Jo Grant

Not to be confused with Joe Grant.

Doctor Who universe character
Jo in The Time Monster.
Josephine "Jo" Grant
Affiliated	Third Doctor Eleventh Doctor UNIT
Species	Human
Home planet	Earth
Home era	20th century 21st century
First appearance	Terror of the Autons
Portrayed by	Katy Manning

Josephine "Jo" Grant is a fictional character played by Katy Manning in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. A junior civilian operative for United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, an international organisation that defends the Earth from alien threats, she was a companion of the Third Doctor and a regular in the programme from 1971 to 1973, the longest-serving female companion during the Third Doctor's tenure.

The character returned for a guest appearance in the fourth series of the spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures, in 2010. Manning reprised her role as Jo, now married, carrying the name Jo Jones, alongside Elisabeth Sladen as her successor Sarah Jane Smith and Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor.

Conception

For his first series, producer Barry Letts had primarily worked on stories inherited from the previous production team. When it came to assessing his and script editor Terrance Dicks' approach to the next series, they identified a need to replace the Doctor's assistant, for the purposes of exposition and audience identification. Previous companion Liz Shaw had been conceived of as a brilliant scientist, and so could discuss matters with the Doctor on an equal footing; the replacement would be younger and more naive, someone who could ask, "Doctor, what's all this about?" Though other sources, including Barry Letts, have said there was an initial idea to make the character more 'exotic' with a tougher, sexier edge but not being academically brilliant to give the Doctor the much-wanted (by Pertwee) chance to play the father figure. Along with the Brigadier's new second in command, Captain Mike Yates, the character of Jo Grant was inspired by the male-female companion pairing of Jamie McCrimmon and Victoria Waterfield, whom Letts had previously directed, with the intention of a possible romantic subplot for the two.

Letts and Dicks also intended that Jo Grant would be cast so as to go beyond the stereotype of a "pretty doll... who can just stand there and scream." They settled on young actress Katy Manning, whose personality had impressed in an otherwise shambolic audition it would seem this casting was at odds with the original 'tougher' and 'sexier' image which was conceived for the character as others short listed for the part included Yutte Stensgaard, Shakira Baksh and Gabrielle Drake amongst others. According to the commentary provided by Letts for the DVD release of Terror of the Autons, Rula Lenska and Anouska Hempel were also auditioned for the role. Like previous companions, Manning's character was clothed in contemporaneous fashions and attitudes, providing useful reference points for the audience of a science fiction series which couldn't incorporate events of the day. And similar to Pertwee's Doctor, Jo Grant was an "action-style" character, with the actress performing some of her own stunts — understandably so, given that her diminutive stature could not easily be doubled by a male stunt performer — though it is debatable whether the character fully broke any stereotypes.

Character history

Jo first appears in the 1971 serial Terror of the Autons, having been assigned to the Doctor (John Pertwee) as a replacement for Liz Shaw (Caroline John). Apparently, she gained the assignment to UNIT because her uncle, a high ranking civil servant, had "pulled some strings". Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney) assigns her to the Doctor, who is initially dismayed when he finds out that she is not a scientist, but accepts her because he does not have the heart to tell her otherwise. An enthusiastic, bubbly and sometimes scatter-brained blonde, Jo soon endears herself to the other members of UNIT, especially Captain Mike Yates (Richard Franklin) and Sergeant Benton (John Levene). The Third Doctor is also particularly attached to her, and she is devoted to him, refusing to leave his side even where mortal danger was involved.

There is plenty of danger to go around as well, especially after the Time Lords restore the Third Doctor's ability to travel through time and space. Jo faces the hazards and wonders of travel with the Doctor with courage and plucky determination. Together with the Doctor and UNIT, she encounters such perils as killer daffodils, time-eating monsters, and renegade Time Lord the Master (Roger Delgado). She is miniaturised, hypnotised, flung through time, nearly aged to death, and menaced by giant maggots and ancient dæmons. Over time, Jo also grows more confident and mature, until she is independent enough to stand up to the Doctor, which she does in her last serial, The Green Death in May–June 1973. During the events of that story, Jo falls in love with Professor Clifford Jones (Stewart Bevan), a young, Nobel Prize-winning scientist leading an environmentalist group. At the end, she agrees to marry Jones and go with him to the Amazon to study its vegetation, the news of which the Doctor greets with a mixture of pride and sadness.

Jo Grant (now Jo Jones) returned in two episodes of the fourth series of The Sarah Jane Adventures in Death of the Doctor (2010), meeting her replacement companion Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) for the first time, and subsequently the Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith). The two attend a memorial service for the Doctor, but later learn aliens faked his death in order to steal the TARDIS using Jo and Sarah Jane's memories. Jo is still married, and travels with her grandson Santiago (Finn Jones); she is envious of Sarah Jane for having had several Doctor encounters since her departure, but has herself led a fulfilling life travelling the world promoting humanitarian and ecological causes. The Doctor also discloses to Jo that he secretly visited her at a time he thought he might be dying.

Other appearances

Her life after she leaves the Doctor and UNIT is not substantially explored in the original series. Jo is briefly mentioned in the serial Planet of the Spiders, when she sends a package back to UNIT from the Amazon. In the 1985 story Timelash, the Sixth Doctor and Peri arrive on Karfel, a planet which was previously visited (off screen) by the Third Doctor and Jo. One of the locals wears a locket with a picture of Jo inside, Peri recognises that the girl in the picture, explaining that she had seen her only in photographs, but never in person.

Her story is picked up decades later when she and her grandson are transported by UNIT to Mt. Snowdon for a staged funeral for the Doctor in Death of the Doctor, a two-part serial of The Sarah Jane Adventures. There she meets her immediate successor companion, Sarah Jane Smith, and both are reunited with the Doctor, now in his Eleventh incarnation. In the interim, she and her late husband had travelled the world whilst raising a family.

The Seventh Doctor encounters an alternate version of Jo in the Virgin New Adventures novel Blood Heat in an alternate timeline where the Third Doctor was killed and the Silurians have conquered Earth (Doctor Who and the Silurians). A middle-aged Jo is featured in the spin-off novel Genocide, by Paul Leonard, where she and Jones have a son named Matthew and are divorced, Jo collaborating with the Eighth Doctor and his current companion Samantha Jones to avert a plot to erase the human race from history. Alternatively, text stories in an UNIT-oriented special issue of Doctor Who Magazine, written as in-universe articles, state that Jo, her husband Clifford and their eight-year-old daughter Katy "now" live in North Wales and she is standing for Parliament as a Green Party candidate. Jo's appearance in Genocide was highlighted in a trailer for the re-launched Doctor Who range which was included on a number of BBC videos in 1997-8. The trailer used a clip from Frontier in Space to illustrate Jo.

Jo is mentioned by the Fifth Doctor in Castrovalva, by both the Fifth Doctor and the Brigadier in Mawdryn Undead and by the Sixth Doctor in The Mysterious Planet. A vision of Jo Grant is seen along with every other companion up to that point aside from Leela on the scanner screen in Resurrection of the Daleks.

List of appearances

Television

Doctor Who

Season 8

• Terror of the Autons
• The Mind of Evil
• The Claws of Axos
• Colony in Space
• The Dæmons

Season 9

• Day of the Daleks
• The Curse of Peladon
• The Sea Devils
• The Mutants
• The Time Monster

Season 10

• The Three Doctors
• Carnival of Monsters
• Frontier in Space
• Planet of the Daleks
• The Green Death

The Sarah Jane Adventures

• Death of the Doctor

Audios

• The Doll of Death
• The Magician's Oath (adventure related by Captain Mike Yates)
• The Mists of Time
• Find and Replace (Katy Manning also plays Iris Wildthyme)
• Tales from the Vault
• The Many Deaths of Jo Grant

Short Trips audios

• Seven to One
• Pop Up
• Lost in the Wakefield Triangle

Novels

Virgin New Adventures

• Blood Heat by Jim Mortimore (parallel universe version of Jo)

Virgin Missing Adventures

• Dancing the Code by Paul Leonard
• Speed of Flight by Paul Leonard

Virgin sidestep novel

• Who Killed Kennedy by David Bishop (cameo appearance)

Past Doctor Adventures

• The Face of the Enemy by David A. McIntee (cameo appearance)
• Catastrophea by Terrance Dicks
• The Wages of Sin by David A. McIntee
• Last of the Gaderene by Mark Gatiss
• Verdigris by Paul Magrs
• Rags by Mick Lewis
• The Suns of Caresh by Nick Saint
• Deadly Reunion by Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts

Eighth Doctor Adventures

• The Eight Doctors by Terrance Dicks
• Genocide by Paul Leonard

Telos Doctor Who novellas

• Nightdreamers by Tom Arden

Short stories

• "Where the Heart Is" by Andy Lane (Decalog 2: Lost Property)
• ". . . And Eternity in an Hour" by Stephen Bowkett (Decalog 3: Consequences)
• "Freedom" by Steve Lyons (Short Trips)
• "Honest Living" by Jason Loborik (More Short Trips)
• "The Switching" by Simon Guerrier (Short Trips: Zodiac)
• "Hidden Talent" by Andrew Spokes (Short Trips: Companions)
• "Losing Track of Time" by Juliet E. McKenna (Short Trips: A Universe of Terrors)
• "Deep Stretch" by Richard Salter (Short Trips: Steel Skies)
• "Come Friendly Bombs..." by Dave Owen (Short Trips: Past Tense)
• "The Seismologist's Story" by Peter Anghelides (Short Trips: Repercussions)
• "The Touch of the Nurazh" by Stephen Hatcher (Short Trips: Monsters)
• "Categorical Imperative" by Simon Guerrier (Short Trips: Monsters)
• "/Carpenter/Butterfly/Baronet/" by Gareth Wigmore (Short Trips: 2040)
• "UNIT Christmas Parties: Christmas Truce" by Terrance Dicks (Short Trips: A Christmas Treasury)
• "Angel" by Tara Samms (Short Trips: Seven Deadly Sins)
• "Morphology" by Phil Pascoe (Short Trips: A Day in the Life)
• "The Thousand Years of Christmas" by Simon Bucher-Jones (Short Trips: The History of Christmas)
• "The Sommerton Fetch" by Peter Anghelides (Short Trips: The Ghosts of Christmas)
• "Jigsaw" by Michael Abberton (Short Trips: The Ghosts of Christmas)
• "Rock Star" by Robert T. Jeschonek (Short Trips: The Quality of Leadership)
• "Manchusis Psychosis" by Roger Clark (Shelf Life)

Comics

• "The Time Thief" by Steve Livesey (Doctor Who Annual 1974)
• "Menace of the Molags" by Steve Livesey (Doctor Who Annual 1974)
• "Dead on Arrival" by Edgar Hodges (Doctor Who Annual 1975)
• "After the Revolution" by Edgar Hodges (Doctor Who Annual 1975)
• "Target Practice" by Gareth Roberts and Adrian Salmon (Doctor Who Magazine 234)

External links

• Jo Grant on TARDIS Index File, an external wiki
• Jo Grant on the BBC's Classic Doctor Who website
• Jo Grant on the BBC's Sarah Jane Adventures website