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Satisfied Customer: Romana.
She gets to be rescued from the dismal fate of full aculturation into Gallifrey's cold high-on-beauracracy/low-on-dancing society, and gets her eyes opened to all the exciting alternatives to the extent that she comes to understand why she needed rescuing. And once she's transformed herself into someone capable of enjoying it all, it's obvious she was having a whale of a time. There can't be many companions who've treated thier travels as a party to the extent the second Romana did. And when the party was over, she got something else. A purpose.

Grounds for Complaint: Peri.
The most depressing story in the history of the show. Here's a girl who, by the time she goes with the Doctor, has already lost two fathers. Finding a caring, gentle and affectionate new father figure in the Fifth Doctor...he then dies on her almost immediately (ignoring the audios and just going by how it looked on telly at the time).

Her potential perfect father figure gone, she's left trapped with a man who condesendingly claims to be him. A man who subjects her to constant bullying, condesending put-downs, verbal abuse and the occasional threat of violence. Peri's an emotionally wounded child who, for some reason, the Doctor sees fit to subject to an ongoing programme of psychological torture.

And while she's enduring his sustained bullying, she's also got a random series of brutalising experiences awaiting her everytime she steps out of the TARDIS to be met by megalomanic after megalomanic who implicitly threatens to rape her.

In the end, if she's lucky, she gets killed. Or if she's unlucky she gets dragged off to a Barbarian planet that sounds like its probably got the life expectancy of a Victorian slum and is about as woman-friendly as Gor, to be married to a violent psychopath.

I think Captain Jack came off best. He gained immortality! He also changed from being a conman when he first met the Doctor to being a trustworthy, responsible member of society when they parted and he had to wait for the Doctor to come back (see Utopia).

As to the ones who came off worst, probably Jamie and Zoe, because they had all memories of travelling with the Doctor wiped by the Time Lords, so obviously gained nothing.

Though at least they lost nothing which is more than the bitter, desensitised Tegans of the world get.

And if you go with the whole Season 6B theory (which is the only sensible way of reconciling The Five Doctors and The Two Doctors with The War Games, as well as being what the author of The War Games now asserts) then Jaime at least gets his memories back at some point.

In in a sense. But at what cost was his immotality. Jack was person who lived on the edge the risk of death being half the fun. Now he lives forever no real risk the only pain being watching those around him age and die and not being able to stay with those he loves. He's really lost a real lust for life to him it's "What's the point of living if you can't die?"

Yeah. Being immortal has its drawbacks - the Doctor knows that. (He's not technically immortal, but you get my point)

I think it was partly down to the problem successive production teams had on the classic series of trying to create strong female companions. Usually this would mean "a strong companion for her first storyline, who'd then start acting like all the others from her second storyline on", but with Tegan then they made an effort to keep the character assertive, but made the mistake of thinking 'assertive' had to mean 'perpetually contrary and dismissive'.

If she were stomping about on New Earth then she wouldn't react to smelling applegrass with anything like Rose's deep breath and huge grin. She'd just wrinkle up her face in derision and say, "Applegrass?" as if she were half sceptical and half eager to haul the Doctor before a civil court to be put on trial for somehow causing applegrass to exist.

Funny I should think of New Earth really, as it strikes me now that by the end of that episode Cassandra has more wisdom and understanding of death than poor Tegan ever acquired.

Oh! Go see, go see!
Traken drags a fair old bit, but deserves a bit of credit for trying to structure a four-parter in a very different way...but Logopolis is realy outstanding. Something built very much around its SF ideas shouldn't really be able to be so wistful and elegiac, but it pulls it off. A gorgeous ******** mini-epic with so many images and moments that really stay with you. One of Tom's best performances too. Loveitloveitloveit.

I quite like Logopolis.

I haven't seen 'Trakken' or 'Logopolis' yet either. My sister wants this box set with both of them and another Tom Baker episode, though. =3 Perhaps I'll see it then? I'm really looking forward to seeing "Logopolis", as I've heard so much praise about it.