HE TRAVELLED in the TARDIS with not one but two Time Lords during his adventures on Doctor Who, but companion Adric looks very different today.

Actor Matthew Waterhouse, who played the role of the young native from the planet Alzarius, has certainly come a long way since his time on the long-running science fiction series.

The now 54-year-old shot to fame on Doctor Who when he played the plucky sidekick to Peter Davidson and Tom Baker’s incarnations of the time travellers between 1980 and 1982.

Adric had a number of exciting trips in TARDIS after he stowed away on board the blue police box, including watching a regeneration and battling with the Cybermen.

He was highly gifted with mathematics, which was marked out by the star he wore on his clothes.

Sadly, Adric’s time on Doctor Who came into an end when he was killed off after trying to stop a freighter controlled by the Cybermen from crashing into the Earth while the Time Lord and his companions could only gaze on in horror.

It has since become a rarity for characters to be killed off in the revived series of Doctor Who, Jenna Coleman’s assistant Clara Oswald did not meet such a tragic end when she left last year.

Matthew is the youngest male Doctor Who companion in the show’s history and his character’s name was an anagram of  Nobel Prize-winning physicist Paul Dirac.

Since Doctor Who finished, Matthew is still very much a part of the sci-fi series as he has done a number of audio dramas that have seen him reprising the role of Adric.

He also made a return for the 50th anniversary of the show in the The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot in 2013.

The star’s other credits include  Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, To Serve Them All My Days, and The Killing Edge.

The actor charted his life in his memoirs Blue Box Boy and has subsequently written several novels, including Vanitas: A Comedy of New York and Precious Liars.

Matthew now lives in America but comes to the UK occasionally for events, and he is very much a fan favourite on the conventions circuit.

Most recently, he recorded an audio books for Terrence Dicks’ Doctor Who story Four to Doomsday, which is out in March next year.