Jamie McCrimmon

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Doctor Who character

James Robert "Jamie" McCrimmon
Jamie
Affiliated with Second Doctor
Race Human
Home planet Earth
Home era 1746
First appearance The Highlanders
Last appearance The War Games (regular)
The Two Doctors (guest appearance)
Portrayed by Frazer Hines
Hamish Wilson (The Mind Robber)

James Robert McCrimmon, or simply Jamie, is a fictional character played by Frazer Hines in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. A piper of the Clan McLaren who lived in 18th century Scotland, he was a companion of the Second Doctor and a regular in the programme from 1966 to 1969. The spelling of the surname varies throughout the scripts. Other spellings include Macrimmon and McCrimmond.[1]

Contents

[edit] Character history

Jamie first appears in The Highlanders, encountering the Doctor, Ben and Polly in the aftermath of the Battle of Culloden in 1746. At the end of the story, Polly suggests that the Doctor take Jamie along with them. Jamie continues to travel with the Doctor even after Ben and Polly leave the TARDIS at the end of The Faceless Ones. He appears in all but the very first Second Doctor serial, The Power of the Daleks, and in more episodes than any other companion, although Tegan Jovanka served with the Doctor for the longest in terms of years on the series.

Jamie shares a lively, bantering relationship with the Doctor, and during his time in the series sees the arrival and departure of first Victoria Waterfield and finally Zoe Heriot. Jamie, being a product of his time, is always solicitous and gentlemanly towards the women who travel with him. Jamie does not have the background to always understand the situations his adventures with the Doctor take him into, but is quick enough to translate high technology and concepts into equivalents he can understand and deal with. His famous battlecry "Creag an tuire", in Scottish Gaelic, translates to "The Boar's Rock." It is the motto of the MacLaren Clan of Scotland.

Together with the Doctor, Jamie encounters Cybermen, Daleks, the Yeti in the London Underground, the Ice Warriors, and many other dangers. Jamie is particularly fond and protective of Victoria, due in part to her being an elegant Victorian lady. The relationship between Jamie and Victoria reflected on the real-life romance of Frazer Hines and Deborah Watling who married after Hines' departure from the show, and divorced after 16 years. Jamie is heartbroken when Victoria decides to stay with the Harris family at the end of Fury from the Deep, to the point of even being briefly angry with the Doctor for allowing her to leave (The Wheel in Space).

Hamish Wilson as Jamie (from The Mind Robber)
Hamish Wilson as Jamie (from The Mind Robber)

During the filming of The Mind Robber, Frazer Hines contracted chickenpox and was replaced for part of the serial by Hamish Wilson. This was written in as part of the story when Jamie is turned into a cardboard cut-out and has his face removed by the Master of the Land of Fiction. The Doctor's first attempt to reconstruct his face is unsuccessful. Eventually Jamie's real face is restored when Hines recovered.

Jamie's travels with the Doctor come to an end on the battlefields of The War Games, when the Time Lords finally put the Doctor on trial for interfering with the universe. For his offences, the Doctor is forced to regenerate and exiled to Earth. Jamie and Zoe are returned to their own time, their memories of the Doctor wiped, save for their first encounters with him. When last seen, Jamie is fighting an English redcoat back on the fields of Scotland.

Frazer Hines returned to Doctor Who as an illusory image of Jamie in the 20th anniversary special The Five Doctors. He also reprised the role in the 1985 serial The Two Doctors alongside Patrick Troughton and Colin Baker as the Second and Sixth Doctors respectively. Hines reprises the role of Jamie in the 2007 audio drama Helicon Prime released by Big Finish Productions.

[edit] Season 6B

Main article: Season 6B

That in The Two Doctors the Second Doctor and Jamie are on an assignment for the Time Lords (whom they do not encounter until The War Games) and, less significantly, that they are so obviously aged from their earlier appearances, has led to fan speculation about a possible "Season 6B". As we do not directly see Patrick Troughton regenerate into Jon Pertwee's Third Doctor, fans hypothesise that, prior to his third incarnation, the Time Lords recruited the Second Doctor as a covert operative. In at least some of these untold adventures, Jamie would also have accompanied the Doctor. (Although she does not appear, Victoria's presence is also mentioned in The Two Doctors.) While the television continuity has yet to confirm these theories, the spin-off media have incorporated it into their working backstory.

[edit] Other appearances and "Death"

An elderly Jamie, who remembers his time with the Doctor (explaining that the Doctor had taught him tricks to ensure the Time Lords would not really wipe his memories), also appears in the comic strip story "The World Shapers" with the Sixth Doctor, published in Doctor Who Magazine #127–#129. In this story, written by Grant Morrison, Jamie sacrifices himself at the conclusion of the story to stop the titular world shaper machine. In "Planet of the Dead" (DWM #141-#142), a race of shapeshifters known as the Ganzalum impersonate the Doctor's dead companions (although Peri and Frobisher are also impersonated), Jamie among them.

Jamie's death was very much controversial due to his status as a major companion, let alone his death taking place outside the confines of the television series. In the Virgin New Adventures novel Timewyrm: Revelation, writer Paul Cornell omitted Jamie from the group of deceased companions that the Seventh Doctor encounter in the novel.

As such, Jamie's ultimate fate remains nebulous with the generally accepted canonicity of the various Doctor Who spin-off media remaining unclear as towards whether or not they are officially recognized as canon.

In the 2006 episode "Tooth and Claw" (set in Scotland), the Tenth Doctor identifies himself to Queen Victoria as "Doctor James McCrimmon".

[edit] List of appearances

[edit] Television

Season 4
Season 5
Season 6
20th anniversary special
Season 22

[edit] Audio drama

[edit] Novels

Virgin Missing Adventures
Past Doctor Adventures
Telos Doctor Who novellas

[edit] Short stories

[edit] Comics

[edit] Trivia

 Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.

Best selling author Diana Gabaldon, author of the Outlander series, admits that her character Jamie Fraser was inspired by Doctor Who's Jamie, in her nonfiction work The Outlandish Companion:

"This character wore a kilt, which I thought rather fetching, and demonstrated--in this particular episode--a form of pigheaded male gallantry that I've always found endearing: the strong urge on the part of a man to protect a woman, even though he may realize that she's plainly capable of looking after herself."

In a footnote, Gabaldon states that the episode she was watching was The War Games.

Frazer Hines is noted as being the Doctor's longest serving companion on screen, appearing in 115 episodes

[edit] References

  1. ^ The MacCrimmons were a genuine piping family, and one of the most famous piping families in the Scotland. They were pipers to the chiefs of Clan Macleod. Although the Macleod's own tartan is actually yellow, Jamie always wears a red kilt in the series. Note, however, that Jamie originates from 1746, some seventy years before the practice of particular clan tartans.

[edit] External links

v • d • e
Companions of the Second Doctor
Seasons ← Season 4 Season 5 Season 6
Serials 029 030 031 032 033 034 035 036 037 038 039 040 041 042 043 044 045 046 047 048 049 050
Companions ← Polly Victoria Zoe
← Ben
Jamie