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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, who was also attached briefly to Torchwood 3.
Biography
Early Life
Martha Jones was born in 1986 to Francine and Clive Jones. Martha had an older sister called Tish, a younger brother, Leo, and later a niece, Keisha Jones. Leo accidently pushed Martha off the swing when she was a child and she broke her arm. Going in the ambulance and having her arm plastered fascinated Martha and she was determined to be a doctor. Martha's parents divorced when Martha was quite young, and she, along with her brother and sister, grew up with their mother. Martha slept in the smallest room of their home. (NSA: Wooden Heart)
In 2007, Martha lost her cousin Adeola Oshodi during the Battle of Canary Wharf. Martha studied medicine and worked as a student doctor at the Royal Hope Hospital under Mr Stoker in London, England. Martha was constantly forced to play peace-keeper amidst constant family arguments. (DW: Smith and Jones)
With the Tenth Doctor
First Meeting
In 2008, Martha was working at the Royal Hope Hospital on the day it was transported to the Moon by the Judoon. Remaining calm while those around her panicked, Martha worked alongside the Tenth Doctor (who was posing as a patient named John Smith) to track down the Plasmavore, "Florence Finnegan", that the Judoon were searching for.
As the oxygen in the hospital ran out, Martha gave her last breaths to resuscitate the unconscious Doctor, who prevented Florence's plan while the Judoon returned the hospital to Earth. Later that evening, a recovered Martha was approached by the Doctor, who revealed that he was a Time Lord and invited her to join him for a single trip through time and space in the TARDIS. She accepted, although the Doctor insisted that he had not brought her aboard as a replacement for his previous companion, Rose Tyler. (DW: Smith and Jones)
Travels
On her first adventure, the Doctor took Martha back to meet William Shakespeare. Shakespeare became somewhat enamored with Martha, referring to her as his "Dark Lady". Together, Martha, Shakespeare and the Doctor used a "spell" to defeat a race of witch-like aliens known as the Carrionites who were trying to change reality. (DW: The Shakespeare Code)
Martha's next adventure took her to the futuristic New Earth where they landed in an area known as the Undercity. Upon learning that the Doctor had also visited New Earth with Rose, Martha became concerned that she was little more than a "rebound" companion. She was then separated from the Doctor after being kidnapped into the Motorway where she was attacked by the Macra. Upon being saved by the Doctor, Martha witnessed the death of the enigmatic 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 once more taking them to 1930s New York City, where they learned that the population of Hooverville were 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 the pig slaves in self-defence, but expressed remorse that they had once been human like herself. (DW: Daleks in Manhattan / Evolution of the Daleks)
Upon the Cult of Skaro's defeat, the Doctor returned Martha home merely twelve hours after she left. He prepared to say goodbye, but overheard a TV news story about a man "changing what it meant to be human" and so decided to accompany her to the opening night of Prof. Richard Lazarus' device that could rejuvenate a human. Upon discovering the disastrous effects of Lazarus' work, Martha, the Doctor, and Martha's sister Tish helped to trap and kill the monster Lazarus had become. When Tish claimed that the Doctor cut it close when saving their lives, Martha claimed that it is "More fun that way". Afterward, the Doctor offered Martha one more trip, but she refused on the basis that she no longer wanted to be just a passenger. The Doctor then invited her on-board the TARDIS as a full-time companion. (DW: The Lazarus Experiment)
The Doctor and Martha answered a distress signal in the 42nd century Torajii system; they found a crew and their ship falling towards the sun. The sun was actually a sentient being that was possessing the crew members and killing them off one-by-one. Believing she was going to die, Martha called her mother on an upgraded mobile phone given to her by the Doctor. Eventually, Martha and the Doctor were able to render assistance and depart safely. (DW: 42)
In order to escape the Family of Blood, who were hunting the Time Lord, the Doctor used the Chameleon Arch to turn himself into a human being with no memories of his time as 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 named Joan Redfern, expressing pain that he "had to go and fall in love with a human... and it wasn't me".
When the Family of Blood finally tracked them down, wreaking havoc on the town and school, Martha convinced John Smith to sacrifice his human life and love by reverting to being the Doctor. The Doctor returned, defeated the Family of Blood, and left a heartbroken Joan, to rejoin Martha in the TARDIS. (DW: Human Nature / The Family of Blood)
Martha and the Doctor travelled to an old house in Wester Drumlins where they encountered the Weeping Angels. They were sent back to 1960s London by the Angels, where Martha assisted the Doctor in helping Sally Sparrow recover the TARDIS in the future. During this time, Martha was forced to take a job in a shop to support herself and the Doctor while they waited for the TARDIS to return and save 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 the last of humanity in the universe, being assisted by Professor Yana. Whilst assisting Yana, Martha noticed that he possessed a watch of similar design to the Doctor's Chameleon Arch, which prompted 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 on the day after Harold Saxon was voted Prime Minister. They figured out that 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 managed to escape. 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
When Martha was given the task by the Doctor she was aware of what she had to do: spread the word of the Doctor. Among her many 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 went to Japan and was put into a concentration camp. She survived the Japan Massacre when it was burned. After a year travelling around the world she met up with Tom Milligan. (NSA: The Story of Martha) She spent a year on Earth telling everyone to think of the Doctor at a specific time so that the Master could be defeated. This plan worked, the Doctor returned to his unaged 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 everyone else who was on board the Valiant retained their memories of that year spent with the Master.
Although the Doctor wanted her to stay with him, she decided that her family needed her more. She also expressed the need to 'get out' of what she viewed to be an unhealthy relationship of her hoping the Doctor would finally notice her, and so stayed on Earth to complete her training as a doctor. In order to keep in touch however, she gave the Doctor her superphone saying that she would call him in the future when she needed him. (DW: Last of the Time Lords)
UNIT career
Work with Torchwood
Martha was recruited to work for UNIT. She and Captain Jack both assumed that the Tenth Doctor put in a good word for her. At the request of Captain Jack, she visited Torchwood Three in Cardiff as a UNIT officer. Here, she became embroiled in their investigation of a private medical organization called the Pharm. Torchwood sent her into the Pharm as an undercover agent, but during the course of her investigation she was discovered, captured and the Mayflies were put into her body. Owen Harper saved her life using an alien surgical device (although she was clinically dead for a few seconds afterwards) but Aaron Copley killed him. Just as Copley was about to shoot Martha he was shot in the head by Jack Harkness. (TW: Reset)
Martha witnessed Owen's return from the dead as an un-dead being, by means of 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 promoted back to Doctor, 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.
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 just as she, together with UNIT, were about to attack the ATMOS Factory which secretly formed a key part of a Sontaran invasion plan. At the time, she worked under the by-the-book Colonel Mace who was in charge of the operation. Later that day she warned Donna Noble to keep her family safe because of what had happened to her own family at the hands of the Master. A few minutes later she was kidnapped by two solders under Sontaran control and taken to a cloning pool, where they started copying her body. She then was put to sleep but kept alive as a Clone was about to aid the Sontarans and needed access to her memories. (DW: The Sontaran Stratagem)
Martha's clone died soon after the Doctor rescued the real Martha, but Martha was able to convince it to help her as they shared the same memories. The clone, before it died, said that Martha had all these things that she wanted to do in life and she should do them. While chatting with the Doctor and Donna inside the TARDIS after the defeat of the Sontarans, Martha turned down the Doctor's offer to let her travel again with him. As soon as she made her refusal an unknown force took control of the ship, preventing her from leaving and dragged the TARDIS into the Time Vortex (DW: The Poison Sky).
Martha walked out of the TARDIS onto the planet Messaline, remarking to Donna that even though she didn't want to travel with the Doctor any more, she loved the first steps of exploration on a new planet. On Messaline the Doctor was immediately taken hold of 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 saw an injured one named Hath Peck whom Martha helped, earning the Haths' trust, who then showed her a map of where they were.
The Doctor was shown a corresponding map, and caused new passages and tunnels to appear on both maps, much to the Haths' surprise, who thought Martha was responsible. The Doctor then called her, and told her where they were heading. Martha found a way onto the planet's surface and took Hath Peck with her. On the surface Martha slipped into something like a pool of quicksand, but Hath Peck saved her life, sacrificing his own, to Martha's distress. Martha then saw the temple and was reunited with the Doctor, Donna and Jenny there. They discovered what the Humans and Hath were fighting over: the Source which would make the planet's surface habitable again.
As the Hath and the Humans came running up, the Doctor released the Source. However 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. Later, the Doctor took Martha back to Earth where she cheerfully said farewell to him and Donna, 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 created using recovered Sontaran technology. Whilst she was working at the Manhattan HQ of UNIT in New York City, Earth was transported to the Medusa Cascade. (DW: The Stolen Earth)
During a Dalek attack on the base, General Sanchez ordered Martha to use Project Indigo -- a teleportation device -- to escape HQ in order to track down the Doctor. Sanchez also gave her the Osterhagen Key and ordered her to use it should the need arise. Initially, 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 meanwhile had created a low-level signal and utilised it to contact her, Torchwood and Sarah Jane Smith to work together to assist Earth and defeat the Daleks. Together they all contacted the Doctor and summoned him to help them to fight the Daleks. (DW: The Stolen Earth)
However, unsure of whether the Doctor would come, Martha made the decision to use the Osterhagen Key and departed from her mother, teleporting to Germany and a secret UNIT base -- one of several Osterhagen Key activation points on the planet.
Martha and two other UNIT operatives in other parts of the world prepared to activate the Osterhagen Project, but prior to its final activation she contacted the Crucible, telling the Daleks and Davros that she would use the key to destroy the Earth rather than let it fall into suffering at the hands of the Daleks. 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 each 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)
After the Earth was returned to its proper place, Martha departed the TARDIS with Jack Harkness, who could be heard offering her a job with Torchwood.
After UNIT
Martha did not take Jack's offer to work for Torchwood, staying with UNIT. By the time the 456 incident began, though, 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, when 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 alerting Mickey, called out to him, but he walked away without saying a word. As the TARDIS left, Martha embraced her husband sadly, both possibly realizing what the Doctor's appearance like that meant. (DW: The End of Time)
Martha would occasionally go back to UNIT, however, filling in for her friend Malcolm Taylor as London's Scientific Advisor. (IDW: Don't Step on the Grass) She even saw fit to call 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.
As the hospital was moved to the moon, the oxygen ran out, and so everyone in the hospital, including Martha, was left to die of suffocation. She gave the last oxygen tank to fellow student Oliver Morgenstern before dying, and he was the only survivor. (DW: Turn Left)
Family
- Francine Jones - Mother
- Clive Jones - Father
- Tish Jones - Sister
- Leo Jones - Brother
- Adeola Oshodi - Cousin (Deceased)
- Keisha Jones- Niece
- Mickey Smith - Husband
Personality
Martha was a friendly, intelligent, brave and good-spirited person. 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.
During her travels with the Doctor, Martha developed a crush on him and always wondered if the Doctor liked her as much. Martha was jealous 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, Martha told the Doctor that she no longer had any romantic feelings for him. Indeed, she was later engaged to Tom, and for unexplained reasons married Mickey Smith instead. (DW: The End of Time)
Although she often had cause to be jealous of Rose Tyler, Martha seemed genuinely happy for the Doctor when he and Rose were re-united. She got along very well with Donna Noble. Martha also had a good relationship with Captain Jack Harkness and didn't mind when he flirted with her.
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 notes that it was only four days since she had met him, on the day of Leo's 21st 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 earlier had a companion named Sam Jones in several books.
- There is an account that suggests that at one point she and the Doctor were separate -- 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 25 in 2009. (Doctor Who comic, IDW Publishing)
- Martha is fluent in German, although she speaks it with a noticeable English accent (DW: Journey's End).
- Martha is UNIT number 56671. (DW: Journey's End)
- Martha has 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 the "Dark Lady," the mysterious subject (though 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 alert of 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 rumors 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 (2010) 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 coincidently 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), and 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 installments of the BBC Writers' Comics online series all featured plotlines involving fake Marthas.
- Commentery 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 is 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".