Deborah Watling, companion to Patrick Troughton’s Doctor, dies at age 69
Following a short battle with cancer, Deborah Watling, the actress best known for her role as companion Victoria Waterfield, appearing opposite Patrick Troughton’s second Doctor in 40 episodes of Doctor Who from 1967-68, has died at the age of 69.
The actress is the daughter of actress Patricia Hicks and actor Jack Watling, who also appeared alongside her in two Doctor Who adventures in the ’60s as Professor Travers. Starting out in the business as a child actress with a regular role in the 1958 television adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man, Watling’s companion entered the TARDIS from the Victorian age. Her character joined the Doctor and companion Jamie, played by Frazer Hines, in the 2nd half of all-time classic Doctor Who story, ‘The Evil of the Daleks’.
Unfortunately, due to the BBC’s old policy of wiping television episodes after transmission, only two of Watling’s Doctor Who stories, the 1967 ‘The Tomb of the Cybermen’ and 1968 ‘The Enemy of the World’, are currently thought to exist in their entirety. Following Doctor Who, Watling appeared in Rising Damp, starring Leonard Rossiter, and the 1979 World War II drama Danger UXB starring Anthony Andrews.
Watling reprised her companion role in 1993 for a Children in Need short called Doctor Who: Dimensions in Time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQCeMIQpFBc
In: Actors/Actresses
