!" Nonetheless he is well-liked by the Doctor and Sarah, and has a slightly flirtatious relationship with the latter.

The character was originally devised by the production team as a means of handling any action scenes required in episodes when they had envisioned that the new Doctor would be played by an older actor (Sarah even jokingly compares Harry to James Bond at one point). When forty year-old Tom Baker was cast, however, this was no longer a concern and the decision was taken to write Harry out — something producer Philip Hinchcliffe later admitted was probably a mistake, as Harry was a likeable and popular character who worked well with both of his fellow leads.

Harry's last regular appearance is in the season thirteen opener Terror of the Zygons, which had actually been made at the conclusion of the twelfth production block and held over to start the following season. At the conclusion of this story he chooses to return to London by train rather than by TARDIS with the Doctor and Sarah, who continue their adventures without him. He does, however, reappear two stories later in The Android Invasion, both as the original Harry and an android double. This is the character's final appearance in the programme.

A later production team gave some consideration to bringing Harry Sullivan back for a guest appearance in the 1983 story Mawdryn Undead, part of the programme's twentieth anniversary season. Their first choice was the character of Ian Chesterton, but those plans fell through due to actor William Russell being unavailable. In the end, they decided to use the character of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (played by Nicholas Courtney) instead. Harry is mentioned in the story, however — the Brigadier tells the Fifth Doctor that he was "seconded to NATO" and was last heard of "doing something 'hush-hush' at Porton Down."

Appearances in other media

After leaving the cast of the programme, Ian Marter went on to pen several novelisations of Doctor Who stories for Target Books, writing an original novel, Harry Sullivan's War for them in 1985. In Harry Sullivan's War, the character has become an MI5 operative. Marter was believed to have been planning a sequel at the time of his tragic death from a diabetic coma the following year.

Between 1994 and 2003, the character of Harry has appeared in several novels from Virgin Publishing and BBC Books. Some of these stories are set in gaps between televised adventures featuring the character, but in several books he has been seen either earlier or later in life.

In the Virgin Missing Adventures novel System Shock (1995) and the Past Doctor Adventures novel Millennium Shock (1999), both by Justin Richards, he is seen during the 1990s as a Deputy Director of MI5. An even later early-21st century Harry has a cameo in the New Adventure Damaged Goods by Russell T. Davies.

The New Adventure Blood Heat (1993) by Jim Mortimore briefly depicts a parallel universe version of Harry serving on a nuclear submarine in a dystopian world ruled by the Silurians, where he manages to save the life of the Seventh Doctor's companion Bernice Summerfield.

In David A. McIntee's Past Doctor Adventure The Face of the Enemy (1998) Harry is seen still working for the Royal Navy before his secondment to UNIT, which he first encounters in the novel.

In the Big Finish Productions audio drama UNIT: The Wasting (2005), Commodore Sullivan (who is working with NATO) is called on by the Brigadier for a favour but does not have a speaking part.

Harry's previously unknown younger stepbrother, Will Sullivan (also a medical doctor), appears in the second series of the Sarah Jane Smith Adventures (2005-2006) audio plays by Big Finish, voiced by Tom Chadbon. Harry is mentioned by both Will and Sarah, but he is apparently on some secret assignment and neither has seen him for a long time. Will is eventually revealed to be a sleeper agent of a religious cult targeting Sarah, and dies during the course of the series.

Harry is a character in a treatment for a proposed Doctor Who movie, written by Douglas Adams. The film was never made, but Adams recycled the plot as the third novel in his Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy series.

List of appearances

Television

Season 12

• Robot
• The Ark in Space
• The Sontaran Experiment
• Genesis of the Daleks
• Revenge of the Cybermen

Season 13

• Terror of the Zygons
• The Android Invasion

Novels

The Companions of Doctor Who

• Harry Sullivan's War by Ian Marter

Virgin New Adventures

• Blood Heat by Jim Mortimore (parallel universe version of Harry)
• Damaged Goods by Russell T. Davies

Virgin Missing Adventures

• System Shock by Justin Richards
• A Device of Death by Christopher Bulis

Past Doctor Adventures

• The Face of the Enemy by David A. McIntee
• Millennium Shock by Justin Richards
• Wolfsbane by Jacqueline Rayner

Short stories

• "The Man From DOCTO(R)" by Andrew Collins (Short Trips: Companions)
• "To Kill a Nandi Bear" by Paul Williams (Short Trips: Past Tense)
• "UNIT Christmas Parties: Ships That Pass" by Karen Dunn (Short Trips: A Christmas Treasury)
• "Suitors, Inc." by Paul Magrs (Short Trips: Seven Deadly Sins)
• "The Last Broadcast" by Matthew Griffiths (Short Trips: A Day in the Life)

Comics

• "The Psychic Jungle" by Paul Crompton (Doctor Who Annual 1976)
• "Neuronic Nightmare" by Paul Crompton (Doctor Who Annual 1976)
• "The Body Snatcher" by Paul Crompton (Doctor Who Annual 1977)
• "Menace on Metalupiter" by Paul Crompton (Doctor Who Annual 1977)
• "Black Destiny" by Gary Russell, Martin Geraghty and Bambos Georgiou (Doctor Who Magazine 235–237)