Character
Madge Arwell
Madge Arwell in Doctor Who (2005), played by Claire Skinner.
Madge Arwell is a wartime mother holding her household together while her husband flies dangerous missions abroad. One evening she finds a strange man in a motorcycle helmet collapsed on her lawn, and without much fuss takes him in, keeps his secret, and gets on with preparing a proper Christmas for her children.
Claire Skinner plays her with brisk, unfussy competence rather than wide-eyed wonder, so the joke and the ache both land: here is the one adult in the story who refuses to be astonished by anything, because astonishment is a luxury she can't currently afford. That steadiness is what makes her, quietly, the most remarkable person in the room.
Madge had helped out the Doctor in 1938 when he fell from a sub-orbital spaceship into a field she was cycling past. He told her he would return the favour if she made a wish. The Doctor kept his word and returned in 1941 to give her children the "best Christmas ever", following her receiving a telegram indicating that Reg was missing and presumed dead.
Played by
Appears in
Doctor Who2005