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Dr Martha Jones, later Martha Smith-Jones, was a British physician. She met the Tenth Doctor while in residency at Royal Hope Hospital in London when the hospital was transported to the Moon by the Judoon, after which she began travelling with the Time Lord. (TV: Smith and Jones)
Unlike other companions, she not only fell in love with the Doctor but also declared her feelings to him. She decided to stop travelling with him as he could not return her affection, but continued to have a number of adventures both with and without him, thanks to her work with UNIT and Torchwood. (TV: Last of the Time Lords, Reset, etc.)
Biography
Early life
Martha Jones was born in 1986 to Francine and Clive Jones. She had an older sister named Tish, a younger brother, Leo, and a niece, Keisha Jones, who was Leo's daughter. When she was a child, Leo pushed Martha off the swing and broke her arm. Going in the ambulance and having her arm plastered fascinated her, which was when she decided she wanted to become a doctor. (PROSE: The Story of Martha) Martha grew up with her mother when her parents divorced, and was often forced to play peacekeeper in continual family arguments. Tish and Leo also lived with them, with Martha sleeping in their home's smallest room. (PROSE: Wooden Heart) Martha devoured Annette Billingsley's Troubleseekers, a thirty-two book series, around the age of eight; they were the first books that she ever read. She later read Harry Potter and His Dark Instruments. (PROSE: The Mystery of the Haunted Cottage) Martha had three trumpet lessons in Year 6 of primary school. (COMIC: House Pests)
In 2007, she lost her cousin Adeola Oshodi, who worked for Torchwood One, in the Battle of Canary Wharf. (TV: Army of Ghosts)
With the Tenth Doctor
First meeting
Martha first met the Tenth Doctor in 2008, on her way to her job as a student doctor at the Royal Hope Hospital in London, where she was studying under Mr Stoker. Without introducing himself, the Doctor merely took off his tie and said, "Like so, see?", before walking off. Unbeknownst to Martha at the time, he was demonstrating the nature of time travel.
Later that same day the hospital was transported to the Moon by the Judoon. Calm while those around her panicked, Martha worked with the Doctor, who was posing as a patient named John Smith, to track down the Plasmavore, "Florence Finnegan", for whom the Judoon were searching.
As the oxygen in the hospital ran out, Martha gave her last breaths to resuscitate the clinically-dead Doctor, who had thwarted Florence's plan. The Judoon returned the hospital to Earth. That evening, after another family argument at her brother Leo's party, a recovered Martha was approached by the Doctor, who revealed that he was a Time Lord and invited her to join him on what he initially described as a "single trip" through time and space in the TARDIS. (TV: Smith and Jones)
Travels
The Doctor took Martha to 1599 where they met William Shakespeare, who flirted with her and called her his "Dark Lady". The three of them used a "spell" to defeat a trio of witch-like Carrionites who were using Shakespeare's play Love's Labour's Won as a spell to bring other Carrionites to Earth. The Carrionites, along with the play, were sealed away. (TV: The Shakespeare Code)
Martha's next trip was to New New York, where they landed in the Undercity. Learning the Doctor had also visited New Earth with Rose, Martha worried she was a "rebound" companion. After the Doctor had opened up the Motorway, Martha witnessed the death of the Face of Boe and heard his final words, "You are not alone". Before they departed New Earth, The Doctor told Martha about his home planet and the Last Great Time War. (TV: Gridlock)
The Doctor extended Martha's trip in the TARDIS again, going to 1930 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. (TV: Daleks in Manhattan / Evolution of the Daleks)
After the Cult of Skaro's defeat, the Doctor returned Martha home to twelve hours after she had left. He overheard a TV news story about a man promising to "change what it means to be human", and escorted her to the presentation of Prof. Richard Lazarus' rejuvenation device. Uncovering the disastrous effects of Lazarus' work, the Doctor, Martha, 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, and so the Doctor invited her on board the TARDIS, as a full-time companion. (TV: 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. (TV: 42)
To escape the Family of Blood, who were hunting him, the Doctor used the Chameleon Arch to turn himself into a human 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 to keep an eye on him. 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. (TV: Human Nature / The Family of Blood)
Martha and the Doctor then 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. (TV: Blink)
Following a short pit-stop in Cardiff, and unknowingly picking up Captain Jack Harkness, the TARDIS took Martha and the Doctor to the end of the universe, and the planet Malcassairo. Here they encountered the last humans in the universe, who were 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. (TV: Utopia)
Martha, Jack, and the Doctor used Jack's vortex manipulator to travel back to 21st century Earth, arriving 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, although 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. (TV: The Sound of Drums)
The Year That Never Was
Martha knew what she had to do: spread the word of the Doctor. She first travelled from England to rebel camps in Europe, where she met the Brigadier's son Erik Calvin, and was later interned in a concentration camp in Japan. Througout her travels she also visited the ruins of New York City, and fusion camps in China. (PROSE: The Story of Martha)
After a year travelling around the world, she met fellow resistance member Tom Milligan. 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, and 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. (TV: Last of the Time Lords)
UNIT career
Work with Torchwood
Martha was later recruited by UNIT, something that she and Captain Jack believed happened because the Tenth Doctor put in a good word for her. She visited Torchwood Three in Cardiff as a UNIT officer, and soon became embroiled in their investigation of a medical organisation called the Pharm, acting as an undercover agent. Mayflies were put into her body when she was discovered and captured, prompting Owen Harper to twice save her life. Once with an alien surgical device to remove the Mayfly, and soon after by taking a bullet meant for her. (TV: 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 which aged her considerably, but reverted back again after Owen defeated the Death being. (TV: Dead Man Walking)
She also 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. She left once Owen Harper was returned to duty and resumed her work at UNIT. (TV: A Day in the Death) Unfortunately, Owen later met a permanent death trying to contain a radioactive meltdown at Turnmill Nuclear Power Station, as did another Torchwood Three operative, Toshiko Sato, when she was fatally shot by Gray. (TV: Exit Wounds)
Martha attended both Owen and Tosh's funerals. (AUDIO: Lost Souls)
Back at UNIT, she became engaged to her boyfriend, Thomas Milligan, though he left Britain for a while to go to Africa. (TV: The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky)
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. (AUDIO: Lost Souls)
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. Not long after UNIT took control of the factory, Martha was kidnapped by two Sontaran-controlled soldiers and put in a cloning pool to be copied. She was put to sleep but kept alive; her clone needed access to her memories while helping the Sontarans. (TV: The Sontaran Stratagem)
Martha's clone died soon after the Doctor rescued Martha, but Martha was able to convince the clone 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, the TARDIS dragged them into the Time Vortex. (TV: The Poison Sky)
Martha walked out of the TARDIS onto the planet Messaline, remarking that even though she did not want to travel with the Doctor any more, she still loved the first step on a new planet. The Doctor was grabbed and his hand put in a Progenation machine, which created his "daughter", Jenny. Soon after, they were attacked by the Hath, which resulted in Martha becoming separated from the Doctor and Donna, and taken by the Hath. After helping the injured Hath Peck, and earning the Hath's trust, they showed her a map of their location.
Martha, alongside Hath Peck, went onto the planet's surface in order to meet up with the Doctor and Donna. She slipped into a pool of quicksand, but Hath Peck saved her life by sacrificing his own. Martha found the Temple and was reunited with the Doctor, Donna, and Jenny. It was here they discovered what the humans and Hath were fighting over: the Source, a terraforming device 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. She said a fond farewell to Donna and him, and went off to reunite with her fiancé, Thomas Milligan. (TV: 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.
When Daleks attacked the base, General Sanchez ordered Martha to use Project Indigo to escape and contact the Doctor. Sanchez also gave her an 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. (TV: 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 Project activation points.
Martha and two other UNIT operatives in other locations prepared to activate the Osterhagen Project, but first contacted the Crucible, warning the Daleks and Davros that she would use the key to destroy Earth rather than let it fall into their hands, giving them the chance to escape unharmed. They teleported her to the Crucible, however, where she rejoined the Doctor, alongside Rose Tyler, Mickey Smith, Jackie Tyler, Jack, and Sarah Jane. After the arrival of Donna and the Meta-Crisis Tenth Doctor, they defeated the Daleks and their plans, and the Doctor and his various companions assisted the Doctor in piloting the TARDIS, towing Earth back to its solar system. (TV: Journey's End)
Return to UNIT and freelance work
After 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. (TV: Journey's End)
However, she stopped working for UNIT as a permanent member of staff. Although, she occasionally went back to UNIT, filling in for her friend, Malcolm Taylor as London's scientific advisor. (COMIC: Don't Step on the Grass)
By the time the 456 incident began, she was on her honeymoon. (TV: Children of Earth: Day One)
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 as his final gift to them prior to his next regeneration. Martha spotted the Doctor. They 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. (TV: The End of Time)
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. (COMIC: The Golden Ones)
The Doctor felt some guilt regarding Martha well into his eleventh incarnation. (TV: Let's Kill Hitler)
Donna's World
In an alternate reality that was created by Donna Noble, Martha met Sarah Jane and Luke Smith, as well as Maria Jackson and Clyde Langer, rather than The Doctor, when the Royal Hope Hospital was moved to the Moon by the Judoon. When the oxygen ran out, she gave the last oxygen tank to fellow student Oliver Morgenstern before dying, leaving him the only survivor. This timeline was negated when Donna sacrificed herself to get her old self to turn left. (TV: Turn Left)
Personality
Martha was an intelligent, brave and kind-hearted woman with a great sense of humour. When she was a prisoner of the Daleks, one of them confirmed that she possessed high intelligence. (TV: 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. (TV: 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. (TV: Human Nature, Last of the Time Lords)
Martha was willing to accept and defend non-humans as friends. She greeted unusual looking species with wonder and even treated injuries. (TV: Utopia, The Doctor's Daughter) She quickly adapted pattern of speech and gesture to communicate more effectively with other species. (TV: Daleks in Manhattan, The Doctor's Daughter)
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 a human named John Smith and fell in love with her saying he "had to go and fall in love with a human, and it wasn't me". (TV: 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. Her feelings for him, in addition to the enormous ordeal she had been put through, strained her relationship with the Doctor to the point that she decided to leave the TARDIS. (TV: Last of the Time Lords) She was later engaged to Tom, but eventually married Mickey Smith instead. (TV: The End of Time)
Her time walking the Earth gave rise to a more soldier-like and less naive side of Martha. Nevertheless, she retained her kindness, sense of adventure, and fierce determination to do the right thing. Despite their strained relationship, she remained loyal to the Doctor, and indeed took many of his teachings to heart. For instance, despite her work at UNIT, she very rarely carried a gun. She explicitly stated that by working inside UNIT, she might be able to change it for the better.(PROSE:The Story of Martha, TV:The Sontaran Stratagem, TV:The Doctor's Daughter)
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 overtures, she did not mind when he flirted with her. (TV: Utopia) She even kissed him when she left her temporary assignment to the Torchwood team claiming that "everyone else has had a go." (TV: A Day in the Death)
Skills
Martha had a scientific mind. Her knowledge, analytical, and problem solving skill were frequently on display. (TV: Daleks in Manhattan, Smith and Jones, The Doctor's Daughter, The Sontaran Stratagem, Reset) Her knowledge and logic allowed her to execute very complicated coordinated plans based on very little information from the Doctor. (TV: Last of the Time Lords) She also proved handy with a gun. (TV: The Family of Blood, The End of Time) Of course, her medical skills proved handy, especially after the experience she gained with aliens and other unusual medical situations, finding her work with UNIT and Torchwood Three. (TV: The Doctor's Daughter, The Sontaran Stratagem, Reset, A Day in the Death)
Behind the scenes
Torchwood and SJA
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 still being with UNIT. Her subsequent appearance at the end of TV: The End of Time again fueled speculation of a possible future Torchwood appearance, which did not come about in the revived Torchwood.
Russell T Davies originally intended for Martha to appear in 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).
Other matters
- 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 TV: Spearhead from Space and TV: Doctor Who and the Silurians.
- Martha seems to be a popular character for writers to have impersonated by someone else. Aside from the TV story TV: The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky, in which a clone was created, COMIC: The Forgotten, a comic story arc and two instalments of the BBC Writers' Comics online series all featured plotlines involving fake Marthas.
- The commentary for TV: The End of Time revealed that her honeymoon mentioned in TV: Children of Earth: Day One 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".
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