Who is new ‘Doctor Who’ companion Belinda Chandra? And where have we seen her before?
These days it’s not always enough for Doctor Who companions to be ordinary people he meets on his travels. From Amy Pond and Clara Oswald through to the most recent TARDIS resident, Ruby Sunday, there’s a trend for characters with backstories as strange and complex as the alien worlds the Doctor explores.
New companion Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu) is no exception. Although her priority is getting back home so she can start a new nursing shift on Monday, she soon discovers that a whole planet shares her name, and that she has a doppelganger — called Mundy Flynn — fighting a war somewhere in the 51st century.
Let’s be honest, you’ve probably got as many questions as she has, so — in the wake of “Doctor Who” season 2 premiere “The Robot Revolution” — here’s everything we know about Belinda Chandra.
Caution! Spoilers for “The Robot Revolution” ahead.
Who is Belinda Chandra?
On the face of it Belinda Chandra is a dedicated A&E nurse living in a house share. At least one of her flatmates can’t be bothered to learn her actual name.
But even before we’ve been properly introduced, it’s clear she’s a person of interest to the Doctor. Unfortunately, he’s unable to get to her before she’s abducted by a race of spacefaring robots on Saturday, May 24, 2025.
Why is the Doctor already following Belinda at the start of the episode?
The specifics are unknown, though he does explain to Belinda that, “I was told about you by someone. It’s kind of a long story and I’ve got to be careful about timelines. But he told me your name like you would be important.” Who is the mysterious “he”?
His interest may also have something to do with the fact she’s the doppelganger of someone he met in last season’s “Boom“…
Why does Belinda look so familiar?
This isn’t Varada Sethu’s first “Doctor Who” adventure. She previously played a different character called Mundy Flynn, an ordained Anglican marine fighting a never-ending war on Kastarion 3. The Doctor is worried the uncanny resemblance is more than just a coincidence, and is amazed by the strength of the genetic link between two people living three millennia apart. Could the fate of former companion Clara Oswald — whose consciousness was spread across numerous iterations of the same person in the time stream — be repeating itself?
The Doctor should also probably be asking why, after spending a year with Ruby Sunday, he’s in the habit of meeting people named after days of the week.
What do the robots want with Belinda?
Looking like Tony Stark’s Hulkbuster armour from “Avengers: Age of Ultron”, these robots travel around the universe in spaceships that wouldn’t look out of place in a Tintin cartoon.
They hail from the planet of Missbelindachandra 1, in orbit around the star Missbelindachandra, and — in a spectacular example of nominative determinism — have decided that a human called Belinda Chandra is the planet’s rightful queen. They want her to marry the Great AI Generator to bring peace to a world that’s been at war for the past decade.
Why is there a world called Missbelindachandra 1?
This is where things get a little bit complicated and extremely “timey-wimey”.
Seventeen years before she’s abducted by robots, Belinda’s then- boyfriend — Alan Daniel Budd — presented her with a “Star Certificate”, effectively adopting a star in her name. Although she’s long since broken up with the unpleasant Alan (he thinks girls can’t do maths, and can’t help telling her what to do), she keeps the framed certificate on her wall.
At some point in the future, the robots will pick up the certificate. But when they bring it back to a present-day Earth where Belinda still has the original copy, the space-time continuum gets a little antsy about the very same atoms occupying the very same space. The resulting interaction creates an interstellar distortion that interferes with the normal flow of time, sending the certificate back thousands of years into the past. It subsequently forms the basis of Missbelindachandra’s creation myth.
Why is the Doctor already on Missbelindachandra 1 when Belinda arrives?
The time distortion is unleashed while the Doctor’s TARDIS is chasing the robots’ spaceship. When that happens, he’s thrown six months into Belinda’s past. The Doctor subsequently has to wait for Belinda’s arrival, working as the “designated historian” on Missbelindachandra 1.
Great AI Generator
Although the story appears to tap into topical fears about AI, this is actually a planet-wide misreading of the situation. The offending machine is actually the Great AL Generator, a grotesque machine/human hybrid built around the forementioned Alan Daniel Budd. The robots picked him up 10 years earlier, guided by Belinda’s recommendation that they should speak to him about the certificate — after all, he was the one who bought it in the first place.
Alan’s arrival on Missbelindachandra 1 all those years ago has created a monster. It turns out he’s the cause of the war between the previously peaceful humans and robots, thanks to his efforts to ramp up the toxic, controlling behaviour Belinda remembers to encompass an entire world. “You’ve taken coercive control and made it control the whole planet,” she says. She also describes Alan’s vision for Missbelindachandra 1 as “planet of the incels”.
Why does Mrs Flood live next door to Belinda?
“You ain’t seen me…”
Doesn’t it feel like an almighty coincidence that Mrs Flood (Anita Dobson), Ruby’s neighbour in season one, is now living next door to the Doctor’s subsequent companion, Belinda?
Ever since she broke the fourth wall in 2023 Christmas special “The House on Ruby Road”, it’s been clear there’s more to Mrs Flood than initially meets the eye. There was the fact she knew Sutekh was the prophesied “One Who Waits” before everybody else. And that she chose to reveal before her (temporary) death in season 1 finale “Empire of Death“, “I had such plans”. And then there was that enigmatic sign-off at the end of the season: “But life goes on, doesn’t it? Ruthlessly. And what happens, you might wonder. What happens to that mysterious traveller in time and space known as the Doctor? I’m sorry to say his story ends in absolute terror. Night night.”
Possibly not someone you want to bump into too often.
Why does the TARDIS life not appeal to Belinda?
Plenty of companions have one adventure with the Doctor, get hooked on the experience, and drop everything to spend a year or two travelling around the cosmos in the TARDIS. Belinda is different. Her priority is getting back to Earth so she can start her new shift at the hospital on Monday.
She’s also quick to call out the Doctor when he tests her DNA without permission, and tells him, “I am not one of your adventures,” before demanding he takes her home. Immediately. Unfortunately, the TARDIS is not playing ball.
(A speculatory side note: could Mundy Flynn be named after the Monday Belinda is desperate to get home for? Given the themes of this episode, there’s every chance the day could be imbued with cosmic importance.)
Why can’t the Doctor get Belinda home?
Seeing as the Time Lord himself can’t work it out — and the TARDIS behaves rather ominously when he tries — the answer to this particular question remains above our pay grade. All we know is that some anomaly halfway between Earth and Missbelindachandra — presumably the same distortion that created all the previous issues in the episode — is making the TARDIS bounce off planet Earth on May 24, 2025. And that this particular region of space is some kind of interstellar dumping ground — hence the remains of a black taxi cab, the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty and an Egyptian Pyramid floating through space as the TARDIS flies away.
Expect this particular mystery — along with the conundrum about Belinda and Mundy looking so alike — to be a major plotline throughout the season. It may also, of course, be connected to Mrs Flood.
Is there a wider relevance to the date May 24, 2025?
In “our” world, this is the Saturday we’re expecting the penultimate “Doctor Who” season 2 episode to air — which, if the show follows traditional form, will be the first half of a two-part finale. In the “Doctor Who” universe, however, this is another question to file under “to be revealed”.
New episodes of “Doctor Who” debut on Saturdays on BBC iPlayer in the UK and Disney+ in the rest of the world.
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