[Note: In case you saw yesterday’s post but didn’t click through to read the comments, YES, it was an April Fool’s joke. I’ve no plans to end the blog, despite the fact that the first paragraph was gospel truth.]

Last week I talked about how nice it would be to see more “bromance” in the TARDIS—that male-male bonding that doesn’t hinge on competition or other head-butting dynamics. But there’s another type of common human relationship that happens all the time in real life but is relatively rare in fiction. It’s a female-female bond I’m going to call sister-friends.

Think about the women you know (yourself included, if that’s how you identify)—family, friends, coworkers, random people at the grocery store, whatever. How often do you find women keeping the company of other women and how often are they with men? Alternatively, think specifically now about women you know well. Who are the handful of people with whom each woman has the closest relationships? Are those people exclusively men? Or are there other women in that innermost circle?

Now compare to what we see of the Doctor’s Companions (especially in the modern era). Starting with our current title holder, note that while Clara can get chummy with other women (as she only does when traveling with the Doctor, as far as we’ve ever seen), the people she actually spends time with are (a) the Doctor and (b) Danny. On rare occasions we’ve seen her with her father and/or her grandmother (or mentioning her long-dead mother), but those relationships are incredibly thinly developed on screen.

Even when we enter Clara’s world a little more completely, as in The Caretaker, nearly everyone around her is male: the headmaster, the other teacher the Doctor mistakes for her boyfriend, the beat cop who gets vaporized by the Skovox Blitzer… Only Courtney rises slightly above bit player status, and even then I’d argue she’s more there to bounce off the Doctor or highlight the relationship between Clara and Danny than anything else.

Amy was no better, with her life also revolving around two men (namely the Doctor and her romantic partner Rory). Her childhood friend Melody—who was secretly her daughter, later called River—had some role in her life, too, but we see so little of that relationship as to make it disorienting when it crops up out of the blue at the beginning of Let’s Kill Hitler.

Within the RTD era, we saw a little more maternal influence in Companions’ lives, which was a step in the right direction. However, Donna’s mother always seemed disapproving and Martha’s was still trying to control her adult daughter. Both felt realistic, but neither felt (to me) like the kind of close, supportive relationship I’m getting at.

A little surprisingly, the closest on-screen relationship to the kind of sister-friends I have in mind is Rose and her mom Jackie. They joke together, they snark at each other and argue, they defend each other against all comers. Throughout their interactions, though, whether they’re sparking off each other or not, there is a sense of caring, love, and enjoyment of each other’s company that shines through.

Now I’ll admit that I’ve gotten a little tired of the “home life” aspect of the show lately, so I’m really not advocating for more tight-knit mom/daughter-type pairings, but how awesome would it be to bring the unique sister-friend dynamic of support and friendship between women onto the TARDIS? There have, from time to time, been multiple Companions in the TARDIS crew, but not since Nyssa and Tegan have there been two women aboard together—unless you count River as one of them (which I don’t, as her role has primarily been to flirt with the Doctor rather than demonstrate any sort of relational bond with his Companion(s))—and while they were friendly, I’m not sure I’d go so far as to call them friends.

The kind of friends I’d like to see are the kind who really rely on each other for emotional support and to straight up say when they’re being myopic. It would certainly change the dynamic in the TARDIS, but I love the thought of two close women discussing how the rigors of traveling with the Doctor really mess with your head instead of skipping in and out of each other’s lives.

The heart of the show will always be science fiction, will always be the Doctor himself, but if Moffat insists on making the Companions the story focus instead of the title character, then why not run with it? Why not delve into realistic human relationships that keep the Companions centered and let the situations of their travels throw them off-balance instead?

As far as I’m concerned, that makes for a more compelling story anyway.