Bonnie Langford's picks from the Doctor Who Archive

Star of stage and screen, Bonnie Langford first appeared as Melanie Bush, companion to the Sixth and Seventh Doctors between 1986 and 1987. More recently, she appeared in Jodie Whittaker's final episode, The Power of the Doctor in 2022 and returned to our screens alongside Fifteenth Doctor, Ncuti Gatwa.

Ahead on season one, BBC Archives caught up with Bonnie to talk about her experiences of accompanying the Doctor across the universe and to pick her highlights from the BBC’s archive collections.

"My introduction to the viewers was on Blue Peter. The reason why I found that so funny was that it was Mark Curry’s first show on Blue Peter and Mark Curry is one of my oldest and dearest friends. So it was really strange that they launched my appearance on the show when it was his first appearance and that we came together again. We first worked together when I was 7 and he was 11, so, a long time."

"Joining a sci-fi, Saturday night programme, I never thought that I would still be talking about it, let alone being in it thirty odd years later! Never in a million years! I didn’t think I would be coming back to it with such joy and such love."

Bonnie Langford

"All of the costumes that I wore in the show were so outrageous. I mean there’s one that I wore, running around a quarry, I’m in white trousers for God’s sake! White trousers in a quarry with these huge great puff sleeves that Kate O’Mara wore as well."

"It was freezing cold, April showers, all day in a working quarry. I had just come off a theatre tour. I did a show on the Sunday and drove down the next day. I fell asleep in the back of a truck in this quarry and then I had to do The Bubble scene and to be perfectly honest I had absolutely no idea where I was or what I was doing. I’d woken up thinking ‘am I in some kind of weird dream?'"

Bonnie Langford

"Another one I’d love to choose is the companion help group from The Power of the Doctor. It’s a sweet scene and I love the concept of 'what do they do?'. You can’t suddenly turn round and say I’ve been travelling with this amazing guy because I think everyone would just say 'Yeah, I think you need to take more medication’."

"It’s lovely to think that there is this community outside once you leave the TARDIS, because life could never really be the same again."

"I got a phone call on the Wednesday, from Chris Chibnall saying, ‘how do you fancy coming down and doing a little scene?’ And I thought that would be great, and then it turned out it was the Monday! It was suddenly this complete cascade of phone calls from various departments going ‘oh my God what are we going to do?’. The costume designer phoned and said ‘I don’t really know what I would put you in?’. I was actually in the shopping centre with my daughter and I had eyed up this jacket that I wanted for something else. So I said, ‘well look, I’ve been doing these audio episodes [Big Finish Audio Dramas] for years, so I feel a little bit more connected to her than maybe you do. I’m going into a shop anyway, shall I go in and send you some pictures?'"

"So I went into this shop with handfuls of clothes and I kept thinking, ‘is that me, is that her, I don’t know, I don’t want to be like me, I need to be different!’ I was taking photographs in the cubicle and sending them to Ray going, ‘What about this? What about this?' And basically he just said 'buy it all and we’ll work it out.'"

Bonnie Langford

"There’s a picture of Richard Briers and Sylvester [McCoy], and you know the stars that we would have on that show were unbelievable. There was a time we were doing an episode with Richard Briers [Paradise Towers], we’d rehearse the show for a week or so and then we would run it like it was a mini play. Clive Merrison and Richard Briers would do a lot of scenes together and they would come back and sit down at this table. We would all sit around while we weren’t in the scenes, supposedly studying our scripts. So we would sit there and wait until it was our scene. Every time they were called back they would say something different, a word like 'antiques', 'stationery' or 'furniture', and I said, ‘is this some kind of code, what is this about, what are you doing?’ And they said, ‘we don’t think we’ll have careers after this so we might have to open a shop and we’re working out which one we might need to open!’"

Bonnie Langford

"Dimensions in Time was shot in Albert Square on the Eastenders set where I ended up spending three and a half years of my life as Carmel."

"I would be spending many a cold morning standing outside on that very set. How bizarre is that? And still with Gilly Taylforth and Adam Woodyatt who were in it at the time with me. I find that really peculiar that you just do not know where your life is going to take you."

"It was a wonderful thing. I remember Jon Pertwee having all his books in the boot of his car and he was trying to flog them (laughs). I think he wanted to put them on the market. He was a delightful man. I loved the way he played Doctor Who."

Bonnie Langford

“The Bi-generation was a highlight because it was such an epic moment. Russell’s writing is just beautiful and perfect. I remember receiving this script very early on and what I found so surprising was that when I went to pick up what I thought would be an amended script there really weren’t any amendments at all. You could tell how beautifully written it was, how heartfelt. To be there those couple of days, it was so joyous. And yes, there was pressure, you could tell there was an anticipation in the air, but it was very happy, very joyous, very jolly and everyone was extremely welcoming. I just remember feeling so grateful to be part of this epic, televisual history moment."

“It’s fantastic [returning to Doctor Who], because I don’t think I really enjoyed it much before. I didn’t think I was in the right place in my head to do it either. I hadn’t been given any kind of backstory. I am literally able to correct those elements that I don’t think I did justice to before. Russell has given me a much more rounded character. I think as an actor back then I wanted it all to be lovely and nice and everybody to be happy ever after and now I’m very different in that respect. It’s just a different world.”

Bonnie Langford