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Jamie McCrimmon

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Template:Infobox Doctor Who character James Robert "Jamie" McCrimmon is a fictional character played by Frazer Hines in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. A piper of the Clan McLaren who lived in 18th century Scotland, he was a companion of the Second Doctor and a regular in the programme from 1966 to 1969. The spelling of his surname varies from one script to another; it is alternately rendered as Macrimmon and McCrimmond.[1]

Frazer Hines played Jamie in 116 episodes. His character appeared in more episodes of Doctor Who than any other companion. Conversely, Sarah Jane Smith appeared in 85 episodes of Doctor Who (80 in her original 1973-1976 tenure, "The Five Doctors", and 4 episodes in the revived era), but had a total of 139 episodes when her spin-offs, K-9 and Company and The Sarah Jane Adventures, are added to the count, or 141 if the charity specials are included.

Character history

James Robert McCrimmon was the son of Donald McCrimmon - a piper, like his father and his father's father. Jamie first appears in The Highlanders, encountering the Doctor, Ben and Polly in the aftermath of the Battle of Culloden in 1746. At the end of the story, Polly suggests that the Doctor take Jamie along with them. Jamie continues to travel with the Doctor even after Ben and Polly leave the TARDIS at the end of The Faceless Ones. He appears in all but the very first Second Doctor serial, The Power of the Daleks, and in more episodes than any other companion, although Tegan Jovanka served with the Doctor for the longest continuous period in terms of years on the series.

Jamie shares a lively, bantering relationship with the Doctor, and during his time in the series sees the arrival and departure of first Victoria Waterfield and finally Zoe Heriot. Jamie, being a product of his time, is always solicitous and gentlemanly towards the women who travel with him. Jamie does not have the background to always understand the situations his adventures with the Doctor take him into, but is quick enough to translate high technology and concepts into equivalents he can understand and deal with. His relationship with the Doctor is not always smooth and in The Evil of the Daleks he comes close to leaving the Doctor whom he feels has been manipulating him and Victoria to discover the human factor for the Daleks, without thinking about the consequences. His battle cry "Creag an tuire", in Scottish Gaelic, translates to "The Boar's Rock." It is similar to Creag an tuirc, the motto of the MacLaren Clan of Scotland.

Together with the Doctor, Jamie encounters Cybermen, Daleks, the Yeti in the London Underground, the Ice Warriors, and many other dangers. Jamie is particularly fond and protective of Victoria, due in part to her being an elegant Victorian lady. For example, in The Ice Warriors Jamie's first priority is to rescue Victoria despite being injured to the point where he can't walk. Jamie is heartbroken when Victoria decides to stay with the Harris family at the end of Fury from the Deep, to the point of even being briefly angry with the Doctor for allowing her to leave (The Wheel in Space). Jamie initially finds Zoe's more modern attitudes and bossy nature irritating, but eventually adopts the same protective attitude disguised by the same bantering he engages in with the Doctor. Often Jamie's simple common sense beats Zoe's strict logic, such as in The Dominators where Jamie realises that the erupting volcano is going to threaten, while the Doctor and Zoe are still congratulating themselves.

Hamish Wilson as Jamie (from The Mind Robber)

During the filming of The Mind Robber, Frazer Hines contracted chickenpox and was replaced for part of the serial by Hamish Wilson. This was written in as part of the story when Jamie is turned into a cardboard cut-out and has his face removed by the Master of the Land of Fiction. The Doctor's first attempt to reconstruct his face is unsuccessful. Eventually Jamie's real face is restored when Hines recovered.

Jamie's travels with the Doctor come to an end on the battlefields of The War Games, when the Time Lords finally put the Doctor on trial for interfering with the universe. For his offences, the Doctor is forced to regenerate and exiled to Earth. Jamie and Zoe are returned to their own time, their memories of the Doctor wiped, save for their first encounters with him. When last seen, Jamie is fighting an English redcoat back on the fields of Scotland.

Frazer Hines returned to Doctor Who as an illusory image of Jamie in the 20th anniversary special The Five Doctors. He also reprised the role in the 1985 serial The Two Doctors alongside Patrick Troughton and Colin Baker as the Second and Sixth Doctors respectively.

Season 6B

Due to the fact that, in The Two Doctors, the Second Doctor and Jamie are on an assignment for the Time Lords (whom they do not encounter until The War Games) and, less significantly, that they are so obviously aged from their earlier appearances, some fans speculate about a possible "Season 6B". As we do not directly see Patrick Troughton regenerate into Jon Pertwee's Third Doctor, fans hypothesise that, just prior to his third incarnation, the Time Lords recruited the Second Doctor as a covert operative. This theory also helps explain how, in "The Five Doctors", he was aware that the Time Lords had erased his companions' memories of him. In at least some of these untold adventures, Jamie would also have accompanied the Doctor. (Although she does not appear, Victoria's presence is also mentioned in The Two Doctors.) While the television continuity has yet to confirm these theories, the spin-off media have incorporated it into their working backstory.

Other mentions

He is mentioned by the 5th Doctor in Castrovalva when he calls Adric Jamie, by the 6th Doctor in The Two Doctors and Attack of the Cybermen, by the 7th Doctor in The Curse of Fenric. A vision of Jamie is seen along with every other companion aside from Leela on the scanner screen in Resurrection of the Daleks.

In Tooth and Claw, the Tenth Doctor uses the alias Doctor James McCrimmon together with a Scottish accent (in reality David Tennant's own).

Other appearances

Jamie's ultimate fate remains unclear within the generally accepted canonicity of the various Doctor Who spin-off media.

In the comic strip story "The World Shapers" with the Sixth Doctor, published in Doctor Who Magazine #127–#129, an elderly Jamie remembers his time with the Doctor, explaining that the Doctor had taught him tricks to ensure the Time Lords would not really wipe his memories. In this story, written by Grant Morrison, Jamie sacrifices himself to stop the titular world shaper machine. Jamie's death outside the television series was controversial[citation needed] due to his status as a prominent companion.

In the Virgin New Adventures novel Timewyrm: Revelation, writer Paul Cornell omitted Jamie from the group of deceased companions encountered by the Seventh Doctor. In "Planet of the Dead" (DWM #141-#142), a race of shapeshifters known as the Ganzalum impersonate the Doctor's dead companions, including Jamie.

Big Finish Productions have reunited Jamie with the Sixth Doctor in a series of audio plays starting with City of Spires. However, in the final story, Legend of the Cybermen, it is revealed that he is simply a fictional construct within the realm seen in The Mind Robber, created by an older Zoe, based on her memories of the real Jamie.

The Doctor Who Adventures comic strip gives the Tenth Doctor a companion from 21st century Scotland named Heather McCrimmon.[citation needed]

List of appearances

Television

Season 4
Season 5
Season 6
20th anniversary special
Season 22

Audio drama

Sixth Doctor audio dramas

Short Trips audios

  • Seven to One
  • The Five Dimensional Man
  • Penny Wise, Pound Foolish

Novels

Virgin Missing Adventures
Past Doctor Adventures
Telos Doctor Who novellas
BBC Books

Short stories

Comics

Influence

Best selling author Diana Gabaldon, author of the Outlander series, admits that her character Jamie Fraser was inspired by Doctor Who's Jamie, in her nonfiction work The Outlandish Companion:

"This character wore a kilt, which I thought rather fetching, and demonstrated--in this particular episode--a form of pigheaded male gallantry that I've always found endearing: the strong urge on the part of a man to protect a woman, even though he may realize that she's plainly capable of looking after herself."

In a footnote, Gabaldon states that the episode she was watching was "The War Games".

References

  1. ^ The MacCrimmons were a genuine piping family, and one of the most famous piping families in Scotland. They were pipers to the chiefs of Clan MacLeod. The MacLeod clan tartan, which is yellow, differs in color and pattern from the tartan of Jamie's kilt, which is red. This is no error, as Jamie left Scotland nearly 70 years before the systemization of clan tartans.
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