Companions: Fifty Years of Doctor Who Assistants (11 page)

She is also not above employing a bit of manipulation to get her own way. For instance when she wants to enter the caves beneath Wenley Moor during
Doctor Who and the Silurians
, she threatens to tell the Brigadier about his planned expedition if he doesn’t comply. The Doctor relents easily enough, suggesting he had every intention of letting Liz join him in the first place.

Similarly, she will not be ordered about. She is not a soldier and doesn’t believe she is required to follow the Brigadier’s orders or indeed the orders of Reegan when he holds her captive in
The Ambassadors of Death
.

Her scientific background is often used to great effect. Whilst working with the Doctor in the lab at the Wenley Moor research centre, very little is said – the Doctor is quite confident in Liz’s abilities to help find a cure for the Silurian virus. Later, when kidnapped by Reegan, she works alongside disgraced Cambridge professor, Lennox, to maintain the alien ambassadors, and help him create a device to communicate with them. Once again the Doctor’s faith in Liz is shown when, once the ambassadors are safe, he leaves her and Cornish with the task of returning them home.

Liz’s doubts regarding the TARDIS continue in
The Ambassadors of Death
. When the Doctor accidentally shifts her fifteen seconds into the future, she is very sceptical, believing he simply vanished. We never see her inside the TARDIS, mainly because the console has been moved into his UNIT lab (but we are not exactly sure how). Later it makes an appearance in a shed at the Inferno drilling station. By this point Liz has learned enough about the console to monitor the Doctor’s experimental test flight and return him and the console. When the Doctor disappears completely (in reality to a fascist parallel Earth where he meets Section Leader Elizabeth Shaw) Liz remains in the shed hoping that he will somehow find his way back. When the Doctor does finally return she cares for him, railing against the Brigadier’s assertion that a medical doctor should look at him. She checks both his hearts – the first companion to know that he has two, knowledge she presumably gleans from the reports made by Doctor Lomax in
Spearhead from Space
. As the Doctor wakes he is almost in a rage having seen the result of the Inferno project destroy one world. Everyone thinks he is mad, including the Brigadier, but Liz believes him and sides with him against the Brigadier once more.

Liz remains unique among the Doctor’s companions. She never travels in the TARDIS, be it to another world or another time. She is also one of the rare few who are able to hold their own against the Doctor’s scientific knowledge – although never his equal, she knows her stuff. We last see Liz as she laughs at the Doctor, who after storming off in a sulk, accidentally lands the TARDIS in a rubbish dump. Before leaving he does, however, make a point of saying to her, ‘I will miss
you
.’

In the next story,
Terror of the Autons
, we discover that Liz, for reasons unknown, returns to her research at Cambridge, never to be seen again. However, in 2010, we do finally learn that she is still alive and well, working on the UNIT moonbase in
The Sarah Jane Adventures: Death of the Doctor
.

Jo, in most ways, was the complete opposite to Liz. She had no scientific background (she took general science at A-level, but did not pass). She was clumsy and often got herself into the kind of trouble that tested the Doctor’s ability to conduct a safe rescue. In some ways she was a continuation of the type of companion seen throughout the 1960s.

Josephine Grant/Jones – Katy Manning
(
Terror of the Autons
to
The Green Death,
and
The Sarah Jane Adventures: Death of the Doctor
)

After Liz leaves, the Doctor asks the Brigadier to find him a new assistant. Enter Jo, barely twenty years old, a recently trained civilian agent who is dumped on the Brigadier by her uncle, a high ranking civil servant who pulls some strings to get her assigned to UNIT. Unsure what to do with her, and knowing the Doctor needs an assistant the Brigadier reaches the obvious conclusion. Initially the Doctor thinks Jo is a tea-lady, and is far from impressed when she botches his experimental work on the TARDIS’ dematerialisation circuit. She introduces herself as his new assistant to which the Doctor can only respond, ‘Oh no.’ He later takes the Brigadier to task over this, who is happy to ‘sack’ her but only if the Doctor tells her himself. In the event the Doctor finds that he cannot do it, and so he has no choice but to welcome Jo.

Determined to prove herself, Jo goes off to investigate on her own. Her inexperience, and clumsy nature, lead her to not only become a captive of the Master, who arrives on Earth to help the Nestene in their second invasion attempt, but also becomes a subject of his incredible hypnotic power. He sends her back to UNIT headquarters to eliminate the Doctor which she almost does, but is prevented in the nick of time by Sergeant Benton. The Doctor initially finds it difficult to bring Jo around, but eventually succeeds leaving her traumatised by the thought of being forced to do something against her will. But this is not the last time she is hypnotised. In
The Curse of Peladon
she is accidentally hypnotised by the Doctor when she stumbles in and prevents his attempts to placate the royal beast of Peladon, Aggedor. This susceptibility to hypnotism is finally overcome in
Frontier in Space
when the Master attempts to hypnotise her and she reveals that she has learned mental techniques to prevent such a thing happening again.

She develops an early fondness for the Doctor, as seen when she mothers him while he is held at Stangmoor Prison (
The Mind of Evil
) but she doesn’t really believe his stories of adventures in space and time, especially when he talks of historical figures in a very matter-of-fact way. However, her fondness and loyalty is not absolute for a while. She is easily convinced that he has betrayed Earth and his friends when he appears to ally himself with the Master, leaving Earth to the mercy of Axos (
Claws of Axos
). As it turns out, the Doctor is merely using the Master to get to Axos so he can trap the space vampire in a time loop for eternity, thus saving Earth. The Brigadier is certain the Doctor will not return, but Jo hopes he will, and her hope is validated moments later when the TARDIS does indeed return – although not by the Doctor’s choice, since the Time Lords wired the TARDIS to return to Earth to prevent him from escaping his exile.

Jo finally learns firsthand the truth of the Doctor’s claims when she enters the TARDIS in
Colony in Space
and is whisked off five centuries into the future. She is, as were so many before her, amazed by the TARDIS’ interior, but doesn’t really believe that they are heading to another world. Indeed, as she thinks about it, fear kicks in, and she only tentatively steps out onto Uxarieus with the Doctor, not willing to stray too far from the relative safety of the TARDIS. Even though she is on an alien world she is still not convinced that they have travelled in time, until Mary, a human colonist she befriends, tells her that the year is 2471.

Jo is a rather superstitious girl, despite the Doctor’s attempts at making a scientist of her, and believes in both magic (
The Dæmons
) and ghosts (
Day of the Daleks
). She doesn’t hold to the Doctor’s thinking that science can explain everything, even though she learns that the satanic creature feared by the inhabitants of Devil’s End is actually an alien called a Dæmon and that black magic is just the remnant of the Dæmon’s old science. Later, when confronted by ‘ghosts’, Jo discovers that they are merely echoes of future and past times or time lines crossing over. For instance she and the Doctor are confronted by slightly older versions of themselves in the Doctor’s UNIT lab, a result of the Doctor’s playing with the time mechanism of the TARDIS console.

She is quick to form opinions, often seeing things in black and white. She considers Anat’s time travelling guerrilla force to be criminals (
Day of the Daleks
) even though the Doctor tries to make her see the truth. Later she is easily taken in by the Controller’s story of future Earth, despite the Doctor’s assertion that twenty-second century Earth is not the free and prosperous society. Indeed, as Jo later discovers first hand, by then humanity has been conquered and enslaved by the Daleks again.

With the Doctor convinced he has the TARDIS working, and Jo dolled up for a night on the town with Captain Mike Yates, he persuades her to join him on a quick joyride. This takes them to Peladon
(Curse of Peladon)
and she is introduced to King Peladon as Princess Josephine of TARDIS. She catches the king’s eye, and is quite taken by him, until she realises he is looking for a political ally – failing to see that he is clearly attracted to her. Once again her simplistic view of life interferes with her thinking. She is not, however, above using his interest in her to get him to spare the Doctor’s life. Over the course of her stay on Peladon, Jo warms to the king and freely admits she would love to remain behind with him, but she cannot, and is upset when it comes time to leave. She starts to become used to TARDIS travel, and insists on accompanying the Doctor on his next mission for the Time Lords to the planet Solos in
The Mutants
, claiming that he needs her to look after him. While there she discovers the state of the Earth Empire and how bad things have become on Earth by the thirtieth century. It is a key moment for Jo, awakening in her a concern for her home planet; the first seeds of her eventual departure from the Doctor are planted.

Although charmed by the Master while he is imprisoned in
The Sea Devils
, Jo never forgets what he is capable of, and is insistent on going with the Doctor to Atlantis when he pursues the Master in
The Time Monster,
even though she knows it will be dangerous. During this adventure the Doctor appears to die, having been cast out into the time vortex; such is her grief that she doesn’t care what the Master intends to do to her. Later, to defeat the Master, she is more willing than the Doctor to sacrifice them both and forces the Doctor to ram his TARDIS into the Master’s. As a result of this ‘time ram’ they end up in a netherworld created by the Chronovore, Kronos, which Jo believes to be heaven – a place she considers groovy. This is not the last time she believes they are in heaven. When she and the Doctor are later transported to Omega’s anti-matter world she believes it to be the afterlife.

In
The Three Doctors
she is initially confused by the idea of more than one Doctor, until Benton explains who the Second Doctor is, and she learns about regeneration. She is also infuriated by the Doctors’ inability to work together, and later when they are faced with the might of Omega’s will, she convinces them that as two Time Lords they should be able to combat him. At the end of this adventure, in thanks for saving them, the Time Lords finally lift the Doctor’s exile. Seeing the delight on the Doctor’s face, Jo worries that he will leave her behind. Of course he tells her otherwise and promises her a trip to Metebelis Three to break in the new dematerialisation circuit.

They never quite make it there, however, instead ending up in the Miniscope – a kind of intergalactic zoo (
Carnival of Monsters
) containing a variety of life forms including humans, Ogrons and Cybermen. By this point she is becoming an old hand at time travel and takes most things in her stride, but upon meeting the horrifying Drashigs a new fear is born. It is a fear that the Master later attempts to use against her with his fear-inducing device in
Frontier in Space
; other fears that manifest include a Sea Devil and a Mutt, but Jo is able to combat the device, impressing the Master no end.

Such is her experience with the Doctor that she expects trouble when the Draconian ship docks with the Earth ship the TARDIS has landed on, despite knowing nothing about the political cold-war happening between the two planets. Her instincts serve her well. She ends up stranded on Earth, a ‘guest’ of the Earth Empire while they decide what to do with her, meanwhile the Doctor is carted off to the Lunar penal colony. She is rescued by an unlikely ally, the Master, and she is not afraid to stand up to him, even though she needs his help to get off Earth and rescue the Doctor. It is a strange alliance, but she is not so easily charmed this time. At the end of this adventure the Doctor is gravely wounded, and Jo helps him into the TARDIS. Such is her concern for him that she appears to have forgotten that he sent a message to the Time Lords to guide the TARDIS to the secret Dalek base on Spiridon (
Planet of the Daleks
).

While on Spiridon, Jo meets a group of Thals, and bonds with one in particular, Latep with whom a slight romance develops. With the Dalek army destroyed, Latep asks the Doctor’s permission for Jo’s hand. Jo is not consulted on this, but when he finally asks her to return to Skaro with him she declines, preferring to return home where she has her own life, a life she cannot leave behind.

This decision is fortunate as when she is back on Earth a young activist, Professor Clifford Jones, is waiting for her (
The Green Death
). Jo has been following the exploits of Global Chemicals in the Welsh mining town of Llanfairfach. In particular she is interested in the happenings at the Wholeweal Community run by Cliff Jones, who is creating a new fungus based protein. Jones reminds her of a younger Doctor and she is determined to go to Llanfairfach and assist them against Global Chemicals, even if that means she has to resign from UNIT. The Doctor tries to entice her to come with him to Metebelis Three, certain he can get there this time, but Jo is so fired up about Jones’ work that she is not really listening. She heads to Llanfairfach with the Brigadier. The Doctor decides to take a trip to Metebelis Three alone. Before he does he ponders the truth of the situation – ‘the fledgling flies the coup’. He knows, even before she does, that Jo is going to be leaving him soon.