Mary O'Sullivan (later Carter), also known as Molly, was an Irish companion of the Eighth Doctor.
Molly was implanted with retro-genitor particles as a toddler, giving her unusually dark eyes. She later moved to London and found work as a chambermaid. During World War I, she served with her mistress, Kitty Donaldson, in France in the Voluntary Aid Detachment. It was here that she met the Doctor, who had been asked to find her by the Time Lords. Forced to flee with him to escape a Dalek raid, she entered his TARDIS and became his latest companion.
Molly's initial hostility towards the Doctor, helped none by her chastening circumstances, faded as they traveled. They discovered that her dark eyes and ability to fly the TARDIS were linked to Kotris, a regeneration of Straxus who wished to wipe the Time Lords from the timeline. Kotris disappeared when Straxus was exterminated by Daleks; without him to implant Molly with the particles, Molly's eyes returned to normal.
Molly left the TARDIS for the service of Kitty, who had been resurrected after the timeline shifted. She returned a year later with again-dark eyes, accompanying the Doctor, and later Liv Chenka, on adventures involving the Eminence and Reborn Master. She stayed behind with Liv to protect herself and the Doctor, allowing the Master to brainwash her into his servant.
As the Master's servant, Molly unwittingly doused humanity with the retro-genitor particles needed to bring them under his control. She was freed by the Doctor and Liv, but had to part ways once more to prevent future plots by the Master and Eminence.
In an alternate timeline created by the Master and Dalek Time Controller, Molly, decades older and going by Mary Carter, nursed in a Dalek labour camp. She reunited with Liv and the Doctor and witnessed the birth of the Eminence. She sacrificed her life to send it into the Time Vortex, stopping the dual threats of the Eminence and a powerful bomb,
Molly was the last companion commemorated by the Eighth Doctor commemorated before regenerating.
Biography[]
Childhood[]
Mary O'Sullivan was born in 1891 to Patrick and Cathy O'Sullivan (AUDIO: Tangled Web). She outlived all seven of her siblings: two of her brothers and her three sisters died before their fifth birthdays, Patrick died on his first day as a soldier in France, and Liam was killed by an English sentry. (AUDIO: Fugitives, X and the Daleks)
On her second birthday in 1893, Molly wandered off during a dangerous storm. The renegade Time Lord Kotris brought her to his TARDIS and infused her with retro-genitor particles before returning her to her parents. (AUDIO: Tangled Web) The particles gave Molly unusually dark eyes, something that she was bullied for as a child and when she entered domestic service. This ended when she began punching those who called her "Dark Eyes". (AUDIO: X and the Daleks)
Meeting the Doctor[]
Molly during World War I. (AUDIO: The Great War)
Molly moved to London and found work as a chambermaid for the Donaldsons, a family living in Eaton Place. She befriended the Donaldsons' daughter Kitty, who saw her as the sister that she never had. (AUDIO: Tangled Web)
In 1917, Kitty enlisted as a VAD. Knowing that her mistress would need protection, Molly enlisted too. They were deployed to France, where they began nursing under the supervision of a strict and dour matron. Kitty contracted gas gangrene from a soldier she was treating. Treatments did nothing to reverse her decline, sending Molly spiraling further into despair. (AUDIO: The Great War)
In July of that year, the Eighth Doctor was brought to Molly's field hospital after being caught in time winds sent by Kotris and his Dalek allies. Her initial disdain for the Doctor was inflamed when another bout of time winds killed Kitty. A Dalek raid on the chateau that they had evacuated to forced her to put her feelings aside. (AUDIO: The Great War)
Molly and the Doctor raced to his TARDIS by horse and plane. They materialised on HMS Thunder during the British retreat from Dunkirk, narrowly surviving its sinking and another Dalek attack. They fled to London in 1972, where they met Sally Armstrong at the Ides Scientific Institute, and again to Halalka, where they enjoyed a brief swim in a floating water bubble. She piloted the TARDIS from Halalka with an unconscious ease that shocked the Doctor. (AUDIO: Fugitives)
The Doctor put Molly in a trance so that he could learn how she piloted the TARDIS so well. Her description of her second birthday prompted him to witness the events in-person. They noticed Kotris and his TARDIS and were in turn noticed by him.
The TARDIS arrived on Skaro as if it had been trapped by a time clamp. Molly and the Doctor encountered evolved Daleks who lived in serenity after a war with the Time Lords. She was pleased by their peaceful turn, nudging the Doctor to stop being stubborn and give them a chance. Remaining unconvinced, he learned that they were in a simulation created by the Mezcoranis and swiftly freed her.
Molly and the Doctor escaped brain-altering surgery when Straxus materialised his TARDIS around them. He asked them to find Kotris, deflecting their questions by faking a time ram that forced them into a duplicate of the Doctor's TARDIS. (AUDIO: Tangled Web)
Molly and the Doctor traveled to Srangor, where they learned that someone with a TARDIS had repeatedly tried to die by suicide. Investigating the mound-topped vents that dotted the landscape, they met Nadeyan and his tribe. They evaded a Dalek raid by descending into a vent, navigating wet and dangerously narrow ledges until she slipped and fell. She was saved before hitting the bottom when Kotris, curious by her non-nativeness, had the Daleks bring her into his underground facility. A sample of her blood contained enough retro-genitor particles for him to deem her "ripe as ripe".
Molly was recovering from torture by a cerebral probe when she ran into the Doctor and Nadeyan. They fled from the Daleks into the duplicate TARDIS, but were followed into the Time Vortex and legitimately time rammed. Separated from Nadeyan when the "paper house" broke apart, they were taken to meet Kotris and the Dalek Time Controller. Kotris revealed his grand plan: to de-evolve the Time Lords from existence.
Kotris activated the retro-genitor particles, putting Molly in agony. Manipulation from Straxus ensured that the Daleks would de-evolve instead. Afraid to see someone who resembled his daughter die, Nadeyan smashed the trigger and sacrificed his life. Furious that the Doctor had failed to destroy the Daleks, Straxus took Molly hostage and threatened to shoot her. He was exterminated on the Dalek Time Controller's orders, erasing Kotris and his impact on the timeline.
Blessed with regular-coloured eyes and a living Kitty, Molly departed the TARDIS after it arrived at the chateau. She left a letter for the Doctor which explained that she needed to fulfill her promise to take care of Kitty. (AUDIO: X and the Daleks) Back in London, she found work as a nurse at a local hospital and stayed at 107 Baker Street without the Doctor's permission. She took in patients like David Walker, ill deserters like Sean Casey, and Irish "cousins" like Tommy Dooley. (AUDIO: The White Room)
Resumed travels[]
The day before the Armistice was signed, the Doctor returned to 107 Baker Street. Molly's "timely intervention" saved him from being shot by Tommy, but also restored her dark eyes and raised her ire. She took him to find Sean, who was trying to escape in fear of Master Zachrey and his Huntsmen. She touched the hand that he was hiding out of concern, accidentally triggering KX Variant 243, a temporally active virus that made him intangible and allowed to time travel. The three used this ability to escape the Huntsmen until Sean faded away.
The Doctor departed in the TARDIS, leaving Molly to be kidnapped to Blackwell Convalescent Home. She bluffed her way through questioning by Zachrey and Herbert Goring, a doctor at the home, and was sedated in preparation for being thrown down the eponymous well. The Surgeon General, a Viryan investigating KX Variant 243, sent her to their laboratory to examine why she was immune to its effects. Their attempt to remove her hand was interrupted by Goring, who was curious about the Doctor's sonic screwdriver. She allayed the Surgeon General's suspicions about her being from the future by telling them about the Doctor and the retro-genitor particles.
Molly watched the failed attempts to retrieve the Doctor from the well, the incursion by Sean and his infected comrades, and Zachrey's execution of Goring so that he could patent Goring's research in America. Sean intercepted Zachrey as he fled with Molly, transporting her out of harm's way. She accepted the Doctor's offer to travel with him again, though not before she could bid David fae. (AUDIO: The White Room)
Some time later, the Doctor told Molly about the Pyromeths. She learned that they kidnapped people to make them tell stories "like Scheherazade". (COMIC: Firelight)
Following up on the TARDIS's suggestion, the Doctor traveled with Molly to the edge of the universe. They sheltered from a time pulse in the Orpheus, an Ides ship exploring the universe's outer reaches, and met its recently thawed crew, including Liv Chenka. Recalling what the Doctor would do on Nixyce VII, (AUDIO: The Traitor) Liv asked the captain, Dal Brock, to imprison him and Molly. (AUDIO: Time's Horizon)
Molly was interrogated by Liv and Bron Kell, who wondered if she had been sent by the Goddess. She accompanied them as they tracked energy flares, at the same time attesting for the Doctor's innocence and ability to help. The flares turned out to be the warning signs of an attack by the Eminence. She and Liv watched it give Kell the breath of forever, turning him into one of its first Infinite Warriors. The retro-genitor particles protected her from its control.
When a copy of Randall Verand, an energy thief from the Twentieth Empire who had been siphoning energy from Time's Horizon, reasserted itself in Liv's mind, Molly angrily ordered it to leave Liv alone and encouraged Liv to break its control. She implored Liv to seek treatment for her theta ray poisoning as opposed to undertaking a suicide mission to stop the Eminence. She watched the Doctor materialise the TARDIS around Liv, halting the mission in time, and invite Liv to help him investigate Ides. (AUDIO: Time's Horizon)
Molly, the Doctor, and Liv traveled to London in the 1970s so that the Doctor could study how Ides had changed in the new timeline. Molly slipped off to see David, pretending to be her daughter to avoid time-related complications. She coaxed him into attending the Reborn Master's eye clinic before leaving to get the Doctor and Liv. Meeting some of the Master's Eminence-based minions, she found her way to Ides and a nearly frozen Doctor. They saved his Volkswagen Beetle from being manhandled by the minions before running into a sighted David.
On the Doctor's orders, Molly and David left for 107 Baker Street in the Beetle. As David evaded the minions, who sought to destroy her before the Master could claim her, she confirmed his suspicions about her being the Molly he had met in 1918. At 107 Baker Street, Mrs Gantry, his landlord, gave him the breath of forever and inducted him into the Eminence's ranks. The Eminence left in the Master's TARDIS, returning him to normal and robbing him of his sight. Molly consoled David, who took the development in stride—he had gained a day and seen her face again.
The Doctor traveled to Nixyce VII without Molly to protect her from being found and exploited for her retro-genitor particles. She and Liv, unable to join him because her past self was on Nixyce VII, took up residence with David in 107 Baker Street. One night, Molly was visited by Sally Armstrong, who related her nightmares about the house. The conversation curdled when Molly was kidnapped to the Master's TARDIS (AUDIO: Eyes of the Master) and brainwashed to obey him. The Master replaced the Doctor with himself in her memories, creating a twisted sense of trust between them. (AUDIO: Rule of the Eminence)
The Master's servant[]
The Master took Molly and Sally to Colony Ro 351 on Heron's World, where under the false belief that she was helping people affected by the war between humans and the Eminence, she passed on her retro-genitor particles to the colonists so that he could test the particles' effect on the breath of forever. Though the particles protected the colonists from becoming Infinite Warriors, they denied the Master the mental control that he sought. (AUDIO: The Death of Hope)
Molly was placed by the Master inside an Eminence casket on a ship that was carrying the gas that would become the Eminence. The retro-genitor particles would diffuse into the gas, granting him power over the Eminence at an early stage. His plan was threatened by the Doctor, who had traveled to the ship to destroy it and stop the Eminence's creation. He goaded the Doctor into saving her life by stopping the self-destruct sequence that the Doctor had triggered. (AUDIO: Masterplan)
Molly's memories of her father served as the source of Walter Vincent, a memetic construct who became Grand Administrator of Earth. Immediately after the war's end, he hypnotised the Earth to obey the Master, a process hastened by the Master's dual usage of the retro-genitor particles and the breath of forever. Molly grew weaker as he grew realer and the Master's new timeline became more firmly established.
The Master's hold over Molly was broken by the Doctor and Liv, who had been sedating Molly to keep the Eminence in check. The Doctor then asked her to shoot him, knowing that her vehement refusal would infuse the Eminence with enough retro-genitor particles to disperse it across an infinite area. To protect her from the designs of the Daleks and the Master, she was taken back to London by Narvin while the Doctor and Liv continued traveling in the TARDIS. (AUDIO: Rule of the Eminence)
Alternate timeline[]
In an alternate timeline created by the Master and the Dalek Time Controller, Molly quit Kitty's service, leaving Kitty to care for her brother Martin alone, (AUDIO: A Life in the Day) and eventually married. The Daleks' conquest of Earth weighed on her as she and her husband worked as missionaries in Africa. A Dalek squadron attacked the missionaries, sparing her from extermination in the belief that she would be useful. She knew that the Daleks were not meant to rule, but without a clue as to how to stop them, she could only maintain a low profile and nurse their slaves. She partly accomplished the former by going by Mary Carter, a combination of her real name and her husband's last name. (AUDIO: Master of the Daleks)
In 1961, Molly was nursing in a Dalek labour camp in the former Moscow. Rastel, her Sontaran supervisor, brought a man into her clinic whom she failed to recognise as the time lag-addled Doctor. Noticing Rastel's uncharacteristic obedience towards the Daleks, she skeptically asked how long he planned to wait to attack them. He gave her a birthing accelerator to hide; she complied by placing it inside a pocket of the Doctor's jacket.
Molly was reunited with Liv when Liv and the Master arrived in search of the Doctor. She scolded Liv for believing the Master's lies about his real Tissue Compression Eliminator. The Master and a Dalek squadron ordered her and Liv to enter a shuttle so that she could be used to stabilise the timeline. She advised a hesitant Liv to concede, saying that they needed to fight another day. Before she entered the shuttle, she watched the Master have Rastel exterminated for pickpocketing the Doctor.
Aboard the shuttle, Molly told Liv about the Daleks' conquest. They waited in a cell, where they heard the Master's army of Daleks exterminate the Time Controller's Dalek Time Strategists. The Time Controller brought them to the Doctor's TARDIS and demanded that they open it. This time, Molly was asked to concede: per Liv, they had a higher chance of stopping the Daleks if they stayed alive. (AUDIO: Master of the Daleks)
The Time Controller took Molly and Liv to a wellness centre-cum-Dalek facility on the Eye of Orion to visit Markus Schriver's new laboratory. The symbiosis between it and Molly, a consequence of it absorbing some retro-genitor particles, ensured that it grew ill with her and vice versa. While it booked her an emergency shuttle to ensure her continued health, Liv checked her pulse and helped her catch her breath.
Left behind by the Time Controller and Liv, Molly waited to be admitted for treatment. She met Anya, a refugee from Nixyce II who thirsted for revenge for a Dalek massacre. After a brief reunion with the Doctor, who had crashed the Master's TARDIS into the arrivals hall, she accompanied him and Anya to find the Time Controller. Told the truth about the facility by Anya, she and the Doctor resolved to keep her in their sight. She asked the Doctor to let her follow Anya; where he would have a better chance of stopping the Daleks, she would find it easier to dissuade Anya from exploding her bomb.
Molly tailed Anya amidst an invasion by a Dalek Supreme and its forces, adamantly refusing Anya's request to be left alone. She tricked Anya into the TARDIS, the one place where Anya could safely explode the bomb. Her eyes darkening, she piloted the TARDIS to the Time Controller's location. The Time Controller's pain proved too much, and she fainted before arrival.
Molly awoke to Liv pushing the Doctor to escape before the bomb, which he had put inside the Time Controller's casing, exploded. She exited and restarted the countdown, declaring that she would sacrifice her life to kill the Time Controller. Giving the Doctor a kiss goodbye and reminding him to make people better, she smiled and entered Schriver's mental extraction chamber. She joined the Time Controller and Schriver inside the Eminence, using her retro-genitor particles to send the Eminence through the Time Vortex. In her dying moments, she encouraged her headmates to relax and watch the "beautiful light" of the explosion. (AUDIO: Eye of Darkness)
Legacy[]
Asked by Anya what she and the Doctor intended to do with Molly's body, Liv responded that they planned to bury it in Ireland. (AUDIO: Eye of Darkness)
Molly was the last companion commemorated by the Eighth Doctor as he regenerated. (TV: The Night of the Doctor) The Twelfth Doctor saw Molly when Bernice Summerfield was hit by temporal energy in the Pyramid Eternia. (PROSE: Big Bang Generation)
Personality[]
Molly was confident, boisterous, and exceedingly combative. Hardened by bullying over her eyes, mistreatment from the families who she served as a maid, and the trauma accrued by nursing on the frontline of a bloody war, she had become a dour woman who bossed around her fellow VADs by the time the Doctor met her.
Molly loathed being referred to by names that she disliked. She insisted on being called "VAD" instead of "Nurse" or "Sister" (AUDIO: The Great War; The Death of Hope), reminded David to say "Nurse Molly" and not "Miss Molly" (AUDIO: The White Room), and made good on her threats to punch the Doctor for calling her "Dark Eyes" when he used the epithet in the Daleks' Srangor facility. (AUDIO: X and the Daleks)
Underneath her hostile shell, Molly was warm, compassionate, and playful. She prayed every night with a deathly ill Kitty, (AUDIO: The Great War) loudly sang to annoy the Master, (AUDIO: Rule of the Eminence), asked David for a kiss goodbye, (AUDIO: The White Room) and consoled David after telling him that he had again gone blind. (AUDIO: Eyes of the Master) She enjoyed teasing the Doctor, who she continued to call "the Doctor" well after he told her not to. Shocked by the technological advances of 1972 London, she peppered the increasingly annoyed Doctor with questions about what had been electrified. After she and the Doctor escaped the Daleks' raid on the Ides Scientific Institute, she made him laugh by manipulating his TARDIS's controls despite his objections. (AUDIO: Fugitives) In the alternate timeline, she mocked him for being "high and mighty" and "always in charge". Even as she died, she ridiculed him for "ranting and raving" at an outcome that he could for once not control. (AUDIO: Eye of Darkness)
Molly had a strong moral compass. She was disgusted by the possibilities of biological warfare, telling Herbert Goring that even Satan would "pause for reflection". (AUDIO: The White Room) She believed that everyone had shades of grey, even her enemies like the soldiers of the German Empire. Inside the Mezcoranis's simulation of a utopian Skaro, she was convinced that the Daleks had genuinely reformed and urged the Doctor to abandon what she saw as his prejudices. (AUDIO: Tangled Web)
Befitting a nurse, Molly often put others' lives over her own. She was prepared to jump into the Time Vortex to stop Kotris's plans before the Doctor, resolute to not lose someone else, overruled her. She was more successful in entering the Eminence to stop it and Anya's bomb. Both times, she told the Doctor that she had had a good life. (AUDIO: X and the Daleks, Eye of Darkness)
Molly was a Christian, regularly referring to "the Lord" and the Bible. She was also rather modest, chiding Isabel Stanford for leaving a button of her VAD uniform undone (AUDIO: The Great War) and worrying about the indecency of ripping her skirt to free it and enter a B.E.2c spotter plane. (AUDIO: Fugitives)
For all their bickering and teasing, Molly and the Doctor cared for each other. When they parted ways after overthrowing the Master, she thanked him for showing her the wonders of space and time and vowed to make her life as worthwhile. Already struggling to walk away, he responded that he would miss her and called her Dark Eyes one last time. (AUDIO: Rule of the Eminence)
Liv believed that Molly had a big and open heart. (AUDIO: The World Beyond the Trees) She told a sedated Molly that she missed her and refused to abandon her at Walter Vincent's seaside hideout. (AUDIO: Rule of the Eminence) Molly cared similarly for Liv, empathising with her experiences under the Dalek occupation, believing that she had done nothing to warrant being called "The Traitor", and reassured her that she was not a coward for fleeing. She pushed Liv to seek treatment for her theta ray poisoning and rallied Liv to break the Randall Verand copy's control by stating her desire to become friends. (AUDIO: Time's Horizon) She was grateful to Liv for looking after her during the Master's rule, stopping her from saying goodbye by expressing her desire to watch the sunset with her friend. (AUDIO: Rule of the Eminence) In the alternate timeline, she easily forgave Liv for outing her as Molly O'Sullivan (AUDIO: Master of the Daleks) and begged Liv to stay with her when she became ill. (AUDIO: Eye of Darkness)
Skills[]
Thanks to the manipulations of Kotris and the Daleks, Molly was among the few non-Time Lords who could pilot a TARDIS, or as she called it, a "tardy box". She unconsciously fiddled with the console of the Doctor's TARDIS after entering it for the first time, knew which control opened the doors, and with minimal study of how he controlled it, was able to dematerialise it and fly it through the Time Vortex. Per the shocked Doctor, she should have been unable to perform the thousand constantly shifting calculations required to dematerialise. (AUDIO: Fugitives; Tangled Web) She retained her skills decades later in the alternate timeline, easily bringing the Doctor's TARDIS across the Daleks' Eye of Orion facility. (AUDIO: Eye of Darkness)
Molly was unable to swim. She needed the Doctor to save her when they fell into the English Channel, and was reluctant to enter the anti-gravity waterfall on Halalka until he reassured her that she would float to the surface. (AUDIO: Fugitives)
Behind the scenes[]
Molly is the first Irish companion that the Doctor has had in any medium.
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