Grant Markham

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Grant Markham
Species:	Human
Place of origin:	Agora
Mother:	Jean Markham
First appearance:	Time of Your Life [+]Loading...["Time of Your Life (novel)"]
Appearances:	PROSE: Killing Ground [+]Loading...["Killing Ground (novel)"] PROSE: Repercussions... [+]Loading...["Repercussions... (short story)"] NOTCOVERED: Wish Upon a Star Beast [+]Loading...["Wish Upon a Star Beast (short story)"] NOTCOVERED: Schrödinger's Botanist [+]Loading...["Schrödinger's Botanist (short story)"] PROSE: And Today, You [+]Loading...["And Today, You (novel)"]

Grant Markham was a late 22nd century human computer programmer residing on New Earth who travelled with the Sixth Doctor for a brief time.

Biography

Grant was born in 2172. (PROSE: Killing Ground ^[+]Loading...["Killing Ground (novel)"])

Travels with the Doctor

He first met the Sixth Doctor in the year 2191 when his home city of New Tokyo on New Earth was transported into a Marston Sphere. Grant used his computer programming skills to defeat a giant robot dinosaur terrorising the city. The Doctor saved New Tokyo. At the end of the affair, Grant went with him to become his companion. (PROSE: Time of Your Life ^[+]Loading...["Time of Your Life (novel)"])

Grant's next adventure with the Doctor was on his birthplace, the planet Agora, again in the year 2191. They found the Cybermen had been using the planet to gather strong males for cyber-conversion. Grant met his father, Ben Taggart, who was killed in an unsuccessful attempt to convert him into a Cyberman as Grant watched. This moved Grant to volunteer to become a Bronze Knight, one of a resistance group of Agorans who themselves used cybernetic implants to become stronger to defeat the Cybermen. He was convinced not to give up his humanity by the knights' creator, the scientist Maxine Carter. The Cybermen attacked the Bronze Knights and slaughtered them all, but Grant lowered their base's temperature and deactivated the Cybermen. (PROSE: Killing Ground ^[+]Loading...["Killing Ground (novel)"])

Further adventures

Grant and the Doctor had many adventures over the next years. (NOTCOVERED: Schrödinger's Botanist ^[+]Loading...["Schrödinger's Botanist (short story)"]) They encountered a group of killer Meeps in the Santaland amusement centre in Norway during the 22nd century; (NOTCOVERED: Wish Upon a Star Beast ^[+]Loading...["Wish Upon a Star Beast (short story)"]) they were joined in their travels by a Legion; and Grant met a future companion, Carmen Yeh, while in a prison cell.

Ultimately, Grant was seriously injured when he linked his mind to a computer infected by a virus. Unwilling to risk Grant's life any further, the Doctor left him at the Bi-Al Foundation. The Doctor later regretted abandoning Grant and returned to apologise, but Grant did not forgive him, and they parted on bitter terms. (NOTCOVERED: Schrödinger's Botanist ^[+]Loading...["Schrödinger's Botanist (short story)"])

Erasure

Grant, feeling low due to his abandonment by (PROSE: And Today, You ^[+]Loading...["And Today, You (novel)"]) the Sixth Doctor, (NOTCOVERED: Schrödinger's Botanist ^[+]Loading...["Schrödinger's Botanist (short story)"]) eventually found himself removed from the Web of Time by the Letharchy, a shadowy organisation who removed people from the continuum, and made others forget them. (PROSE: And Today, You ^[+]Loading...["And Today, You (novel)"]) He was stuck in a limbo-like existence in a zeppelin traversing the Time Vortex, (PROSE: Repercussions... ^[+]Loading...["Repercussions... (short story)"]) and was later transferred to the Point of Know Return, where, travelling through universes, he eventually managed to contact Jhe Sang Mi telepathically by sending out signals. This attracted Lady Aesculapius and Chris Cwej, sent by the Firmament and Cwej's Superiors respectively to the Warsong, the home universe of Sang Mi, and, with the help of the Retconned Auteur, they performed a ritual to bring him back into reality by remembering him. However, the ritual went wrong, and they ended up in the Point of Know Return with Markham. With his help, they managed to overthrow the tyrannical Letharchy by reminding Whilom, leader of the Letharchy, of his humanity. Markham, however, still felt low after having lost his old friend, so Aesculapius shifted into his likeness, pretending to be the old friend and taking him to the planet Gendar, before leaving him. (PROSE: And Today, You ^[+]Loading...["And Today, You (novel)"])

Beyond the Letharchy

Lady Aesculapius claimed to Chris Cwej that she had seen into Markham's personal future, and knew that, after their little charade, things improved for him going forward. (PROSE: And Today, You ^[+]Loading...["And Today, You (novel)"])

Legacy

Four versions of the Sixth Doctor, colliding on Arunopal, found themselves in an argument about their relative chronology. The eldest of the four listed the entire order of their companions, including Grant. (AUDIO: The Firstborn ^[+]Loading...["The Firstborn (audio story)"])

Personality

Grant suffered from robophobia, a morbid fear of androids and robots. Through his travels with the Doctor he learned the roots of his condition; he had repressed memories of watching his mother being killed by Cybermen. (PROSE: Killing Ground ^[+]Loading...["Killing Ground (novel)"])

Some time after Grant's departure, the Doctor travelled with Melanie Bush. When Mel scolded him for failing to return a Volkswagen Beetle he'd hired, he protested that Grant would have let him keep the car. (PROSE: Instruments of Darkness ^[+]Loading...["Instruments of Darkness (novel)"])

Behind the scenes

• The only illustrated depiction of Grant Markham appears on the cover of Killing Ground ^[+]Loading...["Killing Ground (novel)"]. Cover artist Alister Pearson used himself as the model.
• In response to a reference to Markham in Big Finish audio anthology The Quin Dilemma, James Wylder, author of And Today, You ^[+]Loading...["And Today, You (novel)"], remarked on Twitter that this presumably meant that Chris Cwej, Lady Aesculapius, and Jhe Sang Mi had succeeded in their mission to get the universe to remember Markham.