| Tania Bell | Appearances | Talk |
Tania Bell was a companion of the Eighth Doctor, member of Torchwood Three and a resident of 107 Baker Street in 2020. She became further involved in the world of the Doctor when the Eighth Doctor, Liv Chenka, and Helen Sinclair moved into 107 Baker Street while the TARDIS recovered from its draining by the Ravenous. Juggling her growing romance with Liv and her need to hide her affiliation with Torchwood from the Doctor, Tania joined the quest of the residents, the Curator, and her fellow Torchwood member Andy Davidson to stop the rise of Divine Intervention and resolve the damage to time created by the crash of the Doctor's TARDIS.
Following the restoration of the original timeline, Liv left to have further adventures with the Doctor and Helen. Departing the TARDIS for good, she moved in with Tania, for whom mere moments had passed. The couple investigated a mysterious furniture shop with the Ninth Doctor and an alien presence in Yorkshire with Missy and the Twelfth Doctor.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Tania was a transgender woman, a fact which sometimes attracted bigotry from others. (AUDIO: Wild Animals) As a child, her father often told her to leave the house for upsetting her mother. (AUDIO: Lost Property) She attended football matches with him, enjoying the on-field action far more than the crowds. (AUDIO: The Keys of Baker Street) She was not often treated as her friend and fellow Torchwood member Andy Davidson felt she should have been. (AUDIO: Snow)
By 2014, Tania had joined Torchwood, (AUDIO: Lost Property) receiving basic martial arts training. (AUDIO: Snow) She moved into Flat 1 at 107 Baker Street (AUDIO: Lost Property) to keep an eye out for the Doctor, who Torchwood knew visited the house from time to time. The vagaries of her acquiring the lease were conducted by the Curator in the guide of the Eleventh Doctor. (AUDIO: The Keys of Baker Street) She remained in contact with Andy and unbeknownst to her, had her flat bugged with cameras by Torchwood. (AUDIO: Must-See TV)
The Doctor's arrival[]
In an alternate version of 2020 created by the crash of the Doctor's TARDIS, the Eighth Doctor, Liv Chenka, and Helen Sinclair moved into 107 Baker Street. Tania quickly fell for Liv. (AUDIO: Lost Property) Knowing the Doctor could not learn about Torchwood until his tenth regeneration, (TV: Army of Ghosts) she went to great lengths to keep him from discovering her affiliation. (AUDIO: Must-See TV)
When arguments in 107 Baker Street began to heat up and paranoia abounded, Tania suggested that something might be exacerbating tensions. Once the Doctor had deactivated the Pandora Bolt, the cause of said tensions, she called Torchwood to report that the Level 2 activity had been resolved, with no further action necessary. (AUDIO: Lost Property)
Tania offered Liv and Helen smart phones; Liv refused due to a prior experience. (AUDIO: Absent Friends) After Liv was shot in the robbery which killed Sanjit, Tania was requested by Helen to visit her in the hospital. Tania asked a recuperating Liv to have dinner with her and confessed that she was transgender, something which did not faze Liv one bit. (AUDIO: Wild Animals)
Much to her annoyance, given the presence of a police officer inevitably raised Liv's suspicions, Andy visited Tania to learn why she had gone quiet. Tania was further irritated to learn that Torchwood had bugged her flat, smuggling Andy in to point out each bug so that she could remove them. She and Liv agreed to a "no questions, no lies" policy with regards to their secrets. (AUDIO: Must-See TV)
Tania and Helen. (AUDIO: Stranded 2)
As Torchwood needed the Doctor to not be a "broken man", Tania directed the Doctor towards Mr Crusoe. Her choice to send him to a shop teeming with alien technology angered Andy. Her date with Liv was hijacked by the Doctor, who brought along the other residents of 107 Baker Street in celebration of his winning You Either Know It or You Don't, and attacked by Teeja and Bourakai, whom Tania helped chase. Following their defeat, Liv took Tania and Robin Bright-Thompson to a pub to tell them who she really was. (AUDIO: Divine Intervention)
The Doctor invited Tania to join him, Liv and Helen on a test flight in the TARDIS. Accompanied by Andy and Robin, who had smuggled aboard, they ended up 6 million years in Earth’s future. Tania and the Doctor explored the ruins of London together, with him telling her about regeneration. Liv and Andy led a decontamination sentinel to them, which the Doctor told them to disable with rocks. Realising an army of the robots was approaching, he gave Tania a TARDIS key and told her, Andy and Helen to return to the TARDIS. The ship refused to let them in, so Andy took the opportunity of them being trapped to confess that Torchwood had actually been shut down. When the Doctor, Liv and Robin returned, the TARDIS yielded and the Doctor took them back to 2020. (AUDIO: Dead Time)
Tania and Liv argued over adopting a cat; while Tania wanted one, Liv very much did not. Tania insisted on going with the Doctor, Liv, Helen, and the Akhtars to 1941 to investigate an unexploded bomb unearthed in 2020. Liv followed her to the bomb site, discovering an alien stasis pod, and together, they stopped the stasis spreading beyond the site. Emerging after days in and out of stasis, they reunited with the others and returned to 2020. (AUDIO: Baker Street Irregulars)
Tania and Liv. (AUDIO: Stranded 3)
Tania travelled to 2050 with the Doctor, Liv, Helen, and Andy to investigate the altered future. They were immediately captured by forces opposing Divine Intervention and interrogated one by one by Gemma Houlbrooke. The Doctor eventually convinced Gemma to release them, and they returned to 2020. (AUDIO: The Long Way Round)
Repairing the timeline[]
Using the Paradoxica, the Doctor sent Tania and Helen away from a squad of Judoon eager to arrest them into a vision of the lake planet Flask. They were constantly confused as to where they were and why they were there. Helen comforted Tania after Tania expressed a sense of disease, helping her through her first panic attack in years. Tania mused on missing Liv, wondered why the Doctor had paired her with Helen instead of her "rainbow dolphin." They watched a section of the squad capsize in the lake and examined life-size versions of the Paradoxica cards which acted as time windows into the future. Back in the TARDIS, Tania and Andy discussed their strange experiences. (AUDIO: Patience)
Tania assisted the Doctor in ending Earth Empire's rule over Rarkelia by going undercover as a mercenary. Encountering the Doctor, who had been labeled "the deceiver" for telling stories that encouraged the Rarkelians to embrace their traditions instead of suppressing them, in a jungle trench, she was labeled a traitor and fled with him to the TARDIS. In a swampy lab inside the TARDIS, she watched the Doctor fail to save Kray-La from infection by a parasite that had been ravaging Rarkelians.
Tania was thoroughly distressed when she saw Liv injected with the parasite on live TV by Professor Victoria Wilks. The Doctor's intervention destroyed the parasite, saving the lives of Liv and Helen, who had consumed the parasite to stick it to Wilks. (AUDIO: Twisted Folklore)
At the Hollow Ponds in 2020, Tania and Liv argued over their future when the TARDIS was fully restored. Returning to 2020, Liv, who had seen a possible future Tania die in her arms, was relieved to see Tania alive and well. (AUDIO: Snow)
Tania did not accompany the Doctor, Liv, Helen, and Andy in looking for "The Doctor." She greeted them when they returned, embracing Liv when it was revealed Andy had died in the process. (AUDIO: What Just Happened?)
The Doctor and Helen traveled back three months so the Doctor could prevent the chain of events that led to Andy's death, Their interference with Tania's past caused her to experience temporal occlusion, Liv's attempts to fix it taking the couple into an alternate timeline being consumed by the Void (AUDIO: Crossed Lines) Back in the relatively normal timeline, she rested to shake off the exhaustion of her ordeal. (AUDIO: Get Andy)
Meeting other Doctors[]
Further information from Flatpack and The Chaos Cascade needs to be added
In the original timeline, Tania took Liv furniture shopping as a mask for an investigation for Torchwood into the mysterious appearance of the Flatpack shop. They encountered the Ninth Doctor. Tania thought that Flatpack had been there since her student days. She thought that the building might have been a TARDIS. She was shown that there was a future version of Liv and herself in the store. (AUDIO: Flatpack [+]John Dorney, Hidden Depths (The Ninth Doctor Adventures: Series 2, Big Finish Productions, 2022).)
In 2024, Tania and Liv took a holiday to Yorkshire where Tania secretly investigated an alien presence, which led to her encountering Missy whom she mistook for a new incarnation of the Doctor. She accompanied Missy on a quest to assemble the three pieces of the Triskelia, during which she met the Twelfth Doctor. (AUDIO: The Chaos Cascade)
Undated events[]
Robin visited Tania's flat to grouse about his father being prevented by work from taking him to a football match between Crystal Palace F.C. and West Bromwich Albion F.C. Tania reassured him that his father was doing his best, offering to go with him instead so he could attend the match with a "responsible adult." Though he had a spare ticket Liv could use, he scoffed at the idea of her watching a football match, believing she would find it infuriatingly boring. Tania agreed for a different reason: Liv and Helen were busy assisting Ron Winters with Tony Clare's memory issues. (AUDIO: UNIT Dating, The Keys of Baker Street)
Alternate timelines[]
Possible 2035[]
In a possible version of 2035, Tania, labelled a "non-conformer" by Divine Intervention, had been on the run for years. She saved Liv and Andy, who had traveled from 2020 to investigate DI's rise, from a skinhead eager to attack them. Sensing her death was imminent, she drove them to the paved-over remains of the Hollow Ponds. Her car was attacked by a drone on the way; although Liv and Andy were unharmed, Tania died of her injuries while watching the Ponds. (AUDIO: Snow)
Train to Edinburgh[]
Some time after returning from the desolate Earth, Tania met a Helen from months in the future who needed to get to Euston Station as soon as possible. After the two saw the present version of Helen, they took the tube to Euston. Helen explained she was looking for Robin, remaining reticent on the cause of Earth's desolation and the exact fates of the residents of 107 Baker Street.
Boarding the train leaving for Edinburgh on Platform 1, Tania and Helen noticed Mr Bird and were confused by his presence. They were caught by him as they searched the train, being kept from escaping under the threat of being shot. He ushered them along until they met the Doctor in the buffet car. A heated conversation revealed the truth "hidden in plain sight": Mr Bird was Robin, millennia older after his aging was greatly slowed on the future Earth. (AUDIO: Dead Time, Crossed Lines)
Tania realised Mr Bird had arranged the Bright-Thompsons' move. She listened to the Doctor's story about a hermit on Gallifrey who saved as many shimmerlings as he could by throwing them into the Untempered Schism. She was shocked to learn humanity would go extinct in the future. She chimed into the Doctor and Helen's attempt to convince Mr Bird to accept his mortality by noting that it mattered to "[save] what few shimmerlings you can."
Before the Doctor could obtain Mr Bird's help to escape, he used his chrono-warp engine to travel elsewhere in his own timeline. Liv and the Tania from Helen's future entered the buffet car, inspiring the Doctor to instead trigger the Blinovitch Limitation Effect. The energy released when the Tanias hugged repulsed the Void, allowing the TARDIS to return to the future. Though the past Tania was left behind, she found a way to escape the Void—perhaps through the Curator.
Some months later, Tania, less used to time travel than Liv, began experiencing temporal occlusion. In the belief the Curator could soothe Tania's pain, Liv took Tania to Trafalgar Square to find him. He ferried them to the Under Gallery, where he stabilised Tania's memories by showing her The Untempered Vista, an artistic representation of the Untempered Schism.
Tania, Liv, and the Curator were chased deeper into the Under Gallery by the Void, escaping through an emergency exit unlocked by the Curator into the train being taken by Robin and his father to Edinburgh. Marching to the buffet car to either, per the Curator, "confront the problem or to escape it," Tania remembered that Mr Bird was a much older Robin. She and Liv were sat down by the Curator, who, to her disbelief, wanted to tell them a story—the story about the hermit she had heard from the Doctor. She questioned whether the story was true; the Curator stated that was "not the question [he'd] ask." She and Liv were ushered into the buffet car by the Curator, who urged them to warn the Doctor to stop altering the past before it was too late. In response to Tania's concerns about the Void destroying him, the Curator remarked that this was far from the first time he had ceased to exist.
Struggling into the buffet car after the Curator distracted the Void, Tania and Liv encountered the past Tania, the Doctor, and Helen. Tania hugged her past self, triggering the Blinovitch Limitation Effect and opening a window of opportunity for the TARDIS to dematerialise. In the TARDIS, the future Tania allayed Liv's worries about the past Tania's safety by noting that she "had a return ticket" and joked to the Doctor that she had accompanied a mysterious stranger through a magic door through time before. She expressed a desire to, if it still existed, return to 107 Baker Street. (AUDIO: Crossed Lines)
No Robin[]
When Liv caught the eye of Robin's father outside the 107 Baker Street of the 1990s, accidentally averting Robin's birth, the Void began to consume the alternate timeline entirely. Not wanting Tania to "tumble into the Void", the Curator brought her from 2020 in his TARDIS. From the attic, she heard the Doctor, Liv, Helen, Andy, and a version of Robin abandoned by the Doctor on the desolate Earth discussing the Curator. She called them upstairs, inviting them to sit by the fire, eat Ron's scones, and drink what tea remained.
The Curator explained that Tania, Andy, Liv, Helen, the Doctor, and Robin possessed the six original keys to the house. Tania had received her key because the Curator considered her "watchful and kind," the house's present guardian. She escaped through a dimensional interface into the original 2020, using her key to help create another interface and retrieve the Doctor and Robin from their captivity in the kitchen. The group were quickly noticed by Robin's father, who scolded them for not only spurning social distancing, but not masking while doing so. (AUDIO: The Keys of Baker Street)
Original timeline[]
In the original version of 2020, a lockdown instituted to manage the initial wave of COVID-19 kept the residents of 107 Baker Street at home. Tania spent the lockdown with Liv. They received groceries from Andy, participated in Andy's online pub quizzes, clapped for carers, ordered wine online, and binged Tiger King, finishing it just before Liv was called to care for Ron, who had become critically ill with COVID-19. She, Liv, Helen, and Andy discussed the mutual feeling of disease and Robin's proposal that Divine Intervention be reformed. Using Robin's knowledge of DI and Tania's "very particular set of skills", the group was able to infiltrate DI and commandeer it for the residents' benefit.
As the end of the year, and Liv's regained ability to travel in the TARDIS with it, approached, Tania worried about what Liv would do. She related her fears to Helen, who admitted that she was going to leave with the Doctor, no longer living inside "four solid walls," reassured Tania that Liv loved her, and invited Tania to travel in the TARDIS. Tania politely declined, telling Helen she could not abandon her time when it was in such a state.
Tania celebrated Christmas with Liv, Helen, and the Doctor, who had just returned from the TARDIS. She purchased "posh" Christmas crackers for their dinner, one Liv cracked containing a grater, and shared a toast to absent friends. She was on the call with Andy where Liv and Helen shared that the Doctor was back and Andy told the Doctor he was Divine Intervention's new CEO. One week later, on the roof of 107 Baker Street, she celebrated New Year's Eve with Liv, Helen, and the Doctor.
Some time into 2021, the Doctor gathered the residents of 107 Baker Street to tell them that he, Liv, and Helen were departing in the TARDIS. She fought with Liv about Liv leaving, rejecting for the same reasons another proposal to travel with the Doctor. She refused to let Liv apologise, telling Liv "[she had] to do what [she had] to do," and said goodbye to the Doctor and Helen. Left alone with Liv by the Doctor, Helen, and Andy, Tania shared that she had no regrets about their time together and trapped Liv in a hug and kiss. She told Liv that she could return whenever she wanted; Liv took up Tania's offer, returning moments later from Tania's perspective and announcing she was to stay for good. (AUDIO: Best Year Ever)
Personality[]
Tania described herself as nosy. (AUDIO: Lost Property) She enjoyed shopping whenever she was upset. (AUDIO: Divine Intervention) She was "watchful and kind", qualities that motivated the Curator to give her a key to 107 Baker Street, (AUDIO: The Keys of Baker Street) and despite being plagued by panic attacks (AUDIO: Patience) and crying fits, (AUDIO: Best Year Ever) had the inner strength to hold her own against Houlbrooke. (AUDIO: The Long Way Round) She was rather insecure, hesitantly telling Liv she was transgender (AUDIO: Wild Animals) and constantly worrying over her future with Liv. (AUDIO: Must-See TV, Patience, Snow, Crossed Lines, Best Year Ever) She believed everyone deserved the chance to become the people they were meant to be, defending Robin to the Doctor by saying, "If a name stops fitting, get rid of it! Throw it away!" (AUDIO: The Keys of Baker Street)
Tania was a lapsed football fanatic. She regularly attended matches with her father when she was younger, enjoying the on-field action far more than the crowds. She had never told Liv about her fandom, leading to Liv being floored when she learned of it through a time window in 107 Baker Street. (AUDIO: The Keys of Baker Street)
The Doctor was initially suspicious of Tania, warning her to treat Liv well, (AUDIO: Must-See TV) but quickly warmed up to her. Robin trusted Tania enough to visit her flat to complain about his father. (AUDIO: The Keys of Baker Street) Andy and Tania were close both personally and professionally, meeting in private to share their confusion after their first major TARDIS trip. (AUDIO: Patience) Andy was happy that Tania had found satisfaction with Liv (AUDIO: Snow) and showed concern about her well-being following Liv's departure, offering to make her a cup of tea to cheer her up. Tania, on the other hand, teased Andy for allegedly not knowing the true purpose of toilet paper. (AUDIO: Best Year Ever)
However much Tania's secrets and Liv's desire to travel with the Doctor got in the way, Tania and Liv cared for each other. They quickly bounced back from arguments over topics as banal as adopting a cat (AUDIO: Baker Street Irregulars) and serious as their romantic future. (AUDIO: Snow) Liv hugged Tania after seeing her die in the possible 2035, (AUDIO: Snow) with Tania returning the favour after Liv reported Andy's death in a spaceship crash. (AUDIO: What Just Happened?) Unable to stand seeing Tania in pain, Liv took her to see the Curator after she began experiencing temporal occlusion. (AUDIO: Crossed Lines) Tania admired Liv for caring for COVID-19 patients despite being unfamiliar with the medicine of 2020. After leaving the Doctor for good, Liv decided to stay with Tania in London instead of returning to Kaldor. (AUDIO: Best Year Ever)
Skills[]
As a member of Torchwood, Tania was a trained martial artist (AUDIO: Snow) and knew a fair bit about the Doctor. (AUDIO: Must-See TV) She was skilled at staying off the radar; in the possible version of 2035, she had been able to evade Divine Intervention for years. (AUDIO: Snow) Her skills gained from Torchwood came in handy when the residents of 107 Baker Street decided to reform DI. (AUDIO: Best Year Ever)
Tania could cook spaghetti bolognese, putting pineapples in it to "give it a tropical edge." She was obsessed with pop culture, consistently acing the related sections of Andy's online pub quizzes. She was graceful enough to be able to carry a champagne bottle and four glasses up a flight of stairs without dropping them. (AUDIO: Best Year Ever)
Tania's temporal inexperience upon encountering the Paradoxica briefly blessed her with psychic abilities. She could to predict the future by seeing tea leaves, heard the Doctor and Liv's voices in her head, and accidentally assumed Liv's memories of her grandmother Natalav. (AUDIO: Patience)
Behind the scenes[]
Tania is the first transgender companion in any Doctor Who media. Calypso Jonze and Rose Noble would later play companion-like roles in The Lovecraft Invasion (released one month after Stranded 1) and the 2023 TV specials, respectively.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||
