James Robert McCrimmon - Jamie to his friends - was a piper in the service of Donald McLaren, Laird of the Clan McLaren. Together, they had followed the Young Pretender in his efforts to re-establish the Stuart Dynasty in Great Britain in 1745. Their battle cry, which Jamie would never forget, was "Craig an Tuirc!".
Defeated at the Battle of Culloden the following year, they had gone on the run with McLaren's daughter Kirsty and son Alexander - hunted by Redcoat soldiers. Encountering the Doctor and his companions Ben and Polly, they were all attacked by the enemy at a remote farmhouse. Alexander was killed and Polly and Kirsty fled, but Jamie was captured with his laird, Ben and the Doctor.
Narrowly avoiding being hung, they were taken to Inverness where a crooked solicitor named Grey was working on a scheme to transport the Jacobite prisoners to slavery in the West Indies.
Bonnie Prince Charlie having escaped the battlefield, at one point the Doctor pretended that Jamie was the Prince, to fool Grey and his ally Captain Trask - skipper of the ship that would carry the slaves abroad.
The Doctor was able to smuggle weapons to the Highlanders and they won the ship, which would now take them to freedom in France. Jamie fought Trask and threw him overboard.
The young piper then accompanied the time travellers back to the TARDIS. Rather than join his compatriots in exile, he accepted an invitation to travel with the Doctor.
It took some time for the Highlander to get used to the TARDIS and its capabilities, but he was open-minded and trusted the Doctor and his new friends. After visiting the ruined city of Atlantis in the late 20th Century, where he and Ben pretended to be members of Professor Zaroff's security forces, Jamie found himself on the Moon in the year 2070.
Unfortunately, he was involved in an accident when playing with the others in the near weightless environment - colliding with the dome of a weather control base when he leapt over a low ridge. Concussed, he was taken into the base and installed in the sickbay. Here he encountered a Cyberman which, in his confused state of mind, he believed to be the legendary Phantom Piper, who came to claim members of his clan on their deathbed. The Cybermen were abducting and processing crew members who had been infected by an artificial neuro-virus, and Jamie was spared this fate as he did not have the tell-tale marks on his skin. Once recovered, he helped defeat the Cyberman efforts to take control of the base.
In a human colony on an alien planet, Jamie seemed to be immune to mental conditioning - unlike his friend Ben who was highly susceptible due to his armed services background. By now Jamie had very much swapped his fierce loyalty to his Laird onto the Doctor.
Sent to work in a gas-mine, Jamie escaped and was hunted by the giant crab-like Macra. At one point he found himself in the middle of a dance contest, and showed the colonists the Highland Fling - so-called, he said, because at the end you fling yourself out the door.
At Gatwick Airport in 1966, Jamie encountered what he thought of as "flying beasties" - aeroplanes. He also found himself being flirted with by a young Liverpudlian woman named Samantha Briggs. Jamie exploited her interest to steal her flight ticket in order to investigate Chameleon Tours. He was abducted by the aliens behind this company and his body copied for one of their number. An ally of their leader, his copy was shot dead after the Doctor had turned some of their number against him. Jamie discovered on this occasion that, despite his TARDIS travels, he suffered from travel sickness.
Ben and Polly elected to leave the TARDIS at Gatwick, as it was the very day on which they had first come aboard in London, but the Doctor and Jamie discovered that the TARDIS had been stolen from the airport.
After hunting for it in London, both were knocked unconscious at an antiques shop belonging to a man named Waterfield, and woke to find they had been taken back to Victorian times. This was all part of a Dalek plan to obtain the Human Factor, which had so often caused their defeat. To isolate it, Jamie was to take part in an experiment. His emotions and behaviours would be monitored as he went about rescuing Waterfield's daughter Victoria from the Daleks. Sworn to secrecy, Jamie had a blazing row with the Doctor when it looked like he was helping them, putting science before people.
Jamie survived the tests, thanks in part to him saving the life of a manservant named Kemel who had been ordered to kill him.
After defeating the Daleks on Skaro, Victoria joined the TARDIS, and Jamie quickly formed a protective brotherly bond with her - though he and the Doctor were not averse to teasing her due her prim and proper ways.
Jamie once again confronted the Cybermen - this time on their second home world of Telos. Joining a group of archaeologists from Earth, the party had split up to explore and Jamie had partnered with a young man named Haydon. Unfortunately, he was to see his new friend killed by an automated weapon in a testing area which he had accidentally triggered. Jamie was a particularly fearless young man, but sometimes joked that he was not so brave.
When the Doctor decided to descend to the Cyber-tombs alone, Jamie ignored his instructions and followed him - obliged to protect his friend.
The TARDIS later took the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria to the Himalayas of Tibet, where they encountered the fabled "Abominable Snowmen". These Yeti proved to be fur-covered robots, however.
Jamie devised a scheme to capture one - and the Doctor seemed to think that his ideas might not always be good ones.
In the England of 5000 AD, during a new Ice Age, Jamie took part in an expedition which was ambushed by Ice Warriors - reptilian beings from Mars. He was shot and badly wounded - at one point fearing that he might be permanently paralysed by their sonic weaponry. Luckily he recovered and helped defeat the Martians.
The TARDIS next travelled to Australia in 2017, where the Doctor discovered that he was the spitting image of a would-be dictator named Salamander. The Doctor refused to believe what was being claimed about this figure without proof. To this end, Jamie and Victoria would infiltrate his household. Jamie pretended to save Salamander from an assassination attempt, whilst Victoria posed as his girlfriend and was given a job in his kitchens. Jamie was given the role of a security guard. Their attempt to help one of Salamander's enemies escape his HQ failed, and both were captured and transferred to his main base back in Australia. By posing as Salamander, the Doctor was able to save them, before unmasking him as a mass murderer. He perished trying to steal the TARDIS.
The ship materialised in the London of 1968, where Jamie was once again confronted by the Yeti and the Great Intelligence which controlled them. This time they were establishing a base in the Underground, as well as taking over the whole centre of the city. Jamie used his prior knowledge of the foes to help fight against them, though his attack on a pyramid being held by a Yeti proved ineffectual. The Great Intelligence had learned from its mistakes.
Over time, Jamie had grown closer to Victoria, and so he was very upset when she announced her decision to leave the TARDIS following an encounter with a sentient seaweed creature. He attempted to talk her into changing her mind, but she had been unhappy with their dangerous lifestyle for some time.
Arriving on an abandoned spacecraft soon after, the Doctor was knocked unconscious and Jamie had to send a signal to a nearby space station for help.
Once aboard the Wheel he had to quickly come up with a name for his friend, and selected "John Smith" from a piece of medical equipment. On learning that the crew planned to destroy the derelict ship, which still had the TARDIS aboard, Jamie sabotaged their X-ray laser weapon. He had been put under the wing of Zoe Heriot - a young crew member who worked in the parapsychology library. She found his down-to-earth ways fascinating, but after Victoria he was somewhat intimidated by her obvious intelligence. To save the Wheel from the Cybermen, Jamie and Zoe undertook a hazardous space-walk to fetch a TARDIS component to boost the now repaired X-ray laser weapon. Zoe then attempted to stow away on the TARDIS.
When captured by the ruthless Dominators, they noted that Jamie showed signs of rapid mental development. When he had first come aboard the TARDIS he could practically illiterate and thought of science and technology in the same terms as witchcraft or sorcery. His experiences with the Doctor had led to him rapidly learning as he quickly adapted to his new circumstances. He had developed emotionally as well as intellectually.
One new habit he had developed was the ability to fall asleep under any circumstances - no matter how uncomfortable.
Jamie formed a good working relationship with the Dulcian Cully in fighting against the Dominators and their robot Quark servants.
When the TARDIS was thrown into the Land of Fiction - a bizarre domain in which fictional characters could be brought to life, Jamie was almost tempted to leave the ship at the sight of his native Scotland on the scanner. Zoe did succumb to a vision of her old home, and Jamie had to go out and rescue her.
A short time later he was attacked by a Redcoat, who turned him into a faceless cardboard cut-out.
The Doctor had to piece his features together - but got it wrong. Jamie was rendered whole again, but with the wrong face. A second attack repeated the process, and the Doctor was able to get his features correct this time (with more than a little help from Zoe). Escaping giant clockwork soldiers, Jamie found himself helped by the Princess Rapunzel, who let down her long hair to aid his flight. He and Zoe were later rendered fictional themselves after being trapped between the pages of a gigantic book.
When they had fought the Yeti in the London Underground Jamie had met an army colonel named Lethbridge-Stewart. On visiting the city once again, a few years later, he and the Doctor were reunited with him. he was now a Brigadier, commanding a special United Nations group called UNIT, which had been formed in response to the earlier incident.
This time they were to face the Cybermen, who had allied themselves with a ruthless businessman named Tobias Vaughn to take over the Earth. Jamie was shot and wounded by Vaughn's security forces.
During an encounter with a race of crystalline creatures called the Krotons, on the planet of the Gond people, Jamie was separated from the Doctor and Zoe. He entered the Kroton spaceship alone and was captured by the creatures, who only sought those with exceptional intelligence in order to harness their mental energy. Jamie was almost killed as he could not match the minds of his friends.
There then followed a second encounter with the Ice Warriors, who were plotting to exploit a global transmat system to invade the Earth. Jamie made his second visit to the Moon on this occasion. Once again his perceived lower intelligence - lower than that of the Doctor and Zoe - almost got him excluded from their activities.
Jamie's time with the Doctor was drawing to a close. After arriving in the middle of the Great War, in the France of 1917, Jamie was arrested as a deserter from a Scottish regiment. Sent to a POW camp, he was shocked to find a Redcoat who hailed from the time of the Jacobite rebellion.
It transpired that this was really an alien planet on which various war zones from Earth history had been established by an alien race who planned to create an army from the survivors.
In the Doctor's absence, Jamie at one point had to pretend to be a great Resistance leader, but really did lead an attack on the alien base.
The Doctor could not defeat the aliens by himself - needing help to get all of the human soldiers back home. he called upon his own people - the Time Lords - despite the fact that he had been on the run from them all this time. They captured the Doctor and placed him on trial. Jamie and Zoe were to be returned to their own places in history - their memories of the Doctor erased beyond their initial meeting with him. Jamie had to bid his old friend farewell, then found himself back in Scotland in 1746, fighting Redcoats.
Jamie met a future incarnation of the Doctor when he and the Second Doctor visited a space station in the Third Zone. The Doctor had been sent there by the Time Lords to try to get a scientist named Dastari to cease temporal experiments.
This turned out to be a trap for the Doctor. Dastari and an Androgum named Chessene had allied with the Sontarans to capture a Time Lord in order to discover how they could travel safely through the Vortex. After the Doctor had been abducted, Jamie was left for dead on the space station, where he was found by the Sixth Doctor and his companion Peri. Jamie had reverted to a savage state in order to survive his ordeal, but was cured by the Doctor. Together they travelled to late 20th Century Spain where his Doctor had been taken to be experimented upon.
At one point Jamie was captured by another Androgum named Shockeye, who planned to cook and eat him, but he was rescued by the Sixth Doctor.
After the Chessene alliance had been defeated, Jamie departed with the Second Doctor to collect Victoria, who had been dropped off somewhere to study graphology.
Played by: Frazer Hines and Hamish Wilson (The Mind Robber 2 & 3).
Appearances: The Highlanders (1966) to The War Games (1969), The Five Doctors (1983), The Two Doctors (1985).
- Frazer Hines began his career as a child actor, appearing with Charlie Chaplin in A King in New York (1957) and guesting in the Hammer sci-fi film X - The Unknown (1956).
- His mother was Scottish, and so he was used to hearing the accent despite being born and raised in Yorkshire.
- For his role as Jamie in The Highlanders he adopted a soft Highland lilt. When he discovered that he would be appearing as a regular character, he had to amend this to what he calls "TV Scottish", which was easier to say and easier on the ear.
- In interviews he often claims that Jamie was retained due to public demand - but the scenes of him entering the TARDIS were filmed before the story began broadcast. He was due to only appear in the one story and had filmed a scene where he did not enter the TARDIS, and this had to be reshot once he agreed to stay on.
- He had earlier starred opposite Patrick Troughton in a serial called Smugglers Bay, a version of the classic The Moonraker.
- Guide books claimed that his brother featured in background roles in Doctor Who during his stint. Ian Hines was his cousin, not his brother. Another long standing myth was that his relative played him in The Mind Robber when he fell sick. Hamish Wilson was unrelated to him.
- Jamie's war cry of "Craig an Tuirc" means "The Boar's Rock". It was a small rocky outcrop at Balquhidder where the Clan McLaren traditionally gathered.
- As a McCrimmon, Jamie really ought to have been fighting on the side of the Redcoats during the Jacobite Rebellion.
- Hines was originally going to leave during a story called "Prison in Space", to be replaced by a new male character named Nick / Nik. This was down to pressure from his agent, who wanted him to get into movies. The story was scrapped and replaced by The Krotons, but by this stage Hines had decided to wait and leave with Troughton, at the latter's suggestion.
- Hines went on to become a regular on the ITV soap Emmerdale Farm, playing the character Joe Sugden. His commitments to this series meant he was unable to play Jamie in The Three Doctors, and could only manage a cameo in The Five Doctors.
- The Two Doctors is impossible to place in the continuity between The Highlanders and The War Games, leading many (including the late, great Terrance Dicks) to surmise that Season 6(b) must be a thing.
- Jamie was the main inspiration for the character Jamie Fraser, star of the series Outlander, in which Hines had a guest role.
- Had they not fallen out with Peter Bryant and Derrick Sherwin, Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln were on the point of submitting a story called "Laird of the McCrimmon", in which Jamie would have departed. The Great Intelligence would have taken over the McLaren chief, who perished as the threat was defeated - leaving Jamie as the new laird.
- The DWM comic strip The World Shapers killed Jamie off in an act of self-sacrifice. They had him a mad old man whose stories of travelling in space and time weren't believed.
- In episode terms, and in hours and minutes, Jamie is the longest serving companion, and is consistently in the top 5 lists in terms of popularity with fans. Hines' pairing with the Troughton is often voted second favourite after that of Tom Baker with Lis Sladen.
No comments:
Post a Comment