Elizabeth "Liz" Shaw is the deuteragonist of Season 7 of Doctor Who.
She was portrayed by the late Caroline John, who reprised the role for both BBV and Big Finish. Since her death, the role was taken on by Hazel Burrows in the former and voiced by Daisy Ashford in the latter.
Biography
Liz Shaw was a research scientist at Cambridge, who was seconded to UNIT by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart to help examine the Nestene energy units that had landed on Earth. She was highly sceptical of his claims of past alien incursions and that the TARDIS, which his men had found in the same area, was some form of alien spaceship. However, she struck up an instant rapport with the Doctor when he arrived at UNIT HQ and worked with him to construct a machine that shorted out all the Nestene energy on Earth. Afterwards, she agreed to stay on at UNIT as the Doctor's assistant.
Liz accompanied the Doctor in investigating the accidents at the Wenley Moor Research Centre, caused by the recently revived Silurians. She was more supportive than many of the Doctor's hope of a peaceful solution and helped him find a cure to the virus introduced by the Young Silurian, although the incident ended with the Silurian shelter being destroyed by UNIT. She later took part in investigating the disappearance of the three astronauts from the Mars Probe mission, during the course of which she was kidnapped by the criminal Reegan to treat and communicate with a trio of kidnapped alien ambassadors.
She finally joined the Doctor at Project Inferno, where they became caught up in Professor Stahlman's near-catastrophic attempt to drill to the Earth's crust. At the beginning of the following season, the Brigadier noted Liz had returned to Cambridge, having realised the Doctor didn't need a scientist as his assistant. Their parting is depicted in a number of tie-ins, including the short stories "Countries of the Blind" and "Reconnaisance" and the novels The Scales of Injustice and The Devil Goblins from Neptune.
A number of tie-ins have shown Liz continuing to associate with the Doctor for some time afterwards. The comic strip "Change of Mind" sees them investigate the dangerous psychic Hardin together and the novel The Wages of Sin sees her join the Doctor and his new assistant Jo Grant on a trip back in time where they became caught up in the murder of Rasputin. The short story "Down to Earth" sees her go on a trip in the TARDIS with the Fourth Doctor. In another short story, "Ladies' Night In", she was part of a reunion of old companions including Jo Grant, Sarah Jane Smith and Tegan Jovanka. She was the main character of the PROBE series of videos, leading a British paranormal research unit.
The novel Eternity Weeps depicted Liz as dying in 2003, having contracted the alien virus Agent Yellow and given the only cure to Chris Cwej. This was overwritten by the Sarah Jane Adventures story "Death of the Doctor", which mentioned her as still alive and stationed on UNIT's moonbase in 2010.
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