Review by TIM WORTHINGTON
Illustration by JAMIE LENMAN
In 1965 poor old Katarina didn’t have a very happy Christmas. Just four episodes into The Daleks’ Master Plan (1965-66), the historically displaced TARDIS traveller was sucked out of an airlock, saving the others from a desperate criminal while viewers had barely begun opening their Advent calendars. While the Doctor, Steven and Sara got to enjoy a notorious Christmas Day comedy runaround three weeks later, and viewers were gleefully unwrapping their Anti-Dalek Fluid Neutralisers, she was presumably still floating through the vacuum of space. As if to emphasise how keen everyone was to move on, writer Terry Nation simply marked her exit in the script with “SPEECH HERE TO COVER THE CHARACTER OF THE GIRL”.