#ryan sinclair

I have a lowkey hobby of analyzing media that “doesn’t work”. Games that are poorly reviewed and shows that bombed. It always fascinates me to try and figure out what caused the gap between artist intention and audience reception.

Obviously, you can see how that’s a lead-in for Ryan Sinclair. He’s a companion that has had so little impact, he doesn’t even make the cut for discussions of “bad” companions. So, I recently became fascinated with him and what the show intended, regardless of the result. I’d encourage you to rewatch some of Ryan with these thoughts in mind.

First thing’s first: There’s little mystery to what led to him underwhelming. The show’s writers struggled to balance a 2x Size Tardis Cast, and his storylines clearly kept getting shunted off to “next week”. His opening scene introduces his physical disability, which receives only dubbed-in lip service for the rest of the run. He clearly was written off when the writers gave up on paying him off.

But why was he there in the first place?

I found the answers in “It Takes You Away” and “The Witchfinders”. In both of these episodes, Ryan does something significant and fascinating that was clearly intended to lay the groundwork for something. In both episodes, he “solves” a major mystery extremely early and is ignored.

In “The Witchfinders”, the Fam notes that they’ve never heard of the town they’re in. Ryan shrugs and says “then we’re probably in the moment it gets wiped off the map” (paraphrased). This does, indeed, turn out to be exactly the case.

In “It Takes You Away”, the Fam postulates where the child’s father is. Ryan states “he probably just abandoned her”, which is roundly rejected for being too awful… before turning out to be entirely correct.

Very importantly, these aren’t complicated deductions. Ryan isn’t a super detective, smarter than the Doctor. But he does have something few other Companions have had:

Ryan is cynical.

Over the show, most companions are optimistic, spirited, and want to believe in the best. It’s become very baked-in canon that the Doctor keeps companions in order to stay connected to his own humanity. They need to be kind and uplifting and calm the Oncoming Storm’s heart.

This optimism is beautiful, but it’s also true that the world can suck sometimes. And people can be unfair and jerks and that answers can be unsatisfying. Ryan is deeply familiar with that. He has a disability that he feels like he should be able to overcome. He has friends that have unfairly hard lives. He feels disconnected from his family (including Graham, until later). Ryan has had it rough in a way that denies whimsy and optimism. He is kind. He is loyal and noble. He is also just intimately aware that things can just…. They can just suck. They can suck without poetry or grander meaning.

And because of embracing this, he can see things the others can’t. He can deduce where the girl’s missing father is and what happened to the town specifically because those answers are very obvious when you take the stars out of your eyes.

This in my mind, could have been a GREAT balance to 13. Thirteen was a Doctor that was sincerely happy and family-oriented, unlike the coldness or 12 or the “pretending to be all laughs” of 11. 13 doesn’t need a companion to “remind her to be kind”. Ryan could, in theory, have been the inversion that kept her grounded. They could have episodes where they argued about how to properly view a situation. 13 could have opened his heart to joy while he noticed the things she didn’t. There was a lot of potential there!

Ryan has been lost to the ever-marching pace of Doctor Who, but I can’t shake the idea that a cynical and skeptical companion could have been an absolute banger. I hope Big Finish or some such finds time to give him the spotlight he deserves.

Thank you for reading.