Winter is Coming
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Doctor Who: Sheridan Smith returns as Eighth Doctor companion Lucie Miller

By James Aggas

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In July 2019, over seven years after leaving the role, Sheridan Smith will return as Eighth Doctor companion Lucie Miller in four new Doctor Who stories!

It’s official. After a little bit of hinting and teasing, Big Finish have announced today that Sheridan Smith, who played Eighth Doctor companion Lucie Miller from 2006 to 2011, will be returning to the role in a brand new box set of stories, Doctor Who: The Further Adventures of Lucie Miller.

Sheridan Smith was hugely popular as Lucie. Not only did the beginning of her era essentially represent a fresh start, but Smith and Paul McGann had absolutely brilliant chemistry. Like the Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble, they always had fantastic banter to listen to.

It was also great hearing how close the two characters became over time. For a time, they seemed to share an incredibly strong friendship, until Lucie found out about a huge secret the Doctor had kept from her in Death in Blackpool.

She decided to leave him then, but learned to forgive him by the time of the epic Eighth Doctor Adventures finale, To The Death. Of course, that was not only her final story, but also the story where she was killed off for good.

Lucie Miller’s journey originally came to an end in the incredibly dark finale To The Death.

(Image credit: Doctor Who/Big Finish Productions.

Image obtained from: Big Finish Productions.)

Before To The Death

And this was one thing that I was worried about when I started to hear the rumors of the character’s return. Her ending is one of the darkest, most devastating and absolutely tragic endings of a companion ever. And as much as I love Lucie, I didn’t want anything undoing that.

Thankfully, both Big Finish and Nicholas Briggs are much smarter than that.

"I have always been clear that I wouldn’t reverse the finality of Lucie’s departure. That would somehow seem like cheating and would lessen the emotional impact of what we did. So my plan was always to revisit Lucie earlier on in her adventures with the Eighth Doctor. It’s pretty much what we do with every classic companion-and-Doctor pairing, so why not do it with Lucie?"

I’m very happy to hear this. To The Death is one of my favorite finales ever, and its brutal ending for Lucie is a big reason for that.

It’s also had a very long term impact, too. Dark Eyes started directly where To The Death left off and focused on a psychologically scarred Eighth Doctor. And even in last year’s Doom Coalition 4, it was made clear that Eight hadn’t forgotten about Lucie, and he never will.

More from Winter is Coming

So finding out that The Further Adventures of Lucie Miller are set between series one and two of the Eighth Doctor Adventures is a huge relief. It works very nicely, too. It’s after the amount of time it took for Eight and Lucie to admit that they actually liked each other, but before any of the major shakeups their relationship would go through.

The Further Adventures of Lucie Miller will be released on CD and download in July 2019, the same month that both The Time War: Series 3 and the multi-Doctor epic The Legacy of Time will be released. So July 2019 will definitely be a good month for Eighth Doctor fans.

Next. Review: The Turn of the Screw (Eighth Doctor Short Trip audio). dark

Are you excited about the return of Lucie Miller? Did you enjoy her adventures when they were originally broadcast? Are you glad that the character isn’t being resurrected? Let us know in the comments below.

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