Emily Blandish
| Emily Blandish | |
|---|---|
| Doctor Who character | |
| Affiliated | Honoré Lechasseur |
| Species | human |
| Home planet | Earth |
| Home era | 20th century |
| First appearance | The Cabinet of Light |
| Last appearance | Child of Time |
Emily Blandish is one of two main characters in the Doctor Who spin-off Time Hunter series published by Telos Publishing Ltd. She is a time channeller, which means that she is able to physically travel along people's timelines when she is working with a time sensitive, such as her friend Honoré Lechasseur. Emily has not yet appeared on the cover of a Time Hunter novella, and so her physical appearance is uncertain.
Overview
The character of Emily Blandish was created by Daniel O'Mahony for the Telos Doctor Who novella The Cabinet of Light. Shortly after the novella was published, it was announced that BBC Enterprises would not be renewing Telos' licence to produce Doctor Who novellas. Telos subsequently announced that they would begin producing a series of "Part mystery, part detective story, part dark fantasy, part science fiction" novellas that would continue the spirit of the Doctor Who novellas. This was the Time Hunter range, which continued the adventures of Emily and Honoré Lechasseur.
Emily is a mysterious character, who due to amnesia is unaware of her own history. She shows a great deal of affection for Honoré, but equally a great drive to find out the details of her missing memories – something which sets her apart from the character of the Doctor in the Eighth Doctor Adventures novels, who has a similar problem but was unwilling to investigate it.
The character continued in the Time Hunter range for 11 novellas, before Telos announced that the range was to be closed due to poor sales.
According to her creator, Emily's appearance is loosely based on that of the actress Charlotte Coleman.
Biography
Emily is a young woman who was born some time in the future and somehow arrived back in 1949 London. Due to her amnesia, it is currently impossible to say for sure how she arrived in London, although her first memory being of "blinding light" and stepping out of a door of "not a house, but a cabinet or a wardrobe" would suggest that she was brought to the city in the TARDIS – presumably by the Doctor, for reasons as yet unknown.
Emily was found dressed only in pink pyjamas at the site of an explosion in Shoreditch by a patrolling policeman. The mystery behind her arrival there led to her story being taken up by the press, who paid for her to stay in the guest house of a Mrs Beardsley. Whilst there, Mrs Beardsley also took money from visitors wanting to see "the girl in the pink pyjamas", as the press dubbed her, and it was implied that not all of these visitors had honourable intentions.
Some time after her arrival, Emily was visited by a "fixer" or spiv named Honoré Lechasseur, who had been hired to find a gentleman called the Doctor. Emily had no recollection of such a gentleman, but when Honoré mentioned he had been hired by a woman called Emily Blandish, Emily instantly remembered that this was in fact her own name. It was revealed later that the false Emily Blandish was actually working on the instruction of the Doctor, suggesting that his inten was to bring Emily and Honoré together.
Emily soon found herself at the centre of a plot by Nazi sympathisers to steal "The Cabinet of Light" (the Doctor's TARDIS) for their own nefarious ends. With the help of Honoré, she managed to escape the Nazis and also her landlady/captor Mrs Beardsley.
Following this adventure, Emily and Honoré kept in touch and built a strong, platonic relationship. It was not until they both happened to spot the same man at the same time and wonder where he had come from, however, that they realised that Emily was a time sensitive. They both travelled forwards in time to an alternative 1984 (based on the novel by George Orwell), where they spent time trying to work out how to get back to their own time — which they ultimately did, whilst also ensuring that the future they had witnessed never came about.
Honoré and Emily eventually came to understand how they had travelled through time, and became so practised at it that they could soon travel at will to any chosen date and time. They shared various adventures, during which they fought the Fendahl and gained the enmity of a mysterious time travelling cult.
The final Time Hunter book reveals the whole truth about Emily, and the reason of why she had been so fearful of a recurrent symbol that crisscrossed her path: a small horned circle with a tail. It turned out to be the emblem of an ancient cult, the Sodality, whose premise was the extermination of all time-sensitives. In medieval Venice, they had summoned a "demon" called Mastho, who had given them certain ideas that had resulted in the creation of a time-sensitive aspect of humanity. When called back to oversee the development of the creations, he called them abominations and had the Sodality kill all time-sensitives.
On a certain point in the future, the Sodality had gained control over a sizable part of humanity and killed virtually all time-sensitives, leaving only the smartest and strongest. This turned out to be Mastho's goal all along, who possessed one of the few time-sensitives left, the so-named Child of Time, to allow his race to enter the normal continuum. Honoré and Emily had stumbled upon the corpse of the Child of Time and followed her to the future, where they crossed swords with the Sodality. In doing so, they learned their High Executioner was having serious issues with what she was being forced to do for the Sodality.
The High Executioner confronted the Sodality, and for her perceived betrayal, she was beaten within an inch of her life, being barely rescued by the Doctor. However, before she was led away into the past, Emily saw the face of the High Executioner, and realized it was her own. Realizing she had once been a monster, she tried to leave after returning to 1950s London with Honoré, only for him to convince her that Emily Blandish was no longer the Sodality's High Executioner, and that the Doctor had saved her for a reason, allowing her to leave her past behind.