Mona Lisa's Revenge - SJA 3.5

In which Luke, Clyde and Rani's class win a trip to the International Gallery in London for a special preview of a forthcoming exhibition. The curator, Lionel Harding, has finally managed to arrange for Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece known as "The Mona Lisa" to be shown in the UK. The reason for Class 11T being chosen is because Clyde had won an art competition. His work will also be on display. Luke is annoyed to see that he has painted three female soldiers in futuristic fashions, one of whom is carrying a Sontaran blaster. Sarah had warned them about never revealing anything about the work they do. Harding's assistant Miss Trupp has always carried a torch for him, but he has only ever had eyes for the painting. Shortly before the class arrives, the painting comes to life and Mona Lisa swaps places with Trupp - so that when Harding unveils the picture everyone sees her image in the frame.
Headmaster Haresh Chandra had earlier confiscated all of the pupils' mobile phones, so Luke is unable to contact his mother and warn her about what has happened. Mona Lisa removes the Sontaran weapon from Clyde's painting. Mr Chandra has evacuated all the pupils from the gallery, but Luke, Clyde and his daughter have managed to remain inside.

They notice that the weapon is missing from Clyde's painting just as Mona Lisa arrives. Harding decides to cooperate with her whilst the others flee into the gallery. She informs him that she is looking for her brother, who is somewhere inside this building. She is happy to have life, but discovers that she cannot leave the gallery without being reduced to lifeless paint flakes.
Mr Smith, meanwhile, alerts Sarah to what has been happening after monitoring the news reports. Sarah heads for the gallery. She cannot find any of the police officers who are supposed to be here, until she notices them hidden within a number of paintings. Sarah confronts Harding and Mona Lisa - only for the latter to trap her inside a nearby painting of a country scene...

Luke and the others beg Mona Lisa to free Sarah but she refuses. When they run off with the Sarah painting, she brings the image of a Highwayman to life and sends him after them. Harding then helps Mona Lisa find her brother - which is really another painting created at the same time that she was. Harding does not know which image this might be, until everyone starts to hear loud growls coming from the basement. Harding then realises that the painting is one known as "The Abomination", which was so disturbing that it was never exhibited. It is locked away in a basement store room. It was painted by an obscure artist who lived near to Leonardo and is said to have gone mad. The painting is in a locked container which cannot be opened. Clyde is taken prisoner and Luke and Rani are forced to surrender. Luke realises that an ornate Chinese puzzle box elsewhere in the gallery is the key for the container. Harding smashes this to prevent the Abomination being released. Mona Lisa is about to shoot him when Luke points out that there is another way to open the container. Clyde had earlier sketched the box - so Mona Lisa can make this image real. This is used to free the Abomination.

However, Clyde had also sketched an image of K9 in the same pad, and this is also brought to life. K9 fires upon the Abomination and destroys it, which causes Mona Lisa and the Highwayman to return to their pictures, and frees those humans who had been trapped.
It transpires that the artist who created the Abomination had used pigments derived from a sentient meteorite, which he had also lent to Leonardo for his portrait. This is how the paintings had come to life and were so interconnected. Harding attempts to woo Miss Trupp, now that his illusions about the Mona Lisa have been shattered, but she had overheard his negative comments about her whilst she had been trapped in the painting. Sarah tells Clyde she will be having words with him about putting alien technology on display to the public.

Mona Lisa's Revenge was written by Phil Ford, and was first broadcast on 12th and 13th November, 2009. The story was originally developed by writer Brian Dooley, but underwent major rewrites by Ford, who was the show's lead writer, and so he ended up gaining the credit. It was Dooley's idea to have a story about paintings coming to life.
The notion of an alien threat having its origins in a sentient meteorite fragment had already been done in the second season story Day of the Clown. The Doctor Who story Fear Her had already featured pictures coming to life.
The main guest artist is Suranne Jones, who plays the living Mona Lisa with a broad Mancunian accent. She first came to fame in Coronation Street, and will later appear as Idris, who becomes host to the TARDIS Matrix in The Doctor's Wife. Lionel Harding is portrayed by Jeff Rawle, who had previously played Plantagenet in the 1984 Doctor Who story Frontios. Miss Trupp is Liza Sadovy, whilst the Highwayman - the Dark Rider - is regular monster performer Paul Kasey. As he has been painted with a mask over the lower part of his face, he cannot speak - never having had any mouth. The Abomination is never actually seen, beyond a glimpse of a clawed hand.

Overall, a story very much played for laughs, in which Lis Sladen features only briefly - so you could call it a Sarah-lite story.
Things you might like to know:

• The International Gallery had featured earlier in the year, when Lady Christina de Souza had stolen the Cup of Athelstan from the venue - which gets a mention from Harding.
• The room where the Mona Lisa is to be displayed is our old friend The Temple of Peace in Cardiff, which has been providing locations ever since The End of the World in 2005.
• Other scenes are shot in the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff, which also features regularly in Doctor Who and its spin-offs. It is recognisable by the statue of David with the head of Goliath on the marble stairway landing. It played the Musee D'Orsay in Vincent and the Doctor, for example, whilst the statue was boxed up when the venue was used for the W3 Foundation in Dark Water.
• Technically K9 doesn't actually feature in this story, as it is simply Clyde's drawing of him which has been brought to life.
• Clyde's talents as an artist had previously been mentioned in the series two story Mark of the Berserker, when Luke had encouraged him to develop this.
• The Mona Lisa had previously featured prominently in the classic 1979 story City of Death. Then it had been suggested that the surviving copy had been one of the ones upon which the Doctor had written "This is a fake" on the blank canvas.

The Macra Terror - an animated review

Having been away on holiday, I only got round to watching the animated version of The Macra Terror over the weekend.
On the whole, the animated versions of lost stories - or missing episodes from incomplete ones - have been well done. I think the only ones I really did not like were the two which completed The Reign of Terror, owing to the fact that the director thought he was Orson Welles. Being entirely lost, the director of The Macra Terror animation could do pretty much what he wanted - sticking rigidly to the telesnaps, or giving us a fresh interpretation. If only plugging gaps in an incomplete story then the animation really has to match with the real episodes which surround it - and this The Reign of Terror Parts Four & Five singularly failed to do.
Director Charles Norton has chosen to pay homage to the visual remnants of this story, but has decided not to become hidebound by them.
Animation allows you to what the Classic Series DVD range has been doing with a number of stories - give them a new 21st Century look. A bit like offering updated CGI VFX.
We all know that only one Macra prop was made, and it was a massive, unwieldy thing which limited what they could do with it in the studio. Anneke Wills is on record as saying that for the Macra to grab anyone, the actor had to throw themselves into its claws.
The Macra here are much, much bigger than the TV ones. No throwing yourselves on top of them to make it look like they've grabbed you here. The animated versions are big enough to pick someone up by their ankle and dangle them off the floor. There are also lots of them, whereas only the one could ever be shown at a time before.

The colony in which the story is set can now be shown in all its widescreen glory, with large sections of it seen up close - rather than just the limitations of a few flats in some studio-bound sets.
The likenesses of the main characters are all pretty spot on - especially Terence Lodge's Medok and Peter Jeffrey's Pilot. Even Ian Fairbairn's Questa is recognisable, if you are familiar with the actor.
A few gripes though. I had read in advance that one whole scene was cut out of Part One - the section dealing with the colony's Spa area. It doesn't add anything to the plot, but it does provide some nice humour and character moments, and the bottom line is that if they are going to make these animated versions then they really ought to give us the whole thing. All Doctor Who is precious - especially when it comes to these lost stories - and I don't like the idea of them deleting things. Apparently one of the reasons that they cut the sequence was due to cost. I'd like to know how they could come up with the money for extraneous sequences such as the pre-credits throwback to the end of The Moonbase - which totally fails to match with the real sequence which still exists - and yet complain about lack of funds.
The only good thing about this pre-credits sequence is the beautiful shot of the TARDIS in space.

They also chose to animate the title sequence - when they could have just used the real thing and spent the time and money elsewhere.
The loss of the Spa scenes also gives us some continuity problems. As I've said, the stuff from The Moonbase does not match the opening here. Everyone is in the wrong costume, and Polly already has the short hair which she doesn't get until the visit to the Spa in the broadcast version. Another problem is that they have Jamie in his sweater and kilt throughout, when we know that he also changed into a uniform similar to Ben's when he gets sent down the gas mines.
Whilst these things were a minor irritation, I was impressed overall by the story as presented.
I elected to watch the Black & White version, which comes on the second of the DVD's discs - purely because that's how the story was broadcast. However, this animation was intended to be done in colour first and foremost. (Power of the Daleks, on the other hand, was made in B&W format, and only given a colourised version later). I've heard that the colour version looks really good, so I will give it a go on my next watching.
Of the extras, the most interesting is the 10 minute clip from Part One of The Wheel in Space - which makes you long to see the full thing done.
Hopefully lots of people will buy this - because that's the only way to ensure that more lost stories will get the animation treatment.

Inspirations - The Invisible Enemy

In the latter years of the 1970's, and on into the 1980's, many Sci-Fi films and TV series insisted that some sort of cute robot be included amongst the central characters. Buck Rogers had Twiki, Battlestar Galactica had Daggit, Disney's The Black Hole had V.I.N.CENT, and so on and so forth. This was all a reaction to the inclusion of the hugely popular C-3PO and R2-D2 in Star Wars.
That film was released in the US in May 1977, and did not hit the UK until December of that year.
The Invisible Enemy was produced in April 1977, and screened that October - so the arrival of K9 in Doctor Who was most assuredly not down to the influence of Star Wars.
Besides, K9 was originally only going to appear in this single story as a one-off character - which explains why the machine is under repairs for the next story. He simply wasn't in the original story brief.
Now, Star Wars was filmed in the UK, and many of the VFX gang at the BBC would have known about the film from colleagues working at Pinewood Studios, but it is unlikely that writers Bob Baker and Dave Martin would have known much about it.
K9 is the personal computer of Professor Marius, who is played by Frederick Jaeger. Jaeger was a friend of Baker and Martin, and they had given the name Jaeger to the scientist character in their 1972 story The Mutants. He did not get the part named after him, although he had already appeared in the show back in the 1960's, playing Jano in The Savages. More recently, he had featured as Professor Sorenson in Planet of Evil.

Baker and Martin took as their starting point a story about an alien infection. Doctor Who had always shown the human race venturing out into space, colonising new worlds, but the risks of unknown viruses and illnesses posing a threat, instead of aliens and monsters, had rarely been touched upon.
The Ark had shown what might happen if a TARDIS traveller introduced the common cold to a people from the future who no longer had any immunity to it, whilst The Moonbase had featured a throwaway line from the Doctor about the TARDIS being a sterile environment, and that he and his companions were generally illness-free. Illnesses in the programme tended to come in the form of biological weapons, deliberately engineered by the enemy to attack humans - be it the Cybermen and their neuroptropic viruses, or plagues concocted by Daleks or Silurians.
The virus in this story floats about in space in the vicinity of Saturn, waiting to infect a passing spaceship which can carry it to someplace where it can incubate and then spread throughout the colonists. It is said to be noetic - relating to mental activity or intellect. After infecting a space shuttle crew, who will be tasked with setting up a home for it, the virus then attacks the TARDIS - the most intelligent thing it comes across. It quickly transfers itself to the Doctor. It ignores Leela, as she is all animal instinct and intuition. Later, it will be seen to temporarily infect K9.
The Doctor is taken over but manages to fight off its influence for a time, and guides the TARDIS to the nearest hospital - the Bi-Al Foundation which is built into an asteroid. This is where Professor Marius works alongside his computer K9. He is a dog lover, but could not afford to transport his real dog to the Foundation with him - and so built his computer in the shape of a canine, named K9.

The VFX designer on this story was the late, great Ian Scoones, assisted by Mat Irvine due to the amount of FX required. Also brought on board was Tony Harding, and it was he who designed and built K9. The first version he came up with was a large, doberman-style animal, with legs, but was then asked to make it simpler, and went for what is basically a box with a dog-like head. Adjustments had to be made as the script was developed - such as the addition of the ticker tape dispenser beneath the nose.
For a Sci-Fi show, Doctor Who had rarely ventured into outer space. Spaceships had been seen briefly in space in stories such as The Sensorites, but spaceships were usually just there to get the aliens to a planet where the real story would take place. The Wheel in Space was the first story to be set entirely off-planet, and had featured the titular space station W3, as well as the Silver Carrier rocket and a Cyberman spaceship. A number of spacewalks were also shown. A short time later we had the first real attempt at what is commonly known as "space opera", with The Space Pirates.
Much of the action in The Invisible Enemy takes place in space - either in various shuttles or within the asteroid hospital. The other main location is the refueling station on Saturn's moon Titan.
Not a lot was known about Titan at the time, so it is presented as being similar to our own moon, with no atmosphere. We now know that it is in fact the only moon in our Solar System which does possess an atmosphere, as it is shrouded in a dense orange fog of organonitrogen. (When this story was released on DVD it came with optional new CGI effects, and the black star-scape is replaced with an orange haze. Unfortunately, these changes failed to be carried through thoroughly, and there are scenes set inside the base where you can still see the star-scape through the windows). We also now know that because of this it has weather systems - a methane cycle rather than a water cycle - and the surface is not all rock and ice. There are lakes of liquid hydrocarbons.

Once at the Bi-Al Foundation, the Doctor comes up with a plan to use the TARDIS dimensional stabilser, plus clones of himself and Leela, to delve into his own body and fight the Nucleus of the virus there. This section of the story has a movie inspiration - 1966's Fantastic Voyage, which starred Donald Pleasence, Stephen Boyd and Raquel Welch. The film was based on a story by Otto Klement and Jerome Bixby. In this, a medical team are miniaturised within a submersible craft and injected into the body of a scientist defector from the Soviet Union who has been injured in an assassination attempt. The team have to sort out a blood clot in his brain which has rendered him comatose. Among the many hazards the team has to negotiate is attack by antibodies from the body's immune defence system - just as Leela and the clone of Lowe are attacked here.

This is the first story to be produced under the vision of new producer Graham Williams. He wanted to take the show into more hard Sci-Fi areas, and it is noticeable that spaceships feature prominently in his era of the show. He had also been tasked with getting rid of the Gothic horror trappings which had characterised his predecessor's reign, as well as injecting more humour into the proceedings. Ironically, this story features one of the staples of the Hinchcliffe era - body horror and physical and mental possession. Robert Holmes is still Script Editor, after all - although he is about to step aside for Anthony Read.
One thing Williams did not like was the Jules Verne-style wooden TARDIS console room design. He asked this story's designer to return it to a more traditional futuristic look. The designer in question was Barry Newbery - the man who had come up with the wooden console room in the first place. Long before the notion that the ship has "desktop themes", the Doctor blames the similarity of the new console room to the original one on the ship's lack of imagination.
Apparently the shots of the Nucleus' eggs in their tank on Titan were derived from test footage which the BBC VFX crew had prepared for an intended Quatermass remake - presumably Quatermass II, which features alien organisms being prepared in environment tanks.
And this is the second story from Baker and Martin to feature a catchphrase from the characters. Previously they had people stating "Eldrad must live!" in The Hand of Fear, and here those infected claim "Contact has been made".
Next time: Graham Williams' third story in charge, and he just can't get away from Hammer Horror. He almost had vampires for his first story, and now we have black magic rituals deep in the English countryside...

The Eternity Trap - SJA 3.4

In which Sarah Jane Smith goes to visit her old friend Professor Rivers, who is carrying out a series of experiments into the paranormal at Ashen Hill Manor. This old house is said to be haunted, and Prof. Rivers wishes to investigate the reported phenomena. Sarah brings Clyde and Rani along - Luke remaining at home with K9. Sarah is skeptical about the supernatural, believing that everything must have a rational, scientific explanation. Assisting Rivers is a young man named Toby, who is a firm believer in the paranormal. Rivers explains that the house belonged to a man named Lord Marchwood back in the 1660's. He employed an alchemist named Erasmus Darkening, whom he invited to stay at the Manor. Soon after, Marchwood's children - Elizabeth and Joseph - went missing, and it is said that the Lord's ghost haunts the building, forever searching for his missing offspring. Darkening was reputedly a master of the dark arts. Since this time, other people who have lived here have disappeared without trace, and the building now stands empty.
Sarah fails to see a book she was just looking at  - a history of the house - move by itself, whilst out in the garden Clyde and Rani see the fountain suddenly stop, and wet footprints appear on the pavement. Entering an outhouse after hearing the sound of a girl crying, Clyde briefly catches a glimpse of a man's face in an old mirror.

In the house, the camera covering the children's nursery suddenly cuts out. Rivers goes to investigate, and is found to have vanished when the others go looking for her. The toys in the room all start to move on their own and a message appears on the mirror - "Get Out!". Clyde and Rani then find the entrance to a secret tunnel, which leads them down into an ancient laboratory, which they realise must have belonged to Darkening. Sarah has gone out into the garden, where she is menaced by a creature with red eyes which is lurking in the undergrowth. A man in 17th Century dress suddenly appears and chases it off with his sword - the ghost of Lord Marchwood. Clyde and Rani find that the laboratory is not quite as it seems, as they discover advanced technology. Darkening suddenly appears in the room with them...
They are rescued by the arrival of Marchwood. They discover that the house is full of the ghosts of those who have vanished here - including Elizabeth and Joseph. Prof. Rivers is also present, but she has not been absorbed into the house like the others. She appears to Sarah and warns her that Darkening is coming for them. Sarah realises that the ghosts are really people trapped between dimensions. Examining Darkening's equipment, she deduces that he is an alien, who had become trapped on Earth and was trying to get back to his own universe.

Toby explains to Sarah why he studies the paranormal, despite pressure from his scientist father to concentrate on more conventional science. As a child, he had been haunted by something which came into his bedroom every night. Clyde and Rani are chased outside, and find themselves locked out and at the mercy of the creature in the bushes. Lord Marchwood once again comes to the rescue. Back in the house, Sarah has worked out that the equipment in the laboratory has allowed the creature to cross over from Darkening's dimension, and it has also given him a prolonged lifespan. Darkening is lured into a trap - forced by Marchwood into stepping into a metal circle in the floor of the great hall. His powers are drained and he is destroyed. His death frees all of the trapped people - including Prof. Rivers.
The following morning Sarah, Clyde and Rani are about to leave when Sarah points out that there never were any real ghosts in the house - but then she sees Lord Marchwood and his children watching them from an upstairs window...

The Eternity Trap was written by Phil Ford, and was first broadcast on 5th and 6th November, 2009. It sees the return of Professor Rivers, played by Floella Benjamin, who had first appeared in the closing story of the first season - The Lost Boy - and who had then featured in Series 2's Day of the Clown.
It is a highly effective haunted house story - far scarier than the later attempt by the parent programme to cover this topic - 2013's Series 7 story Hide.
Being set within the confines of the manor, there is only a small guest cast. Other than Benjamin, we have Donald Sumpter as Darkening, and Callum Blue as Lord Marchwood, with Toby being played by Aiden Gillen, who is best known for the ITV comedy drama series Benidorm these days.
Sumpter had previously appeared in Doctor Who on two occasions - as technician Enrico Casali in The Wheel in Space, and as submarine commander Ridgeway in The Sea Devils. He would later portray the Time Lord Rassilon in Hell Bent, when Timothy Dalton proved unavailable to reprise the role.
The creature lurking in the bushes is never shown. We see things from its point of view most of the time, otherwise it is just a pair of red eyes hidden in the foliage and sound effects.

Things you might like to know:

• This is one of only two stories in the entire run of the series in which Tommy Knight (Luke) does not appear.
• And it's the only one where there are no sequences set in Bannerman Road.
• In 2010 a novelisation of this story was published (as Haunted House), written by Trevor Baxendale. It was aimed at people learning to read.
• Sarah identifies the thing which young Toby saw in his bedroom as being the Trickster.
• There is a fan theory that Darkening is actually a rogue Time Lord - extending his life as he has reached the end of his regenerations. This theory depends on some hindsight, as the Doctor at this time had made it plain that no other Time Lords existed. However, we later discover that Gallifrey was only ever hidden in a pocket universe, and this might be the dimension from which Darkening had come.
• Ford seems to have been inspired by Nigel Kneale's spooky drama The Stone Tape, which was first broadcast on Christmas Day, 1972. The Stone Tape theory holds that a building can absorb psychic energy from its inhabitants - especially traumatic events - and may be an explanation for hauntings.

G is for... Grant, Jo

Josephine Grant - better known as Jo - was the niece of a British UN diplomat. She used this family connection to get a job with UNIT, where the Brigadier decided to assign her to the Doctor as his new assistant. On first meeting the Doctor, he presumed she was the tea lady, and she ruined one of his experiments with a fire extinguisher when it appeared to have burst into flames. The Doctor did not want a new assistant - unless it was a fully qualified scientist like Liz Shaw. The Brigadier insisted that he break the bad news to her, but her enthusiasm was such that he decided to give her a try. She claimed to have studied science at A-Level - only to later admit that she didn't ever claim to have passed. Her first assignment was to trace the Master, who had recently arrived on Earth and who had stolen an intact Nestene control sphere. All plastics factories had to be checked. Jo found the one where the Master was based, but her clumsiness got her captured. She was hypnotised by the Master into returning to UNIT HQ where she was compelled to activate a bomb. She was later attacked by a Nestene controlled troll doll, as well as almost suffocating when fired upon by a Nestene plastic daffodil.

Some time later she visited Stangmoor Prison with the Doctor, in order to observe a test of the Keller Process, which drained evil from the minds of hardened criminals. Jo got caught up in a prison riot, and whilst confined to the hospital wing she befriended a man named Barnham, who was the last to undergo the process. He could placate the Mind Parasite which lived in the Keller Machine - brought to Earth by the Master. her influence over Barnham allowed the Doctor to use him to control the parasite, and Jo was saddened when Barnham was later killed by the Master.
After welcoming American agent Bill Filer to UNIT HQ, the alien spaceship Axos arrived on Earth. Jo disregarded orders to follow the Doctor and the Brigadier into the ship, where she was confronted by one of the Axons in their natural, tentacled form. She was shocked to discover that the Doctor and Master were planning to join forces and abandon the planet to Axos - but this was simply a ruse by the Doctor to trap the creature in a time-loop.
Soon after this, Jo got her first trip in the TARDIS, when the Time Lords operated it by remote control to send the Doctor to the planet Uxarieus, where the Master was planning to steal a powerful doomsday weapon. She made friends with Mary Ashe, daughter of the leader of a party of Earth colonists on the planet. She was captured by miners from IMC, only to be saved by a group of the planet's indigenous people - who took her to their city where they planned on sacrificing her. She was rescued by the Doctor.
Jo had a fascination with the occult, and so was keen to watch a TV programme about the opening of an ancient burial mound near the English village of Devil's End. The Doctor dismissed these ideas, claiming that everything could be explained by science. However, he was concerned about the dig and so he and Jo rushed to the village to attempt to stop it. Jo witnessed the Doctor being apparently frozen to death, but refused to give up on him. She called upon her UNIT colleagues for help. After suffering an accident falling from the Doctor's car, Jo decided to go alone to the cavern beneath the village church to confront the Master, who led a coven here which planned to resurrect the Daemon Azal, who had been in hibernation in the burial mound. The Master captured her and offered her as a sacrifice to Azal. When the Doctor arrived, Azal decided to give his powers to him instead of the Master. The Doctor refused them and the Daemon was about to kill him when Jo interceded - offering her life for his. This irrational act ultimately caused Azal to self-destruct.

Following reports of a ghostly visitor at Auderly House, home of a senior diplomat, Jo accompanied the Doctor on a night's ghost-hunting. She attempted to slip some food to Sergeant Benton, and was annoyed when Captain Mike Yates took it for himself. The ghosts proved to be guerrillas from the 22nd Century, come back through time to kill the diplomat. Jo accidentally transported herself to the future where she encountered the Controller of the European Zone, and fell for his charm. He was really a quisling, working for the Daleks. The Doctor followed her to the 22nd Century, where he was able to convince her that the Controller was not to be trusted.

Jo later accepted the offer of a dinner date with Mike Yates, but made the mistake of allowing the Doctor to take her there in the TARDIS. The Time Lords once again took control and guided the ship to the planet Peladon. Here the Doctor was mistaken for the Earth delegate from the Galactic Federation. He introduced Jo as a member of royalty - Princess Josephine of Tardis, as it was death for any woman not of noble blood to enter the throne room. The young King Peladon fell in love with her - reminded perhaps of his mother, who had come from Earth. However, Jo became exasperated with the King when he failed to break with ancient customs and save the Doctor from a death sentence. Jo discovered that the other delegates presumed she and the King were to marry. She later took charge of them, joining forces with the Ice Warriors to coerce Alpha Centauri into voting to help the Doctor. The King later proposed to her, and whilst she did love him, she preferred to return to Earth.
The Master had been captured by UNIT after the events at Devil's End, and the Doctor and Jo went to visit him in his island prison - only to discover that he had taken control and was about to form an alliance with a colony of Sea Devils whose shelter lay off the island. Not for the first time, Jo's expertise with escapology techniques came in handy when rescuing the Doctor after he was held captive in the prison. After a Sea Devil attack on the nearby naval base, Jo led an escape attempt, going to fetch reinforcements in a hovercraft which she piloted herself.
The Time Lords then had another mission for the Doctor - to take a message container to a young freedom fighter named Ky, on the planet of Solos. Jo insisted on joining the Doctor. She was taken hostage by Ky, but later became firm friends with him and helped him against the Earth Marshal who wanted to take over the planet and prevent it gaining independence.

Jo next found herself visiting the ancient city of Atlantis, after the Master had used a machine called TOMTIT to try to control the Chronovore Kronos. On the way there, the Master tried to kill her by throwing the TARDIS into the Vortex after the Doctor had been expelled from the ship. However, the TARDIS telepathic circuits located him and she helped get him back on board. Once in Atlantis, Jo was presented to Queen Galleia and given a suitable change of clothes. Galleia was in league with the Master to free Kronos, and Jo tried to stop him getting the crystal which controlled it - causing her to become locked in the Temple of Poseidon with its guardian - a savage Minotaur. She was rescued by the Doctor. Kronos was freed and destroyed the city, and the Master fled taking Jo with him as a hostage in his TARDIS. The Doctor threatened to Time Ram his ship with the Master's, but couldn't go through with it. Jo decided to make his mind up for him and completed the manoeuvre. Both ships were saved by Kronos, who wanted to thank the Doctor for freeing it.

When UNIT HQ came under attack from a creature which originated in the universe of anti-matter, Jo found herself having to cope with the two earlier incarnations of the Doctor - sent by the Time Lords as the anti-matter force was also attacking their homeworld. She was confused by this, until Sgt. Benton pointed out that the Doctor had looked like the Second incarnation when he and the Brigadier had first met him. Jo insisted on going with her Doctor when he elected to allow himself to be captured by the organism - finding herself transported to the barren domain ruled by Omega. The Doctors arranged for everyone taken from Earth to be sent back home - but Jo refused to leave, and the Brigadier had to step to make her go. Once Omega had been defeated, the Time Lords rescinded the Doctor's exile to Earth. Jo thought that this meant that he would leave them, but was cheered by the fact that he was not leaving straight away. As it was, Jo was to accompany him on his travels - starting with a trip to the planet Metebelis III. They arrived instead on a ship in the middle of the Indian Ocean in 1926. This came under attack by a Plesiosaur, and Jo and the Doctor then witnessed the passengers and crew repeating all their earlier actions - as though stuck in a time loop. It transpired that they were trapped inside an exhibit within a Miniscope machine, on an alien planet.
Breaking into another exhibit, Jo was terrified by the savage Drashig creatures. Of all the alien beings she had encountered, these seemed to frighten her the most.

The TARDIS next arrived on a space freighter, which came under attack by Ogrons. Jo saw them initially as Drashigs, as the Master was nearby operating a device which preyed on the fear centres of the brain. He was using this to try to set two empires at war with each other - those of Earth and Draconia. Jo and the Doctor found themselves arrested and accused of being Draconian spies. Jo was to be separated from the Doctor - sent to an Earth rehabilitation centre whilst he was despatched to the penal colony on the Moon. She was rescued by the Master, who had come looking for them after the Ogrons had brought the TARDIS back to his base. Whilst locked in a cell, covering for an escape attempt by the Doctor, Jo talked about how she came to join UNIT, and spoke about her day to day duties there. Later, at the Draconian imperial court, Jo disregarded local etiquette and spoke out in favour of the Doctor's plan - gaining a grudging respect from the Emperor himself. Jo was recaptured by the Master who attempted to use his hypnotic device on her - making her initially see him as a Drashig, a Sea Devil and as a Solonian Mutant, but she had learned some mental techniques to overcome hypnotic influence since their very first encounter.
Jo accompanied the injured Doctor after he asked the Time Lords to send the TARDIS after the Daleks, who were behind the Master's warmongering scheme. With him lying in a comatose state, Jo set off alone through the jungles of Spiridon. She became infected by spores from a fungal plant, but was saved by the intervention of Wester, one of the planet's invisible inhabitants. Jo later encountered a party of Thal soldiers, come to destroy a Dalek base on the planet. One of them - a young man named Latep - developed a crush on her, and even invited her to return with him to Skaro after the Daleks had been defeated. Jo declined. When the Doctor offered to take her anywhere she wanted, she opted to return to Earth.

The Doctor finally programmed the TARDIS for Metebelis III, but Jo refused to go with him. She had read about the work of Professor Clifford Jones, who ran a commune in the Welsh valleys. He was fighting against a new petrochemicals plant in the area - Global Chemicals - and she decided that she wanted to go to Wales to support him in his crusade. She even threatened to quit UNIT to do so. The Brigadier gave her a lift to Wales as he was going there anyway - to investigate the death of a miner  whose body had turned bright green. The Doctor was disappointed by Jo's decision, and realised that she was starting to make her own way in the world. She had earlier described Prof. Jones as being like a younger version of himself. Jo's first meeting with Cliff did not go well, as she almost spoiled one of his experiments - just as she had done when she first met the Doctor.
She and Cliff soon fell in love - despite the Doctor's attempts to sabotage their romance. Once the threat from Global Chemicals had been stopped, Cliff asked Jo to marry him - and she said yes. After they were wed, she would accompany him on an expedition to the Amazon basin to search for a new foodstuff. The Doctor gave her the blue crystal which he had found on Metebelis III as a wedding gift. Jo got her uncle to grant Cliff's commune special UN scientific status - only the second time she had ever asked him for a favour.
Jo later returned the Metebelis crystal to the Doctor, as it was frightening the native bearers on their expedition.

Some three decades later Sarah Jane Smith was contacted by UNIT to be informed that the Doctor had been killed. A funeral service was to be held at a UNIT base in Snowdonia. Jo Grant was one of those also in attendance. She was pleased to finally meet the person who had taken over as the Doctor's travelling companion. Jo had one of her grandchildren with her - Santiago. She was still married to Cliff, and spent her time campaigning on ecological issues around the globe - such as the time she had handcuffed herself to Robert Mugabe. Like Sarah, she refused to accept that the Doctor was dead - knowing that she would have sensed if this was the case. The Doctor, now in his 11th incarnation, was not dead. It was all a ruse by a rogue UNIT officer, in league with the alien Shansheeth, to steal the TARDIS. They needed the memories of Jo and Sarah to replicate the ship's key. However, their memories of their time with the Doctor were so overpowering that they destroyed the aliens. At one point Jo and Sarah had been transported to an alien planet, where Jo was disappointed to learn that the Doctor had been back in Sarah's life in recent years. The Doctor reassured her that he kept an eye on every one of his old companions, and he was proud of what she was doing with her life.

Played by: Katy Manning. Appearances: Terror of the Autons (1971) to The Green Death (1973), SJA 4.3 Death of the Doctor (2010).

• Manning continues to portray Jo on audio for Big Finish. She has also played the spin-off character Iris Wildthyme, an eccentric Time Lady who travels the universe in a London double-decker bus.

G is for... Grace

Grace was a nurse who helped look after Sheffield bus driver Graham O'Brien when he had cancer. The two later married. She had a grown up son from a previous marriage, as well as a grandson named Ryan, who idolised her. He refused to accept Grace's new husband as his new grandfather. Grace was travelling home with Graham one evening when the train they were on was attacked by an alien machine creature - a Gathering Coil - which had come in search of another passenger. Soon after, the newly regenerated Doctor fell through the roof of their carriage. The Doctor was later taken to the home of Grace and Graham, and they joined her in searching for the alien who controlled the creature from the train - a member of the Stenza race called Tzim-Sha. He was hunting for the passenger from the train - a young man named Karl who worked at a building site. Whilst Graham was reluctant to get involved, Grace believed that they should help the Doctor. At the building site, Grace was asked to keep out of trouble but she elected to use an electrical cable to disable the Coil. She succeeded, but at the cost of her own life. Ryan was upset when his father failed to show up for her funeral.

Graham joined the Doctor, Ryan and PC Yasmin Khan on their travels in the TARDIS. When they next arrived back in Sheffield, Graham was reminded of Grace in their old house, imagining her still there and advising him. Later, the TARDIS crew visited a pocket universe inhabited by the Solitract, a being which was incompatible with the normal universe. In order to attract company, it could appear as the loved ones of people who visited - and appeared to Graham as Grace. When the Doctor was left alone in the alternate universe, the Solitract appeared as a frog, but spoke in Grace's voice.

Graham later had the chance to avenge Grace's death when they encountered Tzim-Sha on an alien planet, but he elected not to kill him.

Played by: Sharon D Clarke. Appearances: The Woman Who Fell To Earth, Arachnids in the UK, It Takes You Away (2018).

• Grace only really appears in the first episode of Series 11. In her second story she is a ghostly vision in Graham's memory, and in the final appearance is really an alien in Grace's form.

Short break...

Quick update to let you know that I'm awaiting a new computer (coming this weekend) so hopefully the next post should be on Sunday evening. I'll be taking a short holiday the following week, so updates won't be back to regular levels until the end of the month.