P is for... Poppy

When the Fifteenth Doctor and Ruby Sunday arrived on a space station in orbit near Pacifico Del Rio in the year 21506, they were surprised to find that it was inhabited by a group of hyper-intelligent toddlers. Their captain was a child named Poppy. The children ran the station but lived in fear of a creature known as the Bogeyman who lurked in the lower levels. It transpired that these babies had been bred for inhabitants of the planet below, but economic disaster had rendered the station unviable and they had been abandoned here. One adult remained - an accountant named Jocelyn Sancerre, who couldn't bring herself to abandon the children. Poppy helped save fellow crewmember Eric when he rashly decided to attack the Bogeyman single-handedly.

The Doctor was then able to direct the station towards the planet Mondo Caroon where Poppy and the others could find a new home.

Some time later, the Doctor's next companion Belinda Chandra was looking for the Doctor through the backstreets of Lagos, Nigeria, when she spotted a child watching her, who promptly vanished. Though she did not know it, this was Poppy.

When Belinda and the Doctor were later trapped in an alternate reality known as Wish World, they were a married couple with a daughter - Poppy. This was the work of the Rani who sought to resurrect Omega and through him re-establish the Time Lords. Once reality had reasserted itself the Doctor tried to preserve Poppy by having her placed in a Zero Room with Belinda. This failed to work and Poppy vanished, memories of her leaving the Doctor and Belinda - yet she could still be remembered by Ruby.

The Doctor sacrificed his regeneration to alter reality slightly so that Poppy became Belinda's child.

Played by: Sienna-Robyn Mavanga-Phipps. Voiced by: Shola Olaitan-Ajiboye. 

Appearances: Space Babies (2024), The Story and the Engine, Wish World, The Reality War (2025).

• Had Ncuti Gatwa not left the series necessitating major rewrites, it was to have been revealed that Poppy was Susan's mother - i.e. the Doctor's daughter.
• As it is, the Poppy from Series 15 has nothing to do with the one from Space Babies, other than as a construct from the Doctor's memory of the latter. I think.