Raine Cunningham was a safe cracker from the 20th century and a companion of the Seventh and Eighth Doctor.
She first met the Seventh Doctor when she helped him stop a world war against the Russians with alien weapons.
Her travels came to an end when she chose to go home after falling out with the Doctor.
Biography []
Early life[]
Raine was born in 1967 to Sam Cunningham and Sharon Graves, with the Seventh Doctor acting as her obstetrician. While dealing with the Ice Lord Sezhyr, who had possessed Sharon. Raine was left with her grandmother. (TV: Thin Ice)
When Raine was just three, her grandmother passed away and Raine recalled that her mother cried for days. (TV: Night Thoughts)
At the age of 16, Raine and a friend named Julian Milton planned to run away together and packed supplies and clothes. (TV: Love and War)
Meeting the Doctor[]
Raine was unknowingly hired by the Doctor to steal back items owned by her father, that he had been forced to sell due to financial difficulties. The Doctor enlisted Raine to help him retrieve an alien device known as the Fabergé, that was now in the hands of a private military group in the UK, but it soon turned out that the Soviet leader Vadim Senkin, planned to retrieve the weapon and give it to a race of aliens known as the Sharandos, who promised to give Senkin materials that would make Russia the most powerful country on the planet.
After Raine was taken prisoner by Senkin, the Doctor retrieved the warpstorm, and after locating Raine, he discovered that the Sharandos wished to use the weapon to destroy the cosmos. The Doctor, knowing the true nature of the warpstorm, gave it to the Sharandos in exchange for Raine. When the Sharandos attempted to use the device, their ship exploded. After returning to Sam's house, Raine asked the Doctor if she could come travelling with him, and after Sam gave his approval, the Doctor accepted. (TV: Crime of the Century)
Travels with the Seventh Doctor[]
The Doctor and Raine arrived on the planet Alixion, where they found that the two races, the Alyx's and the Akrons lived in peace and had discovered the secret to immortality by drinking a mysterious elixir created by their leader: known as the Abbot, who used Time Beatles. Wanting to know how the elixir was made, the Doctor and Raine met the Abbot and discovered that the Time Beatles helped produce the elixir by consuming the minds of living Akrons, who were hooked up to a machine. After learning that the Abbot wished to harvest the powers of the TARDIS, the Doctor attempted to expose the Abbot to the planet council, but after being dismissed due to lack of evidence, the Doctor and Raine decided to infiltrate the Abbot's laboratory and get evidence.
The two were then ambushed by several guards, and while Raine escaped, the Doctor was captured. Raine, with help from a group of Akrons, infiltrated the Abbot's base of operations and rescued the Doctor. Raine took the Doctor back to the TARDIS, the Doctor managed to take off before collapsing to the floor. He explained the concept of regeneration to Raine: telling her that 'My successor will need all the help he can get' before dying and regenerating into his next incarnation. (TV: Alixion)
Travels with the Eighth Doctor[]
Raine was unsure about whether she trusted the new Doctor or not. After arriving on a mining vessel known as the Wintshore, the Doctor and Raine were arrested, and soon after, Raine met the Daleks and Davros. After being locked up, the Doctor and Raine befriend a spy known as Walters, who helped Raine to escape by causing a riot. Raine disguised herself as a guard and soon discovered a hidden Dalek processing factory. After helping the Doctor and Walters to escape, she helped to defeat the Daleks and Davros, who were planning to invade and conquer Earth. (TV: The Last of the Daleks)
The TARDIS materialised on an island, where Raine accidentally fell into a lake. Taking her to a nearby house, the Doctor discovered a series of murders and that the people there were experimenting with time. Ten years earlier, a girl had been killed as a result of a misdiagnosis and the scientists were trying to send a message back to warn their past selves. This interference with the timeline caused the girl to become alive again in a state of zombie-like limbo. To correct their mistake, the Doctor travelled back and undid the damage. Raine was traumatised after discovering Joe Hartley's body. (TV: Night Thoughts)
Raine met Cody McBride, an American private eye, who had seen a sphere crash land in London 1941, which had been traced to that location by the Doctor. Raine later went to help Cody investigate, but became separated after an encounter with the Cybermen at the Peddler facility. Raine then traveled through London on her own; eventually returning to George Limb's house, where she encountered the Limehouse Lurker, who was actually a malfunctioning Cyber-Controller, he was then captured and taken to a Nazi fortress, but was later rescued by the Doctor. The duo later escaped back to the TARDIS when George Limb activated a Cyberman time machine. (TV: Illegal Alien)
Raine began to suffer strange dreams, and after accidentally arriving on Gallifrey, helped defend the Doctor when he was framed for murder by the Time Lords. While on Gallifrey, she met Leela, Romana, Andred and K-9. While at the house of Lungbarrow, she befriended Innocet and helped her stick up for the Doctor, where they learned that the nightmares were actually the Doctor's memory of being bullied and disowned by his family. (TV: Lungbarrow)
The Doctor and Raine found themselves in an alternate universe, which the Doctor soon realised was the universe where Morgaine originated from. Raine became part of the established history by becoming the Lady of the Lake. (TV: Battleground)
The Doctor and Raine arrived in America in 1892; during the Revolutionary war, but the two soon realised that something was wrong when they saw soldiers using weapons that should not have existed at that point in history, they also discovered that the place they were in was called West Britannia instead of America. Realising that somebody had changed history, the Doctor and Raine traveled back to 1776, but they were soon taken prisoner by American soldiers. Raine soon met the Master, who was responsible for changing history by replacing King George III with a duplicate and making himself the leader of the American army; his ultimate goal being to manipulate both armies into a position where American resources are dropped significantly, as well as giving the British the advantage they need to take down the opposition and win the war.
In the end, the Doctor defeated the Master by rescuing the real King George III and deactivating a perception filter built into the duplicate that allowed the Master to be trusted. (TV: Revolution)
In December 1968, Raine along with the Doctor, landed near Crook Marsham, where she met with Robin Yeadon. She tried to convince the Doctor not to retire. Raine went to the radio telescope nearby and saw a dead body there, she then tried to persuade the Doctor to help with the mysterious goings-on. When Robin's stepfather, Lawrence Yeadon died, she consoled him. She witnessed the attack on Jill Mason. After the Doctor arrived, she was still being attacked and chucked a grenade at the being, but that made it stronger. After the Doctor defeated the Sentience, Raine debated whether or not she should leave the Doctor, and soon decided to settle down. However, after telling the Doctor this, she became angry when the Doctor pretended to take her back, but instead arrived at a beach. (TV: Nightshade)
The Doctor and Raine went undercover at the University of Advanced Education in 1991 after receiving reports from UNIT about traces of Artron energy from within the college. After some investigating, the Doctor and Raine discovered that the Vice Chancellor was the Rani, who was kidnapping the most intelligent students and wiring their brains into a Gallifreyan machine, which she planned to use in order to re-engineer Chaos Theory . Raine, with help from Brigadier Bambera, helped to rescue the Doctor, who's brain was going to be used by the Rani in order to complete her experiment. The Rani was defeated and captured after the Doctor used his mind to infect the machine with a virus, freeing the kidnapped students. (TV: Network)
Lost Memory[]
The Doctor and Raine arrived on Earth in 2003, where they met the Doctor's future companions Bernice Summerfield and Chris Hector. The Doctor and Raine helped Bernice and Chris defeat a group of Weeping Angels, who had been stalking the latter two. Afterwards, Raine and the Doctor learned who Bernice and Chris were, but their memory of this event was erased. (TV: The Hunters of Stone)
Further travels[]
The Doctor took Raine to see the Sol Transit System in London 2109. When they arrived, the TARDIS became trapped in a wall and Raine was left stranded on Pluto. While there, Raine became involved with a protest group who caused riots and anarchy in order to bring down the local crime syndicates. Raine was possessed by the entity known as Fred, who made several clones of her, but she was eventually rescued by the Doctor. (TV: Transit)
When the Doctor was summoned back to Gallifrey, where he was put on trial by the new Lord President Kalien, who claimed that the Matrix predicted that the Doctor would cause the destruction of all Time Lords. Raine and Romana attempted to defend the Doctor, but he was found guilty and sentenced to death. Raine and Romana investigated and eventually discovered that Kalien faked the evidence and that she had found other Time Lords guilty of similar crimes. In the end, Raine and Romana exposed Kalien and cleared the Doctor's name. (TV: The Kingdom of Lies)
Meeting Bernice Summerfield and falling out with the Doctor[]
After saying goodbye to her old friend Julian at his funeral, the Doctor brought Raine and the TARDIS to the planet Heaven in the year 2570. Raine met a young traveller by the name of Jan Rydd. Along with a psychic named Christopher, she helped free the Doctor from being trapped in Puterspace by the Vacuum Church and wanted Jan to travel with her in the TARDIS. However, Jan was infected by Hoothi fibres. Through the Doctor's manipulations, Jan put Raine to sleep with a drug and tried taking a shuttle on his own to the Hoothi sphere, but Máire woke Raine. They followed Jan.
Thinking that they would set the shuttle on a collision course with the sphere, Raine and Máire ejected their pods. Jan instead ignited the sphere with his pyrokinesis, killing three of the four Hoothi and sacrificing himself.
Landing on Heaven, Raine spoke to the part of the Hoothi group mind containing Julian, killing the last Hoothi and freeing the dead minds from the group mind. Angered by him causing Jan's death, Raine almost stayed on Heaven, but the Doctor dragged her back inside the TARDIS and took off, just as Bernice Summerfield slipped into the TARDIS. After being calmed down by Bernice, Raine demanded that the Doctor take her home, but when he set the controls, the TARDIS went out of control. (TV: Love and War)
Landing on an alternate Earth where the Silurians had killed the Doctor in his third incarnation, the TARDIS trio lost the TARDIS and became embroiled in an inter-species conflict. After retrieving the TARDIS and escaping in it, the Doctor was forced to destroy the alternate universe in order to generate the energy needed to restore the original. Raine was furious with the Doctor for destroying the alternate Earth, and after arriving back home, she stormed out of the TARDIS without saying goodbye. (TV: Blood Heat)
Personality[]
Raine believed that she had an innate ability to read people. (TV: Hunters of Stone) Sam told the Doctor that there was no arguing with her. (TV: Crime of the Century)
Raine was very compassionate. She was happy with the idea of humans and Silurians making peace and sharing the planet. (TV: Blood Heat)
Physical Appearance[]
During her travels with the Doctor, Raine appeared as a young woman. (TV: Crime of the Century)
Hair and grooming[]
Raine had short, dark brown hair. (TV: Crime of the Century)
Clothing[]
Raine typically wore a white T-shirt and black trousers with a white pattern on them. (TV: Alixion)
When doing a burglary job, Raine would wear a leather black dress. (TV: Crime of the Century)
Other Information[]
Miscellaneous[]
- To date, Raine is the only companion to leave the Doctor after falling out with him.
- Raine is the second companion/recurring character to be shown as a baby: in the Season 9 story The Time Monster, Sergeant Benton was briefly turned into a baby.
Behind the Scenes[]
Creation[]
After making plans to write Ace out in the second serial and to introduce a new companion in the third, Aaronovitch, with input from Nathan-Turner, devised the new companion, Raine Cunningham, a safe cracker from an upper-class background.
Naming[]
Initially, the next companion was going to be called Kate Tollinger, then Kate Cunningham. Finally, Cartmel and Aaronovitch settled on Raine Cunningham.
Years later, Cartmel discovered that there was a woman in real life named Raine Cunningham. Cartmel said that had he known this at the time, he would have changed her name to Raine Creevy.
Casting[]
Other actors considered for the role of Raine included Julia Sawalha and Elizabeth Hurley. Sawalha turned down the role as she saw Doctor Who as an actors' graveyard.