'Doctor Who': A Fan Favorite Companion Is Returning

A beloved yet relatively unknown Doctor Who companion is set to make her return.

Sheridan Smith will return as the Eighth Doctor's companion Lucie Miller in a new audio drama from Big Finish in July 2019.

Lucie has never appeared on television but became popular through her role in the Doctor Who audio dramas. After Doctor Who returned to television in 2005, the radio drama - which featured Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor from Doctor Who: The Movie - also received a reboot as The Eighth Doctor Adventures. Sheridan debuted as Lucie when the series premiered on New Year's Eve 2006. She departed in 2011 in the episode To The Death.

"We've always had it in mind to bring back Lucie," Big Finish executive producer Nicholas Briggs said in the announcement. "And we only let her go in the first place because we could see Sheridan's stratospheric career path approaching.

"But thanks to Big Finish producer Ian Atkins getting her back to record two Short Trips single-voice releases as Lucie, we discovered that Sheridan was really keen to return. And so, script editor Alan Barnes (who created Lucie in the first place), producer Scott Handcock and I started devising The Further Adventures of Lucie Miller."

The new series, titled The Further Adventures of Lucie Miller, will be set between Miller's previous adventures Human Resources and Dead London.

"I have always been clear that I wouldn't reverse the finality of Lucie's departure," Briggs continued. "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?"

The stories in the series are:

The Dalek Trap by Nicholas Briggs
The Revolution Game by Alice Cavender
The House on the Edge of Chaos by Eddie Robson
Island of the Fendahl by Alan Barnes

Here's Big Finish's description of stories in The Further Adventures of Lucie Miller:

"The Dalek Trap sees the Doctor behaving distinctly out of character, and Lucie having to take control to thwart the Daleks and a mysterious force of 'Darkness'. In The Revolution Game, there's something sinister happening in a far-flung future Earth colony – and Lucie is forced to partake in a perilous rollerskating contest! The House on the Edge of Chaos finds the Doctor and Lucie trapped in a bizarre building, packed with eccentric, social-class-obsessed characters and an emerging alien foe like no other. And in the final adventure, Island of the Fendahl, the classic Doctor Who creature the Fendahl makes its first appearance on audio since the original TV story Image of the Fendahl (1977, starring Tom Baker and Louise Jameson)."

Are you excited about the return of Lucie Miller? Let us know in the comments!

The Further Adventures of Lucie Miller will be released in July 2019.