circular-time: The Watcher — Logopolis NYSSA: That’s the man who brought me from Traken.

circular-time:The Watcher — LogopolisNYSSA: That’s the man who brought me from Traken. DOCTOR: Yes. NYSSA: He said he was a friend of yours. ADRIC: But he’s the man on the bridge. DOCTOR: Yes. ADRIC: You said to be prepared for the worst. DOCTOR: Indeed I did, and I am prepared for the worst. ADRIC: Why are you prepared for the worst, Doctor? DOCTOR: Because he’s here.This is one of those tiny mysteries that intrigues the heck out of me… why and how did little Nyssa take off into the unknown with THAT INCREDIBLY SPOOKY PERSON?The Watcher reminds me of the first Doctor’s original concept as an inexplicable and slightly alarming mystery man, which I wrote about in that essay about how the concept of the Doctor was developed gradually over several incarnations. What is he? WHO is he?Would you entrust your life to him, as Nyssa did?At the beginning of Logopolis, Nyssa sends a message to the (fourth) Doctor, warning him that the Master had escaped and Tremas had vanished. She asks for help in finding her father.When she finds them on Logopolis, Nyssa tells Adric, “I came here to find the Master… I must know what’s happened to my father.” No, but think about this. A sheltered girl living in a perfect paradise, untouched by evil or violence until recently, and that was shocking. Nyssa isn’t totally naive, mind you. In Keeper of Traken, we saw her bribing or stunning guards to help her loved ones. But she’s so young, living the pampered and privileged life of a ruling elite’s only child. One day, shortly after her father vanishes under sinister circumstances with his terrified cry for help still ringing in her ears, a Spooky Mummy Creature (he’s got scabrous hands with broken claws, by the way) appears before her and says, “I’m a friend of the Doctor. Come with me. I’ll take you to the Master.” That’s assuming he speaks at all. She probably wouldn’t be too fazed by telepathy, but still. Talk about a leap of faith.On top of which, the Watcher doesn’t have a TARDIS; he just materializes here and there, flitting from place to place.Imagine that moment from that young girl’s perspective. Imagine taking that creature’s hand and leaping out into the unknown, the vast universe, in order to hunt for the murderer who destroyed your stepmother and almost destroyed your world, in the hopes that you’ll learn what he’s done to your father?Why did the Watcher go to Traken to collect her in the first place? Simply to answer her plea, which had been lodged with his predecessor (who didn’t bother to answer her, just use the info she gave him to sort out his own affairs)?Or maybe… the Watcher sensed that she belonged with him, and that she was part of the pattern? It’s almost as if the Fifth Doctor was picking her as his companion before he was actually alive.That’s always touched me. It’s part of why I love the “Winter” segment of Circular Time so much, the way it bookends the mystery of the previous regeneration without attempting to explain it. [Spoilers]In both stories, Logopolis/Castrovalva and “Winter,” they reach out to each other across time and space,the fifth Doctor seeking her help with his regeneration, Nyssa asking for help regarding the Master (to find her father, the first time, to learn whether the Master is threatening her young family, the second time).The first time, she midwifes the fifth Doctor’s birth. The second time, she serves as a psychopomp to help him die.No wonder he tells her…“Each life creates the next. No wonder Time Lords and Buddhists get on so well. There was a moment when it actually looked like I was going to  get off the Wheel of Life, wasn’t there, and it looked like I might actually have found my Nirvana. But you were here to put a stop to that, to be the grit in the Wheel… or should I say the grain.”“I’m very proud to have been a part of your family, Doctor.”“The most vital part, at the end.”— The Doctor and Nyssa, Circular TimeAnd then he kisses her forehead and walks away, a deliberate echo of her near-death and parting from him on Terminus…NYSSA: I’m not coming with you. DOCTOR: What? NYSSA: There’s too much to be done here.TEGAN: We need you, too…  — TerminusNYSSA: Doctor, you mustn’t die. You’re needed.— Androzani / Circular Time*beats on something* dammit.Team Five was the dysfunctional TARDIS, yet there’s some incredibly profound bonds between several of them. (Granted, Turlough was bound to the Doctor by a contract to murder him, but still.)  -- source link

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