This week I put out a call for topic ideas, and one friend suggested I talk about a Companion I’d like to see return, either in the main show or in their own spin-off. “Brilliant!” I said. Interesting, I thought. How will I decide? What criteria should I use?

Going about it systematically, I should look at whose stories might be considered unfinished, or could be easily picked up again. Maybe Dodo Chaplet, Liz Shaw, Harry Sullivan, Tegan Jovanka, Grace Holloway, or even Peri Brown, whose fate is ambiguous. The actors’ deaths or unwillingness to engage in the community eliminates several of those, but leaves some interesting options.

Maybe I should think in terms of who might be off doing their own Doctor-esque work these days, like Sarah Jane Smith did (or does—she’s not “officially” dead (yet) in the Whoniverse!). I can envision several Companions doing their own thing, especially recent ones: Martha Jones, Rose Tyler (alt universe spin-off could work…), Ace, Nyssa (very much not Earth-based, though, which would be tricky), Jo Grant, or Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright (who, according to alt media, eventually married each other).

Ah, the brain-bending twists and turns of a modern Doctor Who plot. Be it episode or series, we’ve come to expect some pretty convoluted machinations. And you know what? I like to be made to think about what I’m watching. I enjoy a challenge.

Just not where it pertains to major plot points.

A theme unfortunately common to Series Seven could be summarized as “WTF just happened here?” Perhaps the most obvious case in point was The Angels Take Manhattan. At the end of the episode, Amy and Rory are zapped back in time by the Weeping Angels, forever lost to the Doctor. Because New York City in 1938 was a temporal mess. Or something.

Before the theme music over the final credits had even faded, though, fans everywhere were looking at each other in puzzlement. Why couldn’t the Doctor ever see them again? If NYC was the problem, why couldn’t they meet him in Vegas or London instead? If it was 1938, then why not wait until 1952? Or maybe 1952 London?

It would not have occurred to me, years ago, to think that my view of a character might change depending on what I learned of the personality of the actor or actress depicting said character. As a society, we tend to bombard ourselves with minutiae about celebrities, so much so that even someone like me—who doesn’t particularly care about the private lives and lies of “the rich and famous”—can’t help but learn a few things. But more often than not, neither the dirty little secrets nor the heartwarming anecdotes had much impact on me.

More recently, though, I’ve dipped rather thoroughly (at least for me) into the stream of pop culture via Twitter, and from there peripherally via tumblr. The pop culture I view is heavily skewed toward Doctor Who, as one might expect, so I hear a lot of things about—and from—folks who are involved with the program in one way or another. One of the things I learned, to my own surprise though perhaps no one else’s, is that how these people interact with fans really sways how I view them.

To take a case in point on the negative end of the scale, a couple of years ago, one of my Twitter friends (a self-proclaimed feminist) objected to some tweets that Simon Pegg made from San Diego Comic-Con regarding women cosplayers. Specifically, she called him out for implicitly comparing a group of slave Leia cosplayers to food (with a Homer Simpson/doughnuts comment). I won’t go through the entire exchange, but suffice to say, he reacted badly and didn’t do anything to curb the abuse his fans subsequently heaped on her. Now I can barely watch scenes in The Long Game in which Pegg appears (though he’s a baddie there, so that helps), and get pulled out of the narrative whenever Scotty is on screen in the new Star Trek films. So bummer.