I quite liked Adric too (even if some do call him Sadric) but Tegan was mostly annoying (possibly even more annoying than Mel) and Turlough was just very strange, and a bit of a bad egg to boot…

As for his companions, my feelings towards them are mixed. Although I’ve heard that Adric was perhaps the most widely-loathed of all the Doctor’s companions, I actually didn’t mind him*, and feel that, whatever one’s feelings towards him ordinarily, one would have had to have had a heart of granite not to find his death at the end of Earthshock at least a little moving, particularly when he was shown clutching his deceased brother’s reed belt (perhaps in anticipation of joining him soon). Nyssa was probably my favourite companion, though, as I thought she was quite attractive, and also one of those female companions who wasn’t utterly useless (I did think it was in rather poor form, though, for the writers to have the Doctor save her homeworld in one story, and then have the Master destroy it in the next).

As for Tegan, well, much as I wanted to like her (in part because she came from my part of the world!), she was a little too loud and bad-tempered for my taste. I also wasn’t terribly fond of Turlough, who I thought was just too damn weird. Probably no scene exemplified this better than the final one of the aforementioned Warriors of the Deep, in which he, the Doctor and Tegan were standing in a room filled with corpses, and he announced, in that creepy deadpan voice of his, “They’re all dead, you know.” Hmm, thank you for pointing that out, Captain Obvious!

*Mind you, this is coming from probably the only person on the face of the planet who actually liked Jar Jar Binks in the new Star Wars films, so make of my opinion what you will!