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Jenny Flint was the human maid and wife of the Silurian Madame Vastra. Operating from London in the late 19th century, they assisted the Doctor against various threats while also performing their own investigations.
Biography
Early life
Prior to meeting the Doctor, Jenny had grown accustomed to a life of solitude — she was ostracised by her family due to her "preferences in companionship." (WC: The Battle of Demons Run: Two Days Later) Her childhood was spent working in a match factory. (PROSE: Assassin on the Railroads)
The Doctor "saved her life" when she and Vastra first met (TV: The Name of the Doctor) and by 1888, she was living with Madame Vastra in London.
The Battle of Demons Run
Among the many allies the Eleventh Doctor had recruited for the Battle of Demons Run, she along with her lover were among the few to survive the attack of the Headless Monks. She comforted Amy Pond afterwards. (TV: A Good Man Goes to War)
Two days after the battle at Demons Run, Jenny and Vastra waited for the Sontaran Commander Strax to fully recover from the wound he'd suffered. When Strax awoke, he initially believed himself to be dead and was resistant to believe that he hadn't died honourably in battle. Jenny accused him of merely fainting. Jenny and Vastra asked him if he'd like to return to Victorian London with them. At first he refused, but accepted their offer at the last minute and left with them as Demons Run was being evacuated. (WC: The Battle of Demons Run: Two Days Later)
Gene-spliced humans
Following the foiled assassination plot of Queen Victoria by Silas Ruckford and his committing suicide, Vastra noticed that Ruckford's boots had soil from equatorial climate. Jenny pointed Vastra to a newspaper article which announced the grand opening of the Brazilian Rainforest exhibit at the Crystal Palace, which the Queen was going to attend. While at the Palace, Jenny's suspicions were roused when one of the Palace's workers, Tommy Corrigan, told her that the creator of the exhibit, Lady Cornelia Basildon-Stone had spent a lot of money removing all the glass in the Palace roof and then replaced it. That evening, after Vastra believed Lady Basildon-Stone was behind Ruckford's attempted attack, Vastra climbed the outside of the Crystal Palace. Meanwhile, Tommy showed Strax and Jenny a secret way into the Palace via a disused service tunnel. The Sikh warrior Ajeeth used a form of gas from the genetic splicer to turn the police on guard at the Palace into human-wasp hybrids to serve Lady Basildon-Stone as her "drones". After Jenny killed Ajeeth, saving Strax' life, Jenny, Strax and Tommy followed the pipes that had released the gas into the boiler room. Upon realising the boiler was in fact holographic camouflage which hid a more advanced machine, the genetic splicer, Strax used a device to deactivate the camouflage. When Jenny said that they needed to find a way to shut the machine down, Strax did so by throwing a grenade into it. Lady Basildon-Stone's plan to become queen and forge a new empire failed; she fell to the ground and died, and her hybrid eggs subsequently perished. (COMIC: The Crystal Throne)
Defeating the Great Intelligence
By Christmas 1892, Jenny and Vastra were married. Jenny and Vastra, alongside the Sontaran Strax, summoned the Doctor to the London of their time, asking for his assistance. The Doctor refused, claiming he had "retired." (TV: The Great Detective)
Jenny was involved in the defeat of Walter Simeon and the Great Intelligence. She and Vastra confronted Simeon. She later found Clara Oswald looking for the Doctor and took her to see Vastra. Clara explained the situation with one word for each question Vastra asked due to the fact that Vastra and Jenny had made her do the "One Word Test." Jenny later trapped the Ice Governess behind a force field and stayed with Vastra and Strax to guard the Latimer family, while the Doctor and Clara led the Ice Governess up to the Doctor's TARDIS. Jenny was also present for Clara's funeral after the Ice Governess killed her by pulling her off a cloud. (TV: The Snowmen)
Sweetville
In 1893, Mr Thursday came to Vastra so she could look at a photo of his deceased brother, Edmund. Realising Edmund's eyes showed an optogram of the Doctor, the trio headed north, where Jenny infiltrated Sweetville to find the Doctor. Picking locks inside the match factory, Jenny found the Doctor stiffened, his skin bright red from the red leech's "crimson horror". Jenny freed the Doctor from his imprisonment and he guided Jenny to a machine where he was cured of the affliction. After finding and reviving a version of Clara from the 21st century who was travelling with the Doctor, the three of them were saved from Mrs Gillyflower's pilgrims by Vastra and Strax.
Before Mrs Gillyflower could launch a rocket containing red leech poison, Vastra and Jenny prevented the venom from being put in the rocket. Angered by being unable to poison the world, Mrs Gillyflower attempted to shoot the Doctor and his friends. Strax shot at Mrs Gillyflower, causing her to fall to her death. Afterwards, Mrs Gillyflower's daughter, Ada crushed the leech Mrs Gillyflower was feeding off of, Mr Sweet. (TV: The Crimson Horror)
Trenzalore
In a dream-induced conference call with Jenny, Strax, Clara from 2013 and Professor River Song in the Library, Vastra showed that the murderer, Clarence DeMarco had said "The Doctor has a secret, you know. He has one he will take to the grave. And it is discovered." along with the space-time co-ordinates to Trenzalore, where his tomb was. The call was interrupted by Jenny's murder at the hands of the Whisper Men. River woke up Vastra and Strax, keeping the link with Clara. To get the attention of the Doctor, the Great Intelligence used the Whisper Men to take Strax, Vastra and Jenny's body to Trenzalore. Jenny was revived and River, unheard to the Intelligence, spoke the password to enter the tomb, the Doctor's name. Inside the tomb, the Intelligence entered the Doctor's timeline, the time winds shattering him into a million pieces, each echo of the Intelligence undoing every one of the Doctor's victories.
Jenny died in the new timeline without the Doctor, while Strax had forgotten his friendship with Vastra and became aggressive, forcing her to kill him. Clara reversed these effects by entering the timeline after the Intelligence, saving the Doctor wherever he went. The Doctor then decided to save Clara by entering his timeline himself, telling the Paternoster gang that the TARDIS could return them home with the fast return protocol if he didn't return. (TV: The Name of the Doctor)
Meeting the New Doctor
Along with Vastra and Strax, Jenny arrived at the Thames, where a Tyrannosaurus Rex had suddenly appeared without explanation. She managed to calm the beast and contain it within a small area within the Thames using several sonic devices, before, much to her and Vastra's amazement, the dinosaur spat out the TARDIS. There she was reunited with Clara as well as the Doctor, who had newly regenerated into his twelfth incarnation, and was going through post-regenerative madness. Taking him back to the house she and Vastra shared, the trio did their best to get the Doctor to sleep off his trauma.
That night, however, Vastra and Jenny discovered that the dinosaur had been reduced to nothing more than smoke and ash via spontaneous combustion, and joined with the Doctor in taking on the case. The next morning, Clara discovered a cryptic ad in a newspaper which led them to Mancini's Family Restaurant, which served as an organ-harvesting factory for a ship-load of Clockwork Droids that had crashed there millions of years earlier. After receiving a distress signal from Clara, who was trapped inside the crashed space ship with the Doctor, she and Vastra cut through the clockwork decoys populating the restaurant and made their way down to the crashed ship.
Jenny and Vastra, assisted by Strax, fought off the clockwork robots as they attacked the Doctor and Clara, forcing the droids' control node to evacuate in his escape capsule, quickly followed by the Doctor. They fought off the droids, but over time the robots began to overwhelm them. Jenny and her companions were saved when the control node fell — or was pushed — out of his escape capsule. Victorious, Jenny and the others returned to their house, where Clara returned to travelling with the Doctor. Meanwhile, Jenny, Vastra and Strax also returned to life as normal on Paternoster Row. (TV: Deep Breath)
Poltergeist and puppetry
During a December in the 1890s, Jenny helped to investigate reports of a poltergeist that was breaking plates in an old house. The haunting turned out to be a false alarm when the house was discovered to be built atop an old Bakerloo Line that caused the house to shake every time a train came through.
The following month she attended the Carnival of Curiosities in search of Marlowe Hapworth's killer, where she ran into Clara Oswald and the Twelfth Doctor. (PROSE: Silhouette)
Further investigations
Needs info from most of The Paternoster Gang Investigates
When the gang discovered that Samuel Lumber's Dream Doorway had created a bridge between reality and the world of dreams, Jenny ventured through the door and faced her own nightmares on the other side. She rescued Lumber from his nightmares and brought him back to safety before Vastra sealed the doorway. (PROSE: The Dangerous Dilemma of the Dream Doorway)
On 12 December 1894, Jenny accompanied Vastra and Strax to the London Zoo, where they encountered a fog laced with temporal radiation that devolved living things into their ancestors. When Vastra was affected by the fog, Jenny prevented her from acting on savage instincts by reminding her of their love. (PROSE: The Evolution Episode)
Legacy
Shortly before regenerating, the Twelfth Doctor dreamt of Jenny along with some of his other companions. (TV: The Doctor Falls)
Personality
Jenny had a romantic relationship with Vastra, despite the fact that she was a different species. She seemed proud to be married to the Silurian, noting that Dr Simeon had never been married. (WC: Vastra Investigates, TV: The Snowmen) This commitment to her marriage was further shown when the Doctor kissed her after she rescued him from Ada Gillyflower's cell. Although he had no intentions other than to show his gleeful gratitude, Jenny promptly slapped him while clearly looking uncomfortable at the gesture. (TV: The Crimson Horror) Jenny showed jealousy when Vastra showed interest in others. She was also quite sarcastic at times. For example, she replied, "Thank you," to Vastra's comment that mammals all looked alike. Her sarcastic nature was also shown when she said, "At your service," to Simeon. (TV: A Good Man Goes to War, The Snowmen) When Vastra explained to Clara about the public image she and Jenny had to maintain, Jenny wondered aloud why she still acted like a maid in private. (TV: Deep Breath)
Even though she lived with a 'lizard woman' and a 'potato dwarf', Jenny was something of a realist as she still believed Clara to be dead during the events of the Crimson Horror and was deeply confused when the Doctor stated otherwise, despite the fact that the Doctor had told her before that there was another version of her somewhere in the universe. However, she seemed satisfied when she saw the truth for herself and didn't believe the new Clara to be an imposter. She was subsequently impressed by Clara's deduction of where Winifred Gillyflower was keeping her rocket and the two eventually became friends.(TV: The Crimson Horror, Deep Breath)
Despite being a feisty and fierce warrior, Jenny could also be compassionate. She comforted Amy about the loss of her child and told her that it wasn't the Doctor's fault that Melody Pond had been kidnapped. (TV: A Good Man Goes to War)
Abilities
Jenny was quite capable in combat — she survived the Battle of Demons Run without any injury. She displayed excellent skills with a sword during the battle, and was capable of using a blaster against Headless Monks. (TV: A Good Man Goes to War) She also fought off attackers in hand-to-hand combat when confronted in Sweetville, and was, as the Doctor put it, "everyone's favourite lock-picking Victorian chambermaid." (TV: The Crimson Horror)
References
- As one of the people she had met during her travels with the Doctor, Jenny was included in a series of notes written by Clara when she was planning to confess to Danny Pink via phone call about her adventures with the Doctor. (TV: Dark Water)
- Jenny taught Clara how to pick locks. (PROSE: The Crawling Terror)
Behind the scenes
Spin-off?
Since their first appearance, Vastra and Jenny became popular characters in fandom, with fans wishing for a spin-off series to be made based on their adventures. Steven Moffat addressed this, saying that he considered making a spin-off when he created the two characters, but wouldn't have the time, though he said he would like to revisit them.[1] Since their debut, Vastra, Jenny - and Strax - have returned for four additional episodes and three minisodes. Although no television spinoff materialised, they did receive their own short story series in the Doctor Who Adventures magazine called The Paternoster Gang Investigates.
The Brilliant Book 2012
According to The Brilliant Book 2012, a book that contains non-narrative based information:
- Jenny was a match girl when she first encountered Madame Vastra. She was being molested by a Chinese gang called the Tongs, from whom Vastra saved her.
- On one occasion, Jenny helped the Doctor (incarnation not indicated) defeat a Kraal plot to replace Prince Bertie with an android duplicate while Vastra was in Egypt.
- At one point, she and Vastra battled a pair of CyberNeomorphs in feudal Japan.
- Following their return to their own time, Vastra and Jenny were added to the Papal Mainframe "most wanted" list.
Other Matters
- The reference book The Secret Lives of Monsters includes an excerpt from a book called A Study in Green in which Vastra, Jenny and Strax encounter Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. Jenny bought all 200 copies of the book to keep it off the shelves.