Nyssa (Doctor Who)

Doctor Who universe character
Nyssa of Traken
With	Fourth Doctor ; Fifth Doctor
Race	Trakenite
Home planet	Traken
Home era	1981
First appearance	The Keeper of Traken
Last appearance	Terminus
Actor	Sarah Sutton

Nyssa is a fictional character in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. She is played by Sarah Sutton. Nyssa came from the planet Traken. Nyssa was created by writer Johnny Byrne for the Fourth Doctor serial The Keeper of Traken, but the production team later decided that she should join the Doctor on his travels. She returned in the next serial Logopolis, in which the Fourth Doctor regenerated, and remained as a companion of the Fifth Doctor. She was a regular in the programme from 1981 to 1983. Sutton was the youngest female actor to play a companion in the series.

Character history

Nyssa is a alien from the planet Traken, the daughter of Tremas (a consul of the Traken Union) and stepdaughter of Kassia. She helps the Doctor and Adric to defeat Master. During her journeys with Tegan and Adric aboard the TARDIS, Nyssa finds herself trapped in a mathematical equation by the Master – whom she hates as he is, of course, now using "that face" (her father's). She also encounters a race of androids and their insane ruler, helps foil the genocidal plans of a wounded Terileptil and incidentally start the Great Fire of London, and discovers her remarkable resemblance to Ann Talbot.

Appearances in other media

Nyssa's fate after she leaves the TARDIS is not known, although the spin-off novel Asylum, by Peter Darvill-Evans, reveals that she eventually leaves Terminus and settles down as an academic in a university on an unspecified planet. In Asylum, Nyssa shares an adventure with the Fourth Doctor from a time before he met her, leaving the Doctor with the knowledge that he will have to be extremely careful dealing with Nyssa when they eventually meet to avoid changing history.

Since then, Sutton has also voiced Nyssa in several audio plays alongside Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor, produced by Big Finish Productions.

List of appearances

Television

Season 18

The Keeper of Traken
Logopolis

Season 19

Castrovalva
Four to Doomsday
Kinda
The Visitation
Black Orchid
Earthshock
Time-Flight

Season 20

Arc of Infinity
Snakedance
Mawdryn Undead
Terminus

Season 21

The Caves of Androzani (cameo)

30th anniversary special

Dimensions in Time

Audio dramas

The Land of the Dead
Winter for the Adept
The Mutant Phase
Primeval
Spare Parts
Creatures of Beauty
The Game
Circular Time
Renaissance of the Daleks
Return to the Web Planet
The Haunting of Thomas Brewster
The Boy That Time Forgot
Time Reef & A Perfect World
The Darkening Eye

Novels

Virgin Missing Adventures

Goth Opera by Paul Cornell
The Sands of Time by Justin Richards
Cold Fusion by Lance Parkin

Past Doctor Adventures

Zeta Major by Simon Messingham
Divided Loyalties by Gary Russell
Asylum by Peter Darvill-Evans
Fear of the Dark by Trevor Baxendale
Empire of Death by David Bishop

Comics

"On The Planet Isopterus" by Glenn Rix (Doctor Who Annual 1983)
"Blood Invocation" by Paul Cornell and John Ridgway (Doctor Who Magazine Yearbook 1995)