She usually dressed in animal skins, and was armed with a knife or a set of poisonous Janis thorns, which she did not hesitate to use on people who threatened her, much to the Doctor's disapproval.

In the Virgin New Adventures novel Lungbarrow, by Marc Platt, Leela and Andred are expecting a child, the first naturally conceived baby on Gallifrey for millennia.

[3] Jameson has voiced the character in six series of Big Finish Productions audio plays set on Gallifrey, alongside Lalla Ward as Romana and John Leeson as K-9.

She follows Romana through several alternative universes, regaining vision in one eye by ingesting vampire blood, her unique physiology allowing her to be physically enhanced by it without experiencing the negative, mental side-effects.

In the same year, Jameson reprised the role of Leela alongside Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor for a series of audio dramas for Big Finish.

These dramas began to be released in January 2012, and are adaptations of stories planned for TV but never produced, as well as original storylines set in the gap between The Talons of Weng-Chiang and Horror of Fang Rock.

In The Catalyst, an elderly Leela is interrogated by a Z'Nai warrior to learn what secrets she may know of a legendary "lost world" (presumably Gallifrey), and tells stories of her past to a child imprisoned in the room.

They wanted a companion in the mould of George Bernard Shaw's Eliza Doolittle (from Pygmalion): a bright but unsophisticated primitive who would learn from the Doctor.

Writer Chris Boucher had submitted a story proposal titled The Mentor Conspiracy which featured a character named Leela, fitting Hinchcliffe's and Holmes's ideas.

[6] Although The Mentor Conspiracy was not produced, Boucher reused the character of Leela for The Day God Went Mad – later retitled The Face of Evil – seeing her as a mixture of Emma Peel (from The Avengers) and Leila Khaled.

An oft-repeated story (also stated in the DVD commentary to The Robots of Death) is that Leela's skimpy leather outfits were very popular with the "dads", which kept them watching the programme.

According to the official DVD release of the story The Face of Evil in 2012,[8] Louise Jameson won the role of Leela over 26 other hopeful actresses auditioned between 10 and 25 August 1976.

Emily Richard was producer Philip Hinchcliffe's first choice, but when she proved unavailable, Celia Foxe, Colette Gleeson, Elaine Donnelly, Gail Grainger, Belinda Sinclair, Ann Pennington, Sally Geeson, Pamela Salem, Carol Leader, Heather Tobias, Marilyn Galsworthy, Katherine Fahey, Deborah Fairfax, Irene Gorst, Kay Korda, Lois Hantz, Belinda Low, Gail Harrison, Michelle Newell, Philippa Vazey, Sue Jones-Davies, Lydia Lisle, Janet Edis, Susan Wooldridge and Carol Drinkwater were all seen for the part.

To explain the change in-story, writer Terrance Dicks wrote a scene in the 1977 serial Horror of Fang Rock in which Leela's eyes suffer "pigment dispersal" and turn blue after viewing the explosion of the Rutan ship.

[12] Graham Williams offered to rewrite the end of The Invasion of Time so Leela could stay, but Jameson declined as she was already committed to a play of The Merchant of Venice.