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- Nisha Nayar (born 7 June 1967) played the female programmer in the Doctor Who stories Bad Wolf and The Parting of the Ways and voiced Zanzibar Hashtag in the Big Finish Doctor Who audio story Harvest of the Sycorax.
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In 2017 and 2018, Nisha played semi-regular character Samira Kohli in Doctors for the BBC, and Liz in André Chocron's bold and innovative film, Chronos, which was filmed in a single long take. In 2019, Nisha played Rahael Malik opposite Morven Christie in ITV’s The Bay.
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Television - Bio - Nisha Nayar
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Film - Bio - Nisha Nayar
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Nisha Nayar (born 7 June 1967) played the female programmer in the Doctor Who stories Bad Wolf and The Parting of the Ways and voiced Zanzibar Hashtag in the Big Finish Doctor Who audio story Harvest of the Sycorax.
Nisha Nayar, the actress cast as the Female Programmer in this episode, previously appeared as one of the uncredited 'Red Kang' extras in the 1987 classic series story Paradise Towers. This made her the second actor to appear in both the classic and new series of Doctor Who , following William Thomas 's appearance in the previous episode ...
- Biography
- Personality
- Appearance
- Behind the scenes
Early life
Nyssa was born on Traken (AUDIO: Primeval) circa 1961 (AUDIO: Cobwebs; TV: Logopolis) as the daughter of Consul Tremas and Lucina. (TV: The Keeper of Traken) Both of her grandfathers had died by the time she was born (AUDIO: The Toy) and her mother died in childbirth (PROSE: Empire of Death) or when she was young. (AUDIO: The Haunting of Thomas Brewster, Pursuit of the Nightjar) Having grown up in the harmony of the Traken Union, Nyssa was shielded from the horrors of the universe. (AUDIO: 1001 Nights) She was brought up to be altruistic and to always put others before herself, a rule that she abided by. (AUDIO: The Entropy Plague) As Trakenite nobility, Nyssa learnt the manners and behaviours expected of her, including dance, which she considered herself quite good at, (TV: Black Orchid) whilst the servants' children were able to share rooms and play in the grounds. (AUDIO: The Toy) Due to her father's position, Nyssa spent most of her time amongst older people and was starved of company of her own age. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Keeper of Traken) Tremas entered into a romantic relationship with Kassia (TV: The Keeper of Traken) and would play her a piece of Trakenite music when she was feeling low. Nyssa remembered the piece fondly. (AUDIO: The Entropy Composition) She had a number of teddy bears, namely a talking one called Big Bear who "guarded" her when she slept. (PROSE: Divided Loyalties) Nyssa inherited her father's love of science. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Keeper of Traken) She was a genius, with bioelectronics (TV: Castrovalva) and cybernetics as her strong points. (TV: Four to Doomsday) However, she knew very little about telebiogenesis. (TV: Castrovalva) She assisted in a minor role with surgical operations, meaning that blood did not tend to make her nauseous. (PROSE: Goth Opera) She enjoyed tending a grove (AUDIO: Masquerade) and was once stung by a Lime Grove Wasp. (AUDIO: The Mutant Phase) She was able to let loose during the Autumn Festival, when her people hung paper lanterns on all the trees in the garden and carried all the fruits in, followed by singing and a food fight which included the consuls. It was undignified, but Nyssa loved it. (AUDIO: Spare Parts) She recognised that she was very fortunate in her upbringing and had everything in her life handed to her on a plate. (AUDIO: The Peterloo Massacre)
Encounter with the Fourth Doctor
Nyssa attended Tremas and Kassia's wedding, after which she met the Fourth Doctor and Adric. Unbeknownst to her, the Decayed Master planned to exploit the tremendous power of the Keepership, which her father was to inherit, by manipulating Kassia. Nyssa helped the Doctor and Adric prevent the Master from gaining the power of the Source, but was unable to prevent him from killing Kassia. Afterwards, Nyssa and Tremas bid farewell to the Doctor and Adric. Nyssa told her father that he had to put everything back together again following the Master's actions, but did not witness her father being killed and taken over by the decayed Time Lord, (TV: The Keeper of Traken) although she did think she heard a distant echo of mocking laughter. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Keeper of Traken) She sent a message to the TARDIS telling the Doctor of the Master's escape and Tremas's disappearance. (PROSE: Logopolis)
Life after leaving
Nyssa worked tirelessly to cure Lazar's disease and to create a vaccine against it, one which she helped to distribute. In the course of doing so, she travelled from laboratories to makeshift clinics to election meetings and had a number of lovers, after which she proceeded to leave Terminus in search of other challenges. Venturing out into the galaxy, she embarked on microbiological research to defeat a deadly fungus, diplomacy to avert a war and fundraising for medical supplies following a flood. (PROSE: Asylum) Some time after leaving the Doctor, Nyssa was transported to the Death Zone where she met Ian Chesterton, Steven Taylor, Sara Kingdom and Polly Jackson and was reunited with the Fifth Doctor, who had already travelled with her older self in his personal timeline. (AUDIO: The Five Companions) Following the destruction of Exanos, Nyssa decided to find a place free from war and became a technography lecturer at a university. There, she was reunited with the Fourth Doctor, who had not yet met her, and joined him in an adventure in the 12th century, in the course of which she fought back against a killer and realised that she needed to once again choose to enjoy her life. The Doctor returned her in the TARDIS, promising that he would pretend not to recognise her. (PROSE: Asylum) During the Time War, Nyssa operated a hospital ship known as the Traken and assisted planets that became caught up in the war. She met a man who called himself Dr Foster and became her assistant, although she came to suspect him of being a Time Lord saboteur. In truth, the saboteur was Dr Isherwood. Dr Foster departed after giving Nyssa a kiss on the cheek, reminding her of how she had said goodbye to the Doctor on Terminus. (AUDIO: A Heart on Both Sides) She was taken by Gommen into the Gommen Machine believing she was a stuntman. She had discovered what Gommen was doing on a medical station as she was curious about what happening. She realised it was stolen Time Lord technology adapted from the Matrix. K9 Mark II helped her keep her mind active. She worked out the truth and that's why her mind was taken. She had been tracking Gommen due to his torturing in the name of medical advancement. After Gommen was arrested, she took his medical ship to add to her fleet. (AUDIO: The Stuntman) On board the Varnomium, a quarantined ship, Nyssa worked to find a cure for the plague threatening the Stagnant Protocol. She was recruited for her unparalleled skill in this area. By the time the War Master arrived, she was working alone, both treating patients and running experiments to isolate the virus and reverse its impacts. The Master pretended to have been sent by the Stagnant Protocol, as an overseer, and joined her in her pursuit, sabotaging her experiments and manipulating her into killing one of her patients accidentally. In time, he managed to convince her to develop an even deadlier strain, in the interest of her research, and Nyssa finally realised who he was. The Master abandoned Nyssa aboard the Varnomium when he departed. (AUDIO: The Orphan) Nyssa married Lasarti and had two children: Neeka (AUDIO: Winter) and Adric, whom she told stories of her travels in the TARDIS. (AUDIO: Prisoners of Fate) She was reunited with the Fifth Doctor once more when she assisted with his regeneration into his next incarnation. (AUDIO: Winter) Nyssa set about attempting to find a cure for Richter's Syndrome. She had an android called Loki whose hard drive she once had to erase after it was corrupted by his fear of his own shadow. (AUDIO: Cobwebs)
Nyssa was pleasant, friendly (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Keeper of Traken) and selfless. Tegan once remarked that she was "too good for this world", (AUDIO: Aquitaine), the Fifth Doctor described her as "terribly nice", (AUDIO: Alien Heart) and the Eighth Doctor considered her to have more good than anyone else he had known. (AUDIO: A Heart on Both Sides) She always found the good in people; even during the Time War, she provided medical care to both sides of the conflict. (AUDIO: A Heart on Both Sides) Her gentle and trusting nature meant that she was not adept at detecting deception, (TV: Mawdryn Undead) but she was skilled at negotiating an effective balance between strong personalities. (TV: Earthshock, AUDIO: The Game) Tegan noted that Nyssa preferred to "care and share." (PROSE: Goth Opera)
Despite her gentleness, Nyssa was willing to use and threaten violence where necessary, destroying on separate occasions a Terileptil android (TV: The Visitation) and a CyberNeomorph (TV: Earthshock) in addition to threatening to shoot Time Lord guards. (TV: Arc of Infinity) She was driven to rage after the death of Cathy Roberts's son in the Peterloo Massacre (AUDIO: The Peterloo Massacre) and initially wanted to kill the Tremas Master for the murder of her father, although she managed to forgive him. (AUDIO: The King of the Dead) She also argued on occasion with the Doctor, such as when he broke her trust on Valderon. (AUDIO: Prisoners of Fate)
She considered Tegan to be her best friend (AUDIO: The Emerald Tiger) and Tegan held her in the same esteem. (AUDIO: The Waters of Amsterdam) However, she also "never quite understood" why so many of the Doctor's friends were human. (AUDIO: The Boy That Time Forgot)
Nyssa generally did not use a surname, referring to herself only as Nyssa. (TV: Castrovalva, Four to Doomsday, etc.) The Doctor introduced her to the Time Lords as "Nyssa of Traken", (TV: Arc of Infinity) a name that she often used herself. (AUDIO: Spare Parts, etc.) Whilst posing as a human actress, she used the name "Nyssa Traken". (AUDIO: Special Features)
Nyssa was a slender (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Keeper of Traken) and beautiful (AUDIO: Creatures of Beauty) girl with brown curls, a pale face, serious, round eyes (PROSE: Logopolis) and fine features. (PROSE: Kinda) She had an unearthly quality of remoteness and aristocracy (PROSE: Castrovalva) but she had a hardness in her face that bespoke experience. (PROSE: The Parliament of Rats)
During her earliest travels in the TARDIS, she wore a flowing, gauzy dress (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Keeper of Traken) but later started to wear a plum purple velvet trouser-suit with elaborately puffed sleeves. (TV: Four to Doomsday-Arc of Infinity) She eventually stopped wearing Traken clothes, wearing a white blouse with turquoise blue stripes on the front and sleeves, a rainbow skirt, burgundy shorts, and ruby shoes on Manussa (TV: Snakedance) and a steel blue mini-dress over an ivory underdress until her departure on Terminus. (TV: Terminus) Following Adric's death, she took to wearing a bracelet of Trakenite gold. (PROSE: Goth Opera)
•Nyssa was originally meant to have appeared only in The Keeper of Traken as a supporting character. She was, therefore, the sole creation of writer Johnny Byrne, to whom royalties had to be paid when the character was used. Like the Brigadier and K9, she is a rare example of a series regular to whom the BBC does not enjoy sole copyright.
•Peter Davison was known to have preferred Nyssa over any of his other companions. He intervened on several occasions when John Nathan-Turner attempted to write the character out of the series.
•Perhaps in deference to Davison's affection for Nyssa and in part because of Janet Fielding's long reluctance to appear in audio dramas, Big Finish Productions greatly expanded Nyssa's role. They built a network of stories in the televised gap between Tegan's departure in Time-Flight and her return in Arc of Infinity which was very much greater than it had appeared on television. Starting with The Land of the Dead, the Fifth Doctor began a long series of audio adventures with Nyssa as his sole companion. Consequently, Nyssa is one of the most frequently appearing companions in the history of performed Doctor Who stories.
•Like the Fifth Doctor, Adric and Tegan, Nyssa was given a "costume" rather than a basic "look" by producer John Nathan-Turner. Nyssa's original costume narratively originated on Traken. It suggested her highborn status. It consisted of a maroon velvet jacket, a diaphanous, iridescent skirt and multi-pastel, high-heeled shoes. It was accessorised with an ornamental hair comb and a woolly purse. This look persisted through the end of part two of Castrovalva. However, long before this episode was filmed, it was determined the actor needed more practical clothing for the physical demands of her now-co-starring role. She exchanged her skirt for a pair of maroon trousers, lost the purse and began wearing lower-heeled shoes. According to production notes on the DVD release of the preceding story, Logopolis, the second iteration of Nyssa's "royal Traken" look was inspired by a rehearsal in which actress Sarah Sutton wore Nyssa's top, but her own corduroy trousers. She also lost her hair comb. She completely abandoned the "royal Traken" look in Snakedance and changed her look every story thereafter until her departure in Terminus. Famously, her costume for her final story was mostly just the slip she had been wearing under her Mawdryn Undead dress.
•Images of the older version of Nyssa on cover images for the audio arc in which she rejoined the TARDIS crew were based on contemporary photos of Sarah Sutton.
•Discounting the ambiguous status of various UNIT personnel, Nyssa is the first companion to be introduced in one story and established as a companion in another.
With Sylvester McCoy, Bonnie Langford, Richard Briers, Clive Merrison. Meeting up at the pool, the Doctor leads the surviving Rezzies, Kangs and Caretakers as they draw the line together on the 245th floor against the systematic cleansing of all life by Kroagnon and his robotic Cleaners.
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- Adventure, Drama, Family
- Nicholas Mallett
- 1987-10-26
Some of the cast of Doctor Who: The Stuff of Legend (l-r) eorge Naylor, Barnaby Edwards, Nisha Nayar, Paul McGann, Nicholas Briggs, India Fisher, Annette Badland, Jason Forbes (c) Big Finish
Nisha Nayar is a British actress and voice artist,whose work spans across theatre, film, television and radio. Since first coming to prominence in Gurinder Chadha's groundbreaking feature film, Bhaji on the Beach , Nisha has starred in numerous television shows, including Doctor Who, Tracy Beaker, The Buddha of Suburbia , Cracker and Before We ...
