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.