Nyssa — formally Nyssa of Traken or Nyssa, Daughter of Tremas, and on occasion Nyssa Traken — was a companion of the Fourth and Fifth Doctors.
She was a native of the planet Traken, the capital of the Traken Union. She also travelled with Adric, Tegan Jovanka, and Turlough.
The daughter of Consul Tremas, Nyssa was a child of privilege on Traken. She was gifted with a brilliant intellect and specialised in bioelectronics. When Traken was destroyed, Nyssa became virtually the last of her kind and in the wake of the death of her father, the Fifth Doctor once said that he was "pledged to look after her."
She travelled with him when she was barely more than a girl and left his company to help find a cure for Lazar's disease on the space station Terminus in the 35th century.
Biography
Encounter With The Fourth Doctor
Nyssa first met the Doctor in his fourth incarnation when he was travelling with Adric. She had recently attended the wedding of her long-widowed father Tremas to Kassia. Unbeknownst to her, the Master had also come to Traken and was planning to exploit the tremendous power of the Keepership (to which her father was the only rightful heir) to live beyond his last natural regeneration. The Doctor and Adric stopped the Master from taking over the Keepership, but could not prevent him killing Nyssa's new stepmother. Unbeknownst to them at the time, the Master also killed Tremas by transferring his essence into Tremas' body, which left Nyssa orphaned in her young adulthood. (TV: The Keeper of Traken)
Soon after, the Watcher took Nyssa to the planet Logopolis. She discovered the Master had, in effect, killed her father. He enslaved her mind, involving her in his complex plan to conquer the universe. The Doctor soon broke her free of the Master's spell, then entered into an uneasy alliance with the Master. The two Time Lords and Tegan Jovanka rushed to Earth in the Master's TARDIS to halt the waves of rampant entropy the Master had unleashed upon the universe. Adric and Nyssa were left with the Doctor's TARDIS on Logopolis. The Watcher helped Adric transport the duo back to Earth. En route, Nyssa witnessed the entire Traken Union being swept away by the growing entropy field which threatened the existence of every part of N-Space. She knew she was the last of her entire species by the time the TARDIS materialised on Earth. When she next met the Doctor, he was mortally wounded in his successful battle to stop the Master. With assistance from the Watcher, he regenerated while Nyssa, Adric, and Tegan looked on. (TV: Logopolis)
Travels With The Fifth Doctor
Because of the Doctor's debilitated state after his fourth regeneration, Nyssa helped him get to the TARDIS before the Pharos Project's security guards could arrest them for trespassing. In the TARDIS, she became even more worried; the Doctor and Adric were lost in the corridors. When she caught up to them, she found he had changed his outfit and was desperately looking for the Zero Room to recover. Moreover, once the Doctor was in the Zero Room, she found the TARDIS had travelled back in time. They were about to be destroyed by Event One, the formation of the galaxy by a massive hydrogen in-rush. Managing to get the Doctor stable long enough to figure out how to escape, Nyssa accidentally jettisoned the Zero Room to give the TARDIS enough thrust to move forward in time. Arriving at Castrovalva, Nyssa found it was a secondary trap by the Master to get rid of the Doctor by using Adric to make block transfer computations. However, they escaped Castrovalva with Adric and the Doctor stabilised. They began travelling; she now no longer had a home to go to except for the TARDIS. (TV: Castrovalva)
Arriving on an Urbankan ship, Nyssa was taken by the androidinhabitants to become one of their own but was rescued by the Doctor and Bigon. Later in the TARDIS, Nyssa fainted from stress. (TV: Four to Doomsday)
She could not concentrate; she could not even match Adric at chess. The Doctor made a device called a delta wave augmenter, of which his sonic screwdriver formed an essential part, to let her sleep and recover. Nyssa awoke four days later to discover the Doctor had had an adventure without her. (TV: Kinda)
Thereafter, she discovered she had a look-alike by the name of Ann Talbot in England in 1925. The two attended a costume party wearing identical butterfly costumes, making it nearly impossible to tell them apart. George Cranleigh kidnapped Nyssa by mistake but released her to the Doctor when he discovered his mistake. (TV: Black Orchid)
Nyssa encountered Cybermen trying to attack Earth but watched as they were foiled by Adric. She was horrified to see Adric give his life to stop the freighter that killed the dinosaurs. (TV: Earthshock) Adric's death was a severe blow to Nyssa and Tegan.
While working through their grief, the TARDIS crew was embroiled in an adventure which sent a Concorde back through time. After they had returned the airliner to 1980s Heathrow Airport, the Doctor accidentally left Tegan behind. (TV: Time-Flight)
Final Adventures
Nyssa continued travelling alone with the Doctor until they chanced upon Tegan in Amsterdam in January 1983. During the same adventure, she forcefully stood up to the Gallifreyan High Council on the Doctor's behalf. She encountered Omega, who wished to bond with the Doctor to escape the anti-matter universe but was successful in helping the Doctor prevent this. (TV: Arc of Infinity)
Soon after, Nyssa discovered that Tegan was still afflicted by the remnants of the Mara from the Kinda world and helped the Doctor take her to Manussa to permanently destroy the Mara with a "snakedance". (TV: Snakedance)
She mistook Mawdryn for the Doctor going through a gruesome regeneration and was infected by his disease. The Doctor nearly gave up his eight remaining lives to cure her and Tegan, but thanks to the unlikely meeting of two Brigadiers, a substitute was found to cure her. At this time, an undercover agent of the Black Guardian, Turlough, began travelling with them to escape exile on earth. (TV: Mawdryn Undead)
Nyssa left the TARDIS under circumstances as tragic and noble as those that had forced her into the Doctor's company. The TARDIS attached itself to a space liner when Turlough, under the Black Guardian's influence, damaged its controls. The liner docked with what seemed to be a hulk floating in space, the Terminus space station. The Doctor and Nyssa discovered it was, in effect, a leper colony. She was the only TARDIS crew member who contracted the disease the station existed to treat. Just as she had always done with the tragedies in her life, she used her misfortune as a path to a better future. She chose to remain on the space station to help the Garm and her fellow sufferers find a permanent cure for Lazar's disease. (TV: Terminus)
Personality
Nyssa seemed at once more mature and more naive than her fellow travellers. She did not boast of her scientific knowledge nor believe it made her superior. She faced her challenges with the determination and serenity of her Trakenite heritage. She turned her sorrow as the last of her people into a desire to help others. Rarely did she mention any grief she suffered because of her great misfortunes. Perhaps most extraordinarily, she never sought to avenge herself on the Master despite her many good reasons to do so.
Her trusting nature sometimes made her less alert to deception than Tegan (TV: Mawdryn Undead) but it also made her more adept at negotiating an effective balance between strong personalities. (TV: Earthshock)
Like all Trakenites, she tended towards pacifism, though on separate occasions she destroyed a Terileptil android in September 1666 (TV: The Visitation), killed a Cyberman in the TARDIS (TV: Earthshock) and used the threat of violence to save the Doctor's life, shooting a pair of guards on Gallifrey. (TV: Arc of Infinity)
Physical Appearance
To be added.
Other Information
To be added.
Behind the Scenes
To be added.
List of Appearances
Doctor Who
Movies
Footnotes
- ↑ Cameo