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James Robert McCrimmon, or simply Jamie, is a fictional character played by Frazer Hines in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. A piper of the Clan McLaren who lived in 18th Century Scotland, he was a companion of the Second Doctor and was a regular in the programme from 1966 to 1969.
Jamie first appeared in The Highlanders, encountering the Doctor, Ben and Polly in the aftermath of the Battle of Culloden in 1746. At the end of the story, Polly suggested that the Doctor take Jamie along with them. Jamie continued to travel with the Doctor even after Ben and Polly left the TARDIS at the end of The Faceless Ones, and was probably the Second Doctor's most loyal companion.
Jamie shared a lively, bantering relationship with the Doctor, and saw the arrival and leaving of first Victoria Waterfield and finally Zoe Herriot. Jamie, being a product of his time, was always solicitous and gentlemanly towards the women who travelled with him. He did not have the background to always understand the situations his adventures with the Doctor took him into, but was quick enough to translate high technology and concepts into equivalents he could understand and deal with.
Together with the Doctor, he encountered Cybermen and Daleks, the Yeti in the London Underground, the Ice Warriors, and many other dangers. His travels with the Doctor came to an end on the battlefields of The War Games, when the Time Lords finally put the Doctor on trial for interfering with the universe. For his offences, the Doctor was forced to regenerate and exiled to Earth. Jamie and Zoe were then returned to their own time, their memories of the Doctor wiped, save for their first encounters with him. When last seen, Jamie was fighting with a British redcoat back on the fields of Scotland.
Frazer Hines reappeared as a illusory image of Jamie in the 20th Anniversary special The Five Doctors. He also reprised the role in the 1985 serial The Two Doctors alongside Patrick Troughton and Colin Baker as the Second and Sixth Doctors respectively.
The fact that the Second Doctor and Jamie are on an assignment for the Time Lords in The Two Doctors (whom they do not encounter until The War Games) and, to a lesser degree, their obviously aged appearance, has led to fan speculation about a possible "Season 6B". As we do not see Patrick Troughton regenerate directly into Jon Pertwee's Third Doctor, fans hypothesise that the Time Lords recruited the Second Doctor to do covert missions for them prior to his third incarnation, and that Jamie joined him in these untold adventures (Victoria's presence is also mentioned in The Two Doctors although she does not appear). There has been no confirmation of the "Season 6B" position in "official" continuity, although the spin-off media have incorporated it as an element of the series' backstory.
An elderly Jamie, who remembered his time with the Doctor, also appeared in the comic strip story The World Shapers, published in Doctor Who Magazine #127-#129, where he sacrificed himself to destroy the titular worldshaper machine.
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