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Harry SullivanHarry Sullivan is a fictional character from the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who. Played by Ian Marter, the character appeared as a regular during the programme's twelfth season in 1974-75. Sullivan was a doctor in the Royal Navy, who was attached as medical officer to the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, the military organisation to which the Doctor acted as the scientific advisor. Sullivan was first mentioned (though not seen) in Planet of the Spiders, when the Brigadier thought that the Third Doctor had gone into a coma. The Brigadier called Sullivan and asked him to come to the Doctor's laboratory, but told him not to bother after Sergeant Benton was able to wake the Doctor up by offering him a cup of coffee. In the next serial, Robot, after the Doctor's third regeneration, Sullivan was called in to attend him, and ended up travelling aboard the TARDIS with the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith (played by Elisabeth Sladen) for several subsequent adventures. Sullivan was rather old-fashioned and stereotypically English in his attitudes. He often employed slightly archaic language, for example, referring to Sarah affectionately as "old thing". He was nonetheless depicted as possessing great bravery and a "make-do" attitude, adapting well to the many strange situations in which he found himself. He could, however, also be quite clumsy and unsubtle, leading the Doctor to once declare, in a moment of frustration, that "Harry Sullivan is an imbecile!" Nonetheless he was shown to be well-liked by the Doctor and Sarah, the latter with whom he often had a slightly flirtatious relationship. The character had actually been devised by the production team as a means of handling any action scenes required in episodes when they had envisioned that the new Doctor would be played by an older actor. When forty year-old Tom Baker was cast, however, this was no longer a concern and the decision was taken to write Harry out - something producer Philip Hinchcliffe later admitted was probably a mistake, as Sullivan was a likeable and popular character who worked well with both of his fellow leads. Sullivan's last regular appearance was in the season thirteen opener Terror of the Zygons, which had actually been made at the conclusion of the twelfth production block and held over to start the following season. At the conclusion of this story he is seen choosing to return to London by train rather than by TARDIS with the Doctor and Sarah, who continue their adventures without him. He does, however, reappear two stories later in The Android Invasion, both as the original Harry and an android double. This was the character's final appearance in the programme, and there was no proper "farewell scene" for him. A later production team gave some consideration to bringing Harry Sullivan back for a guest appearance in the 1983 story Mawdryn Undead, part of the programme's twentieth anniversary season. Their first choice was the character of Ian Chesterton, but those plans fell through due to actor William Russell being unavailable. In the end, they decided to use the character of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (played by Nicholas Courtney) instead. Harry is mentioned in the story, however - the Brigadier tells the Fifth Doctor that he was "seconded to NATO" and was last heard of "doing something 'hush-hush' at Porton Down." After leaving the cast of the programme, Ian Marter went on to pen several novelisations of Doctor Who stories for Target Books, writing an original novel, Harry Sullivan's War for them in 1985. In Harry Sullivan's War, the character has become an MI5 operative. Marter was believed to have been planning a sequel at the time of his tragic death from a diabetic coma the following year. Since 1994, the character of Harry has appeared in several novels from Virgin Publishing and also from BBC Books since the latter's takeover of the Doctor Who books licence in 1997. Most of these stories have been set in gaps between televised adventures featuring the character, but in several books he has been seen either earlier or later in life. In System Shock (Virgin Publishing, 1995) and Millennium Shock (BBC Books, 1998), both by Justin Richards, he is seen during the 1990s, as a Deputy Director of MI5, picking up on the events of Harry Sullivan's War, and an even later early-21st century Harry has a cameo in Damaged Goods by Russell T. Davies (Virgin, 1996). Blood Heat (Virgin, 1993) by Jim Mortimore briefly depicts a parallel universe version of Harry serving on a nuclear submarine in a dystopian world ruled by the Silurians, where he manages to save the life of the Seventh Doctor's companion Bernice Summerfield. In David A McIntee's The Face of the Enemy (BBC Books, 1998) Harry is seen still working for the Royal Navy before his secondment to UNIT, which he first encounters in this novel. Sullivan, Harry Sullivan, Harry Sullivan, Harry
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