Companions: Fifty Years of Doctor Who Assistants (49 page)

Travelling with the Ninth Doctor, Rose’s first visit to an alien planet, Justicia (mentioned in passing during the episode
Boom Town
), a penal colony sprawled across seven planets, is the subject of the 2005
Doctor Who New Series Adventures
novel,
The Monsters Inside.
Prior to this, Rose’s travels have either been Earthbound or to space stations. She appears in all of the first twelve
New Series Adventures
novels, the next of which,
Winner Takes All
, sees her back on Earth and more specifically back on the Powell Estate, where her mum, Jackie, is mugged and Mickey reveals himself to be quite the obsessive gamer, talking about
Grand Theft Auto
, Sonic the Hedgehog, X-boxes and Playstations.

Rose’s relationships with both her mum and Mickey are touched upon in the
New Series Adventures
series, and none more so than in
The
Feast of the Drowned
, where she travels with the Tenth Doctor. The story examines how the dynamics of not only these relationships are altered by Rose’s increasing absences but also her friendship with an old school friend, Kiesha. When Rose returns to find that Mickey and Kiesha have got together she is unimpressed.

Her jealousy surfaces again in the 2007
Doctor Who Magazine
comic strip,
The Green-Eyed Monster
, when the Tenth Doctor has a group of actors play Mickey’s stunning girlfriends in a bid to flood the psyche of a creature possessing Rose, one that feeds on jealousy. Rose’s attraction to the Doctor is directly addressed in the story and in order to further ensure the creature’s defeat the Doctor even fakes a romance with Jackie.

Clayton Hickman comments on
The Green-Eyed Monster
(reprinted in the graphic novel
The Bethrothal of Sontar
: The comic strip was to begin with Rose, in the TARDIS, waking up in bed. However, this was quashed by Russell T Davies who said that in the new series, nobody sleeps in the TARDIS. (Though, in the TV episode
The Doctor’s Wife
, it is disclosed that the TARDIS has bunk beds. Also, in the 2006 novel,
The Stone Rose
– in which Mickey discovers a statue of Rose in a museum – it is revealed that the Doctor has a set of
Winnie the Pooh
bed linens.)

In
The Stone Rose
the Doctor asks Rose if she has ever come close to marrying anyone that she shouldn’t have. This could be a reference to Jimmy Stone, an ex-boyfriend of Rose’s to whom she was engaged.

However, all this occurred prior to her meeting the Doctor and we’ll return to that in a moment. More probable though is that it is a reference to one of Rose’s stranger episodes in the Expanded Universe, namely the 2005 novel,
Only Human
, in which she marries a Neanderthal man named Tillun. Marriage sees her dispensing with Tyler and becoming Rose Glathicgacymcilliach. Technically though she ends up a widow as Tillun remains in his own time where he lives out his life.

Probably the best source of biographical information about Rose can be found in an article called
Meet Rose
, included in the 2006
Doctor Who Annual
and written by Russell T Davies. Here we learn that Rose’s middle name is Marion and that she has always dreamed of travelling. However, a school trip to France at the age of thirteen was the furthest she had ever got and this didn’t end well; although it did reveal an early taste for adventure; Rose, and Shareen Costello, her best friend, gave their teachers the slip and rode a train to a completely different destination from the scheduled one. They were eventually found by the police and subsequently sent home.

Rose started dating Mickey Smith, who lived on the same estate, when she was fourteen years old, claiming that it really wasn’t anything special. At school further trouble occurred when she managed to talk the school choir into going on strike, resulting in a three day suspension for her. Rose, despite her ongoing tendency for mischief, did reasonably well in her exams, getting an A, a couple of Bs, four Cs and finally a D in science. Encouraged by this she made plans to study English, Art and French at A-Level. Sadly though, this wasn’t to be the case.

Jimmy Stone was twenty, had the title of fittest boy on the estate and played bass in a local band, No Hot Ashes. Rose fell very deeply for Jimmy and, after dumping Mickey and leaving home, she moved into a bedsit with him. Only five months later she was back at home, heartbroken and £800 in debt whilst Jimmy was in Amsterdam with a woman named Noosh. Mickey forgave Rose and they got back together. She then got a temporary job to try and pay off her debt before getting, with Jackie’s help, a more permanent position in Henriks, which of course, was destined to go up in flames.

In addition to this Rose is a fan of the Vengaboys, according to the 2006 short story
Voice from the Vortex!
in
Doctor
Who
Magazine
(written in the style of 1960s comics), as well as the Erasure
song
Sometimes
which she sings during
Opera of Doom
, included in the 2007
Doctor Who Storybook
.

What kind of an individual would get stranded in the Ataline System with only a traffic cone? Welcome to Captain Jack Harkness. The Ataline incident is referred to in
The Stealers of Dreams
, a 2005 Ninth Doctor novel which is set in a world where fiction is against the law. Here Jack references his connection with the Time Agency. Jack tells the enemy that he is a Time Agent and will summon a Time Agency warfleet should he be forced to. This is a highly significant threat to most alien races as the Time Agency is much feared.

The Stealers of Dreams
is also notable in that Jack mentions knowing the Face of Boe, touching on a contentious subject since the television episode
The Last of the Time Lords
; is Jack Harkness the Face of Boe?
The Stealers of Dreams
was released almost two and half years before
The Last of the Time Lords
was aired, and the idea of a connection hadn’t yet been fully conceptualised. In this novel Jack recalls the Face of Boe as being a local figure of some fame in his own time, which doesn’t negate the Face being Jack, living through Jack’s own pre-Doctor life.

Rather than looking to the
Doctor Who
novels, audio stories and magazines as a source of information about the development of Jack’s character, it is more fruitful to delve into
Torchwood
’s Expanded Universe. Although in
The Forgotten
, a 2008-2009
Doctor Who
comic strip from IDW, during the Ninth Doctor part of the story Jack is mentioned by a soldier who talks about him surviving a bullet in the head. This is in keeping with Jack’s TV timeline which suggests on a few occasions that he left Torchwood Three in order to enlist in both World Wars.

In the 2008
Torchwood
novel,
The Twilight Streets
, the 1940s Jack is seen as being critical and disapproving of Torchwood’s approach and methods and is persuaded by Greg, a former boyfriend, to become a freelance agent. Also in the novel is an explanation that during the events of
Boom Town
– in which a younger Jack arrives with the Doctor and Rose to refuel the TARDIS at Cardiff Bay – to avoid a paradox involving his past self Jack puts a lockdown on all Torchwood activity.
Trace Memory
also sees Jack still working as a freelance agent for Torchwood in the 1960s.

Much like
Doctor Who Magazine
, but with less frequency, the monthly
Torchwood Magazine
featured comic strips in which Jack made regular appearances. Perhaps most noteworthy here is the 2009 story
Captain Jack and the Selkie
, written by John Barrowman and his sister Carole E Barrowman. This writing duo return for the 2012 novel,
Exodus Code
, which is set after the events of
Torchwood: Miracle Day
, and sees Jack dealing with more consequences of his immortal life, brought down somewhat by becoming mortal in
Miracle Day
. He is no longer convinced he will remain immortal.

Martha makes her debut in the Expanded Universe a month before her first appearance on television.

In Terrance Dick’s novella
Made of Steel
she mentions that she is the cousin of Torchwood Institute employee, Adeola Oshodi, which is later confirmed in
Smith and Jones
. (Her identical cousin?)

One of the traits to emerge regarding her character on reading the novels is that Martha is quite a dedicated blogger. In
The Last Dodo
she refers to the creatures as ‘giant mental birds’ in her blog, showing a flair for vivid description, while in
Wetworld
her entry reads ‘the time the Doctor left me stuck in the TARDIS – in a swamp!’.

When she steps into the TARDIS, Martha is also entering the life of a Doctor who is still very much haunted by the memory of Rose, and, it appears, is still very much in a state of grief. Martha finds Rose’s jacket in the TARDIS in
Peacemaker and the Doctor
doesn’t cope very well with the discovery at all. Incidentally, in the same novel Martha mentions that she purchased her own jacket from Henriks. When the Doctor tells Martha not to be upset if the TARDIS refers to her as Rose in the 2008 novel,
The Many Hands
, there is a sense of how intimidating it possibly is for her living in a post-Rose TARDIS.

Focusing on the year between
The Sound of Drums
and the
Last of the Time Lords
,
The Story of Martha
, a 2008 novel, sees the character getting a story all to herself. It traces Martha’s journey from the Toclafane attack, as she arrived on Earth, to her eventual return to the United Kingdom, where a showdown with the Master awaits. This, probably more than any other work, provides the reader with a real insight into Martha’s courage, determination and resilience as she tries to survive in a hostile environment in order to spread the Doctor’s story to as many people as possible.

Martha’s medical expertise, her employment with UNIT and her personal life are all touched upon in the Expanded Universe. Her medical training is utilised occasionally, but in
The Last Soldier
, a comic strip in
Doctor Who Magazine
, she talks of returning to a planet in her professional capacity only. It tells of a world on which only the very last male and female survivors of a war, each from opposing sides, are able to reproduce. Martha talks about returning to deliver the new arrival. Referring to the war, she states that she sees quite enough fighting at the hospital on a typical Saturday night.

Tesseract
, an IDW 2010 comic strip, sees Martha filling in as UNIT’s Scientific Director while in another 2010 IDW strip,
Don’t Step on the Grass
, the reason for Martha’s departure from UNIT is established as being the incident involving the Osterhagen key. In this story she is working with UNIT on a strictly temporary basis as a freelancer, and even this is done only as a favour to Malcolm Taylor (UNIT’s scientific advisor last seen on television in
Planet of the Dead
), who is a friend of hers. In both stories Martha’s marital status is alluded to;
Tesseract
mentions her recent wedding but Martha doesn’t specify the identity of the man she has married.
Don’t Step on the Grass
however has Captain Erisa Magambo (featured on television in both
Turn Left
and
Planet of the Dead
) referring to her as Mrs Smith, which may indicate that she is now married to Mickey Smith. Fueling this allusion is Martha’s observation that Matthew is suffering from ‘tin-dog syndrome’ – a depressed state of mind where the sufferer feels like the least valuable companion. Mickey Smith is, of course, the original victim of tin-dog syndrome in
School Reunion
but Martha isn’t present and wouldn’t have known about it unless she found out some other way…

Donna definitely tops Tegan in terms of referencing popular culture. Making her first Expanded Universe audio appearance in 2008’s
Pest Control
, Donna makes repeated
Star Trek
references and joins the Doctor in briefly assuming the aliases of Captain Kirk (Donna) and Dr McCoy (the Doctor). You have to wonder if Donna is a bit of a Trekker as in
The Nemonite Invasion
, a 2009 audio adventure, she says the Doctor’s mind-reading skills are very much like Spock’s mind-meld. To this the Doctor comments that he thinks she watches far too much television. You can see his point as she goes on to refer to him as Joe 90 in the same story and even claims that she and the Doctor are in the employ of
The X-Files
when asked for identification at one point. Returning to
Pest Control
, Donna calls one of the centaurs, Firenze, which is also the name of a centaur in the
Harry Potter
series. She also appears to be a
He Man and the Masters of the Universe
fan as she twice refers to a villain as Skeletor; once to Meng in
The Immortal Emperor
, a comic strip in the 2009
Doctor Who Storybook
, then again to one of the Sycorax in
The Widow’s Curse
.