Meet the Schofields

The Doctor has never been able to save everyone, no matter how hard he tries. Big Finish has never been afraid to shy away from that. Some of the stories are extremely dark, particularly the stories that centre around the Forge family. The Schofields' story is closely linked to that of the Forge (which is a shady government agency that hordes and weaponizes alien technology, sort of like the Torchwood Institute before Captain Jack took over).

And now I will talk about most of the stories featuring Schofields (so don't read this if you don't want to know what happens to them).


Cassie Schofield meets the Sixth Doctor and Evelyn in London (Project: Twilight). She is a young girl from Liverpool who became a mother when she was still in school. Her son, Tommy, lives with her mom, and she decided to move to London to meet her fortune and to escape the disapproving looks she gets from her mother. She finds work at a shady casino working for some even shadier characters. Shady characters who are working on developing a virus to turn the entire human race into vampires. Cassie is the first (and hopefully only) victim of the virus, which devastates Evelyn. At the end of the story, the Doctor drops Cassie off in Norway so she can try and take care of herself, promising he'll be back once he's found a cure.

The Doctor keeps his promise (Project: Lazarus), but unfortunately, the Forge found her first. Cassie is bitter and has turned into a Forge soldier. Cassie has nearly forgotten her son, but Evelyn manages to remind her about Tommy and Cassie is convinced to let the Doctor cure her so she can go home to her son. And then Cassie is brutally killed, breaking Evelyn's heart and causing a rupture between her and the Doctor that is never fully healed. We eventually learn about how Tommy turns out when the Seventh Doctor meets her when she is recovering in hospital and he lets her know that Tommy turns out okay.

And then we meet Hex. Thomas Hector Schofield is Cassie's son, but he doesn't know that the Doctor knows her. He meets the Doctor seemingly by chance (The Harvest) at the hospital he works in. We never find out for sure if it was by chance (although the Doctor's encounter with Evelyn in Project: Lazarus does suggest it was a coincidence). After the death of basically everyone he knows, Hex decides to travel with the Doctor and Ace. The three of them travel together for a while in a series of adventures of varying quality.

Hex is separated from the Doctor and Ace in the Crimean War, where he meets Florence Nightingale (who inspired him to become a nurse in the first place). It turns out that conditions in the field hospital were even worse than he thought, so he takes it on himself to try and clean things up a bit before Florence Nightingale actually arrives in Scutari. At the end of the story (The Angel of Scutari), Hex is shot, and all he wants to do is go back to the hospital where he first met the Doctor so he can be treated.

At the hospital, Hex is told a fact that completely destroys his trust in the Doctor: the Doctor has known all along about his mother and had never told him (Project: Destiny). After that, Hex is a lot more reluctant to travel with the Doctor, but he continues to do so. This creates an interesting dynamic in the TARDIS; Ace has been travelling with the Doctor for so long that she has faith that what he does is always best, and Hex feels like he would be much happier if the Doctor would only tell him what was going on every once in a while.

Hex's story finishes in Gods and Monsters. I was very confused throughout this entire story, until the last ten minutes or so, when Hex sacrifices himself to save his friends. It is an incredibly moving ending to an otherwise overly long and confusing tale.

After Hex's death, there are a few more stories that feature him, but I haven't heard any of them so I don't know how they go.

Hex is one of my favourite companions ever (others include Ace, Donna, Sarah Jane and Romana II). We know one of very few companions where we know his back story, and his character noticeably develops and changes throughout his story arc. Hex seems to go through life in a state of perpetual confusion. He asks a lot of questions, and he is never afraid to question the Doctor and the Doctor's decisions, which is sometimes very necessary.