John Jones

John Jones
Main aliases:	Xavi Moonburst
Species:	Human
Job:	Musician
First mentioned in:	The Friendly Place
First appearance:	What He Wants...
Appearances:	see list

You may be looking for the prop hand.

John Jones was a human (COMIC: The Infinite Astronaut) who worked as a pop musician in London during the 1960s, and a companion of the Eleventh Doctor.

Biology

The Eleventh Doctor studied Jones using his sonic screwdriver. He found out that his electro-magnetic readings were constantly shifting. The Doctor called him an aberration and explained that his cells reacted to the light constantly changing, that his talent was that he was a chameleon. (COMIC: What He Wants...)

Biography

This section's awfully stubby.

Missing info from most stories following The Infinite Astronaut

Jones followed Alice Obiefune and the Eleventh Doctor out of Dog & Duck club after his first concert in 1962 to confront them about their negative thoughts on his music. (COMIC: What He Wants...) According to Alice, he was about twenty years old. (COMIC: The Sound of Our Voices) He sneaked into the TARDIS unnoticed and was transported to the Mississippi Delta in 1931. There he helped Alice and Robert Johnson, a legendary blues singer save the Doctor from the Talent Scout by sneaking unnoticed past a mob of people possessed by the Talent Scout.

After their successful rescue, Robert Johnson gave Jones guitar lessons. (COMIC: What He Wants...)

On the United System Research Base, Jones met ARC in the men's toilet. He was, perhaps, the first to intuit that ARC only wanted to communicate. (COMIC: Whodunnit?) Saved from the ARC-induced coma by Alice, they both shortly played the role of August Hart's bait for the Doctor, but in the end the TARDIS crew managed to escape the station together with ARC. (COMIC: The Sound of Our Voices)

Following a distress call, the TARDIS crew picked up the sole "survivor" from the planet Datastore 8, a Nimon who in reality was responsible for the planet's destruction. Knowing about his sinister plans from alternate timelines, the Doctor dealt with the intruder, after which the TARDIS crew went back in time and prevented the destruction of Datastore 8. (COMIC: Space in Dimension Relative and Time)

Jones jumps in to shield Alice from the Nimon's blast with his own body. (COMIC: Space in Dimension Relative and Time)

Being often scared while travelling with the Doctor, Jones started to comfort eat too much and gained so much weight, the Doctor wanted to use two jet packs instead of one for him, just to be sure. In particular, he took a bite from something doughnut-looking on the Great Wheel, the mothership of the Amstrons. He quickly came to regret it (COMIC: The Eternal Dogfight) as some kind of internal parasite started attacking his emotional centres. As a result, Jones started mirroring ARC's fear of the Talent Scout and was only able to lie on the floor in a strongly distressed state. When Alice volunteered to be one of two Infinite Astronauts on behalf of Earth, Jones, as the only other human in their party, was assigned to be the second. The trip to another universe cured him. (COMIC: The Infinite Astronaut)

Alternate timeline

In a timeline later averted by the Doctor, the Nimon who infiltrated the TARDIS tried to kill Alice, and Jones sacrificed his life to save her. (COMIC: Space in Dimension Relative and Time)

Legacy

Following his death, the Doctor and Alice attended Jones' funeral. (COMIC: Remembrance)

Plex owned a collection of bootleg John Jones vinyls. (COMIC: The Promise)

Appearance

As a chameleon, Jones' true appearance was impossible to say, as he routinely revamped himself. He once said to Alice, "The look I got from that last planet was ace. Takes time to glam meself up like that. I'm an artist." (COMIC: Space in Dimension Relative and Time)

• When he first met the Doctor and Alice, he was a relatively young adult with brown hair and grey eyes. (COMIC: What He Wants...)
• His second appearance had longer hair and a teenage body. His eye colour changed between brown and blue. (COMIC: Whodunnit? / The Sound of Our Voices)
• His third appearance had ginger-haired adult with blue eyes and a large orange star covering right half of his face. (COMIC: Space in Dimension Relative and Time)
• His fourth appearance was chubby and middle-aged, once again with brown hair and brown eyes. (COMIC: The Eternal Dogfight / The Infinite Astronaut)
• His fifth appearance was a blonde adult whose eyes changed between brown, blue, and grey. (COMIC: The Rise and Fall)
• His sixth appearance was a blue-haired adult. (COMIC: Four Dimensions)
• His seventh appearance was a white-haired adult. (COMIC: Give Free or Die)
• Light blond hair with a blue right eye and a brown left eye. He wore a grey trenchcoat and a dark grey suit with a fedora and black sunglasses.
• Slicked back brown hair with blue pilled-shaped markings on his forehead and chin.
• Upright white hair with shaved sides and large black circles over his eyes.
• A thin old man wearing an orange scarf with black stripes and a fedora. (COMIC: The Scream)

Behind the scenes

• The character of Jones was inspired by real-life musician David Bowie. Bowie's birth name was David Jones. The title of his album Abanazar's Madness is an antonymisation of Bowie's Aladdin Sane, and the covers of the albums both feature the respective artist with red hair, closed eyes and paint on the face. In addition, many of the comic stories feature lines of dialogue either copying or closely resembling lyrics from various Bowie songs, for instance, Whodunnit? has many references to "Space Oddity" and The Eternal Dogfight features several lines from "Future Legend".
  • The character could also have been inspired by J'onn J'onzz a.k.a. the Martian Manhunter from DC Comics. The character is an alien from Mars able to transform into any living being.

The Doctor calls Jones a "human chameleon". (COMIC: The Infinite Astronaut)

• When the character of Jones was introduced, the question of his species was left ambiguous due to his unusual abilities in changing appearance. The Eleventh Doctor calling him a chameleon in Jones' first story What He Wants... did not clarify things. The fact that Jones is human was finally established beyond doubt in The Infinite Astronaut, where the Doctor calls him a "human chameleon" and Amstrons allow him to be an Infinite Astronaut from Earth after deeming the Doctor to be ineligible because he is not a human.

External links

• John Jones at the Doctor Who Legacy wiki