Martha Jones
Dr. Martha Jones (later Martha Smith-Jones after marrying Mickey Smith) was a British freelance alien hunter, who began her career as a medical student before becoming a companion to the Tenth Doctor and later a medical officer with UNIT. She was also attached briefly to Torchwood 3.
Biography
Early Life
Martha Jones was born in 1986 to Francine and Clive Jones. She had an older sister called Tish, a younger brother, Leo, and a niece, Keisha Jones. When she was a child, Leo accidentally pushed Martha off the swing and broke her arm. Going in the ambulance and having her arm plastered fascinated Martha and she decided to be a doctor. (NSA: The Story of Martha) Martha's parents divorced when she was young, and she and her siblings grew up with their mother. Martha slept in their home's smallest room. (NSA: Wooden Heart)
Martha was forced to play peacekeeper in continual family arguments. In 2007, she lost her cousin Adeola Oshodi during the Battle of Canary Wharf. Martha studied medicine and worked as a student doctor under Mr Stoker at the Royal Hope Hospital in London, England. (DW: Smith and Jones)
With the Tenth Doctor
First Meeting
In 2008, Martha was working at the Royal Hope Hospital when it was transported to the Moon by the Judoon. Calm while those around her panicked, Martha worked with the Tenth Doctor, posing as a patient named John Smith, to track down the Plasmavore, "Florence Finnegan", the Judoon were searching for.
As the oxygen in the hospital ran out, Martha gave her last breaths to resuscitate the unconscious Doctor, who had thwarted Florence's plan. The Judoon returned the hospital to Earth. That evening, a recovered Martha was approached by the Doctor, who revealed that he was a Time Lord and invited her to join him on a single trip through time and space in the TARDIS. (DW: Smith and Jones)
Travels
The Doctor took Martha to meet William Shakespeare, who flirted with Martha, calling her his "Dark Lady". The three of them used a "spell" to defeat a trio of witch-like Carrionites who were trying to change reality by releasing a swarm of their caged brethren. (DW: The Shakespeare Code)
Martha's next trip took her to New Earth, where they landed in the Undercity. Learning the Doctor had also visited New Earth with Rose, Martha worried she was a "rebound" companion. She was kidnapped into the Motorway, where she was attacked by Macra. After the Doctor had saved her, Martha witnessed the death of the Face of Boe and his final words, "You Are Not Alone". As they departed New Earth, Martha learned about the Doctor's home planet and the Last Great Time War. (DW: Gridlock)
The Doctor extended Martha's trip in the TARDIS again, going to 1930s New York City, where they found the population of Hooverville being transformed into pig slaves as part of the Cult of Skaro's plans to build a race of human Daleks. Martha was forced to kill pig slaves in remorseful self-defence. (DW: Daleks in Manhattan / Evolution of the Daleks)
After the Cult of Skaro's defeat, the Doctor returned Martha home twelve hours after she had left. He overheard a TV news story about a man "changing what it meant to be human" and escorted her to the presentation of Prof. Richard Lazarus' rejuvenation device. Uncovering the disastrous effects of Lazarus' work, Martha, the Doctor, and her sister Tish helped to kill the monster Lazarus had become. Afterward, the Doctor offered Martha one more trip, but she refused. She no longer wanted to be just a passenger. The Doctor invited her on board the TARDIS, as a full-time companion. (DW: The Lazarus Experiment)
They answered a distress signal in the 42nd century Torajii system: a ship falling towards the sun. The sun was a sentient being possessing the crew members and killing them off, but Martha and the Doctor saved the ship and departed safely. During this adventure, Martha had a brief romance with one of the ship's crew, Riley Vashtee. He wanted her to stay but she chose to remain with the Doctor. (DW: 42)
To escape the Family of Blood, who were hunting him, the Doctor used the Chameleon Arch to turn himself into a human being with no memory of the Doctor. He became John Smith, a teacher at an English public school in 1913, where Martha took a job as a maid. Martha watched helplessly as Smith fell in love with a nurse, Joan Redfern, exclaiming he "had to go and fall in love with a human and it wasn't me".
When the Family of Blood tracked them down, wreaking havoc on the town and school, Martha convinced John Smith to sacrifice his human life and love by reverting to the Doctor. He defeated the Family of Blood, left a heartbroken Joan and rejoined Martha in the TARDIS. (DW: Human Nature / The Family of Blood)
Martha and the Doctor travelled to an old house in Wester Drumlins where Weeping Angels sent them back to 1960s London. The Doctor helped Sally Sparrow recover the TARDIS in the future while Martha took a job in a shop to support them. (DW: Blink)
Following a short pit-stop in Cardiff, the TARDIS took Martha and the Doctor to the end of the universe and the planet Malcassairo, where they met Captain Jack Harkness. They also encountered last humans in the universe, being assisted by Professor Yana. Martha noticed he had a watch similar to the Doctor's Chameleon Arch, prompting him to open it. The human Yana was transformed back into the Doctor's Time Lord nemesis, the Master, and escaped in the TARDIS. (DW: Utopia)
Martha, Jack, and the Doctor used Jack's Vortex manipulator to travel back to 21st century Earth the day after Harold Saxon was voted Prime Minister. Mr. Saxon was in fact an alias of the Master, who had been living on Earth for months since his departure from Malcassairo. The Master, who had been manipulating Martha's family since she became a full-time companion, had Francine, Clive, and Tish arrested while Leo escaped. As her family, Jack, and the Doctor were all taken prisoner aboard the Valiant, Martha teleported back to Earth with a mission to defeat the Master. (DW: The Sound of Drums)
The Year That Never Was
Martha knew what she had to do: spread the word of the Doctor. In her travels, she visited the ruins of New York City, fusion camps in China and toxic pits in Europe. She travelled from England to rebel camps in Europe, where she met the Brigadier's son Calvin. She was interned in a concentration camp in Japan. After a year travelling around the world, she met fellow resistance member Tom Milligan. (NSA: The Story of Martha) She had spent a year on Earth telling everyone to think of the Doctor at a specific time so the Master could be defeated. This plan worked; the Doctor returned to his original form and the Master was shot by his wife, Lucy Saxon. As a result of the destruction of the Master's paradox machine, only Martha, her family, and the people on board the Valiant retained their memories of that year under the Master.
Although the Doctor wanted her to stay with him, she felt her family needed her more. She also needed to get out of what she saw was an unhealthy relationship of her hoping the Doctor would finally notice her. She stayed on Earth to complete her training as a doctor. To keep in touch, she gave the Doctor her superphone saying that she would call him when she needed him. (DW: Last of the Time Lords) The Eleventh Doctor later felt guilty about how he had treated her during the time they travelled together. (DW: Let's Kill Hitler)
UNIT career
Work with Torchwood
Martha was recruited by UNIT. She and Captain Jack believed the Tenth Doctor put in a good word for her. She visited Torchwood Three in Cardiff as a UNIT officer. She became embroiled in their investigation of a medical organisation called the Pharm as an undercover agent. She was discovered and captured, and Mayflies were put into her body. Owen Harper saved her life with an alien surgical device but Aaron Copley killed him. Before Copley could shoot Martha, he was shot by Jack Harkness. (TW: Reset)
Martha witnessed Owen's return as an undead being through the resurrection gauntlet and gave him a posthumous physical. "Death", a force possessing Harper, made the gauntlet attack Martha and age her into an old woman. After Owen defeated the Death being, she reverted to normal (TW: Dead Man Walking). She mended Harper's injured hand when, in a fit of self-destruction after Jack decided to relieve him of duty at Torchwood, he deliberately wounded it.
Once Owen Harper was returned to duty, she left for UNIT, a few days after she had joined on. (TW: A Day in the Death)
She did not attend Gwen Cooper's wedding because of work, (WEB: Torchwood website) though she did attend both Owen and Tosh's funerals (BBCR: Lost Souls).
Back at UNIT, she got engaged to her boyfriend, Thomas Milligan, though he left Britain for a while to go to Africa. (DW: The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky)
Reunion with the Doctor
Martha called the Doctor when UNIT were about to attack the ATMOS factory which secretly formed a key part of a Sontaran invasion plan. She was working under the by-the-book Colonel Mace who was in charge of the operation. A few minutes later she was kidnapped by two Sontaran-controlled solders and put in a cloning pool to be copied. She was put to sleep but kept alive; her clone was helping the Sontarans and needed access to her memories. (DW: The Sontaran Stratagem)
Martha's clone died soon after the Doctor rescued her, but Martha was able to convince it to help them. Before the clone died, it said Martha had many things she wanted to do and she should do them. While chatting with the Doctor and Donna after the Sontarans' defeat, Martha turned down the Doctor's offer to travel again with him. As soon as she had made her refusal, an unknown force took control of the TARDIS, and dragged them into the Time Vortex. (DW: The Poison Sky)
Martha walked out of the TARDIS onto the planet Messaline, remarking that even though she didn't want to travel with the Doctor any more, she loved the first step on a new planet. The Doctor was grabbed and his hand put in a machine to form his daughter, Jenny. Soon after, they were attacked by the Hath. Martha was separated from the Doctor and Donna and taken by the Hath. She helped the injured Hath Peck, earning the Haths' trust. They showed her a map of their location.
The Doctor was shown a corresponding map, and made new passages and tunnels appear on both maps. The Doctor phoned Martha and told her where they were heading. Martha went onto the planet's surface and took Hath Peck with her. She slipped into a pool of quicksand, but Hath Peck saved her life, sacrificing his own. Martha found the temple and was reunited with the Doctor, Donna, and Jenny. They discovered what the humans and Hath were fighting over: the Source, which would make the planet's surface habitable.
As the Hath and the humans appeared, the Doctor released the Source. General Cobb was enraged and shot at the Doctor, killing Jenny instead. When the Doctor said that there was a possibility she would come back to life, Martha shook her head and confirmed she was dead. The Doctor returned Martha to Earth where she cheerfully said farewell to Donna and him, and was reunited with her fiancé, Thomas Milligan. (DW: The Doctor's Daughter)
Fighting the Daleks
Martha moved to New York after promotion to the post of Medical Director on Project Indigo, a teleport device using recovered Sontaran technology. Whilst she was working at UNIT HQ in New York City, Earth was transported to the Medusa Cascade. (DW: The Stolen Earth)
When Daleks attacked the base, General Sanchez ordered Martha to use Project Indigo to escape and contact the Doctor. Sanchez also gave her the Osterhagen Key and ordered her to use it should the need arise. Project Indigo, which had never been tested, teleported Martha to her home in London, where she was reunited with her mother. Martha later theorised that her emotions controlled it, sending her home.
Harriet Jones had created a low-level signal and contacted Martha, Torchwood and Sarah Jane Smith to assist Earth and defeat the Daleks. Together they contacted the Doctor and summoned him to help them to fight the Daleks. (DW: The Stolen Earth)
Unsure of whether the Doctor would come, Martha decided to use the Osterhagen Key . Leaving her mother, she teleported to Germany and a secret UNIT base -- one of several Osterhagen Key activation points.
Martha and two other UNIT operatives in other locations prepared to activate the Osterhagen Project, but first she contacted the Crucible, warning the Daleks and Davros she would use the key to destroy the Earth rather than let it fall into their hands. However she was teleported to the ship, meeting and re-encountering the Tenth Doctor, Rose Tyler, Mickey Smith, Jackie Tyler, Jack Harkness, Sarah Jane Smith and Donna Noble. They all helped defeat the Daleks and destroy the Crucible. Martha and the others assisted the Doctor in piloting the TARDIS, towing Earth back to its solar system. (DW: Journey's End)
Return to UNIT and Freelance Work
After the Earth was returned to its proper place, Martha exited the TARDIS with Jack Harkness, who offered her a job with Torchwood. She did not take Jack's offer to work for Torchwood, but stayed with UNIT.
She phoned Captain Jack when stationed at the CERN Facility in Switzerland when the Large Hadron Collider was scheduled to be activated. Some of the staff had gone missing, including her old friend Julia Swayles. The Torchwood 3 team went to Switzerland to investigate and found the person who was responsible was Dr. Harrington. (BBCR: Lost Souls)
By the time the 456 incident began, she was on her honeymoon. (TW: Children of Earth)
She decided to go into "freelance" alien fighting with Mickey Smith, whom she had married. One adventure saw Martha and Mickey battle a Sontaran, Jask. Unknown to them, Jask had them cornered and was about to kill them,. The Doctor stepped in and knocked out Jask, saving them. The Doctor was dying and was going to regenerate soon so he was visiting each of his companions to help them a final time as part of his "reward." Saving Martha and Mickey was his final gift to them. Martha spotted the Doctor and after showing Mickey, called out to him, but he walked away without saying a word. As the TARDIS left, Martha embraced her husband sadly, possibly realising what the Doctor's appearance meant. (DW: The End of Time)
Martha occasionally went back to UNIT, however, filling in for her friend Malcolm Taylor as London's Scientific Advisor. (IDW: Don't Step on the Grass) She called in the Eleventh Doctor to assist the Japanese branch of UNIT with investigating a mysterious beverage. This was Martha's first interaction with the eleventh incarnation of the Doctor. (DWM: The Golden Ones)
Donna's World
If Donna Noble had turned right for a job interview instead of turning left, Martha would have been working in the Royal Hope Hospital and met Sarah Jane and Luke Smith, as well as Maria Jackson and Clyde Langer.
When the hospital was moved to the moon, the oxygen ran out, and so everyone in the hospital, including Martha, would be left to die of suffocation. She would have given the last oxygen tank to fellow student Oliver Morgenstern before dying, and he would have been the only survivor. (DW: Turn Left)
Family
- Francine Jones - Mother
- Clive Jones - Father
- Mickey Smith - Husband
- Tish Jones - Sister
- Leo Jones - Brother
- Keisha Jones - Niece
- Adeola Oshodi - Cousin
Personality
Martha was a friendly, intelligent, brave and good-spirited woman. When she was a prisoner of the Daleks, one of them confirmed that she possessed high intelligence. (DW: Daleks in Manhattan) The Doctor was impressed with her theory about having air on the Moon, and he asked her to join him in the hospital balcony to see if they could breathe. (DW: Smith and Jones) Although the Doctor asked more of her than any other companion (watching after him while he was human, walking the world for a year), she rose to every challenge.
Martha quickly developed a crush on the Doctor and always wondered if he even noticed her. Martha was envious of Joan Redfern when the Doctor made himself human and fell in love with her, and said he "had to go and fall in love with a human, and it wasn't me". (DW: Human Nature/The Family of Blood)
In The Year That Never Was, Martha admitted that she loved the Doctor, but after the Master's defeat, she decided that holding on to the hope that he would return her feelings was not good for her. She was later engaged to Tom, and for unexplained reasons married Mickey Smith instead. (DW: The End of Time)
Although she had cause to be jealous of Rose Tyler, Martha seemed genuinely happy for the Doctor when he and Rose were reunited. She got along very well with Donna Noble. After the year that never was, Martha became a close friend of Captain Jack Harkness and although she did not seem to return his romantic feelings she did not mind when he flirted with her (DW: Utopia).
Martha was also capable of speaking German (DW: Journey's End)
Other Information
- The length of time Martha spent travelling with the Doctor during her first adventures in the TARDIS has never been defined, but is known to include approximately three months spent in 1913 (DW: Human Nature / The Family of Blood), a year in an alternate timeline (DW: Last of the Time Lords), and two months trapped in 1969 (DW: Blink). However, Martha noted that it was only four days since she had met him, on the day of Leo's twenty-first birthday party. (DW: The Sound of Drums)
- While investigating the Pharm for Torchwood, she posed as an applicant to join a medical study. While doing so, she adopted the name Samantha Jones. Coincidentally, the Eighth Doctor had had a companion named Sam Jones in several books.
- There is an account that suggests that at one point she and the Doctor were separated -- for only a few hours from Martha's perspective, but for nearly three years from the Doctor's viewpoint. (DW: The Infinite Quest)
- There is an unconfirmed piece of information that suggests Martha was born in 1984, making her twenty-five in 2009. (Doctor Who comic, IDW Publishing)
- Martha was fluent in German although she spoke it with a noticeable English accent (DW: Journey's End).
- Martha was UNIT number 56671. (DW: Journey's End)
- Martha had a tattoo on her upper right arm; she is one of the only companions known to have such markings, although the third incarnation of the Doctor was also seen to sport a tattoo soon after his regeneration (DW: Spearhead from Space).
- Martha has a particular fondness for milkshakes and early in her travels with the Doctor she asked him to help her find the ultimate milkshake. (IDW: Agent Provocateur; IDW: Black Death White Life).
- Much was made in the media of Martha being the first black companion, though the theme of racism did not frequently appear in the series. Some examples include her trepidation on landing in Elizabethan England and Shakespeare, who was attracted to her, referring to her as his "Dark Lady," the mysterious subject (perhaps allegorical) of many of his sonnets (DW: The Shakespeare Code), as well as her mistreatment while living as a maid in 1913 England (DW: Human Nature / The Family of Blood). In actual fact, Mickey Smith is the first televised black companion, but Martha was considered more official, due to her actress's name appearing in the opening sequence, and her closer companion relationship with the Doctor.
Behind the scenes
- Freema Agyeman was the first black female companion on Doctor Who.
- The arm tattoo sported by Martha is Agyeman's own real-life tattoo. Although Agyeman has been described as the first major Doctor Who cast member to be so adorned, in fact Jon Pertwee was seen sporting an arm tattoo in DW: Spearhead from Space and DW: Doctor Who and the Silurians.
- The Torchwood audio drama Lost Souls, broadcast in September 2008, takes place prior to the events of the Series 4 finale.
- With Martha and her phone on Earth, the Doctor can be alerted to any threat to the planet. While this has been featured on Doctor Who itself, it is unsurprisingly ignored for narrative convenience in Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures (although, in The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith it was revealed that the Doctor was aware of Sarah's alien defence gang, and he was aware of Torchwood 3 from Jack, so perhaps Martha didn't feel the need to call him for every disaster that threatened Earth).
- Martha's last scene in Journey's End was interpreted as opening the door for a possible return to Torchwood. Although there were unconfirmed rumours that Agyeman was seen at a Torchwood filming location, she did not appear in the Children of Earth miniseries; she was referenced in dialogue as being still with UNIT. Her subsequent appearance at the end of DW: The End of Time again fueled speculation of a possible future Torchwood appearance, although whether this is possible depends on her commitments to Law & Order: UK, a non-BBC series in which she currently (2011) co-stars.
- Interestingly, the name 'Martha Jones', is an anagram of 'A Master John'. The part saying 'Master', is possibly referencing the Master, that appeared in the finale of Series Three . And the part 'John', is coincidentally the name of the actor (John Simm) who plays the Master in the Series Three Finale.
- Russell T Davies originally intended for Martha to appear in both the Torchwood: Children of Earth miniseries and Enemy of the Bane, the Series 2 finale of The Sarah Jane Adventures. Freema Agyeman's casting in the ITV series Law & Order: UK resulted initially in her Torchwood appearance being reduced to a cameo, and then eliminated completely (along with an appearance by Mickey Smith). Later her schedule also precluded Agyeman from appearing in Sarah Jane, resulting in Nicholas Courtney returning as The Brigadier instead. (REF: Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale - The Final Chapter) Had she appeared in these two productions, she would have been the first major character to play an important role in Doctor Who and both of its direct spin-offs (even including the Doctor, who to date has not appeared in Torchwood).
- Martha seems to be a popular character for writers to have impersonated by someone else. Aside from the TV story DW: The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky, in which a clone was created, IDW: The Forgotten, a comic story arc, and two instalments of the BBC Writers' Comics online series all featured plotlines involving fake Marthas.
- Martha is the only regular companion in the revived series not to be in a Christmas Special.
- The commentary for DW: The End of Time revealed that her honeymoon mentioned in TW: Children of Earth referred to her marriage with Mickey Smith, although this was never referenced on-screen.
- "Martha's Theme" is included in the Doctor Who: Original Television Soundtrack: Series 3. Her name appears in three other tracks on the disc, "Only Martha Knows", "Martha's Quest" and "Martha Triumphant".
External links
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