Caroline Frances John (19 September 1940 – 5 June 2012) was an English actress. She played classical roles on the stage and also portrayed Elizabeth "Liz" Shaw in the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who, as well as several other television roles. Early life and education John was the third of eight children born to Vera (née Winckworth), an actress and singer, and Alexander John, a theatre director. She was educated at St. Joseph's convent school, Crackley Hall in Kenilworth. After training at the Central School of Speech and Drama, she worked in theatre and toured with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre Company. She appeared in Juno and the Paycock in a 1966 production directed by Laurence Olivier, King Lear, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, The Merchant of Venice and as Hero in Franco Zeffirelli's production of Much Ado About Nothing. Doctor Who John played the role of the Doctor's companion in 1970 opposite Jon Pertwee's Third Doctor. John was recommended to then Doctor Who producer Peter Bryant by another BBC producer, James Cellan Jones, who sent Bryant and his associate Derrick Sherwin photographs of her. Unlike most of the preceding and subsequent female companions of the Doctor, Shaw was a brilliant scientist and understood much of the Doctor's technobabble. Shaw and the Doctor discussed things on a more equitable level of intelligence, and the Doctor respected and rarely patronised her. New series producer Barry Letts believed the character was too intellectual to be a suitable companion to the Doctor and decided against renewing her contract for the next season. During her final story, Inferno, John also played the part of Section Leader Elizabeth Shaw, an alter ego of her regular character that the Doctor encounters in an alternative time stream. John reprised the role of Shaw, albeit as a phantom, in the anniversary episode The Five Doctors, and also appeared in the special episode Dimensions in Time (1993), part of the BBC's annual Children in Need appeal. In the 1990s she appeared in a series of straight-to-video releases including The Stranger: Breach of the Peace, and as Liz Shaw in the P.R.O.B.E. stories written by Mark Gatiss and featuring numerous actors from the history of Doctor Who – including Jon Pertwee, Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy. In these stories made by the production company BBV, a pipe-smoking Shaw works as an investigator (for