Jenny (The Doctor's Daughter)
Jenny was the daughter of the Tenth Doctor, artificially created from his DNA when it was forcibly sampled with a progenation machine.
Biography
Creation
During a short war on the planet Messaline between humans and Hath, both sides used progenation machines to instantly create mentally programmed adults from the DNA of single parents. When the Tenth Doctor, Donna Noble, and Martha Jones arrived on Messaline, Jenny was made from a skin sample taken from the Doctor, against his will. (TV: The Doctor's Daughter)
With the Doctor
The then nameless Jenny pushed a button which triggered an explosion. The tunnel collapsed, cutting the group off from the Hath and Martha. Shortly after, Jenny was named by the Doctor's companion Donna Noble from his description of her as a "generated anomaly". Jenny's commander, Cobb, had the Doctor, Donna, and Jenny locked up. Donna proved to the Doctor that Jenny was indeed his daughter by listening to Jenny's heartbeat. Like the Doctor, she had two hearts. However, the Doctor insisted that she was nothing more than an "echo", and that a "real" Time Lord was "so much more".
Jenny helped the others escape by kissing Cline and stealing his pistol. The Doctor found his daughter very capable, though she was inclined towards violence. He later convinced her not to kill Cobb. As the three of them made their way towards the Source, which Cobb and the Hath both sought, Jenny spoke with the Doctor about the possibility of travelling with him, and he told her that he would never leave her. The Doctor told the respective parties to end the war, whereupon General Cobb aimed his gun and shot at him. Jenny jumped in the way of the bullet. She was shot through one of her hearts, and died, but did not regenerate.
While lying in state, Jenny's body was revived. With her father having left the planet and believing her to be dead, she stole a shuttlecraft and left Messaline. When asked where she was going, she restated Donna's earlier description of the Doctor's life. "Oh, I've got the whole universe: planets to save, civilisations to rescue, creatures to defeat — and an awful lot of running to do." She then set off to explore the universe. (TV: The Doctor's Daughter)
After Messaline
At one point in her life, Jenny was captured by Adam Mitchell and trapped with many other companions of her father's. Along with the others, she was released by Frobisher. (COMIC: Prisoners of Time)
Legacy
Davros tried to manipulate the Doctor when he moved the Earth to the Medusa Cascade by asking the Doctor how many people had died in his name. Jenny was one of the people the Doctor thought of, as he was unaware of her revival. (TV: Journey's End)
While trying to convince the Cybermen that she was the Doctor, Clara Oswald noted among his family a non-Gallifreyan daughter created via genetic transfer. (TV: Death in Heaven)
Personality
Jenny showed a lot of the brilliance, lust for life, and determination of her father. She was also flirtatious. Though programming had made her military-minded and goal-oriented, she had too much of her father in her blood. While at first she showed violent intentions towards others, she soon adopted the Doctor's values and principles, though she also challenged him.
She was delighted at the prospects of travelling in the TARDIS with her father and Donna. After her revival, she seemed very excited about travelling the universe. (TV: The Doctor's Daughter)
Inherited characteristics
Being biologically Gallifreyan, Jenny had two hearts, as well as reflexes, precision timing, and acrobatic ability far beyond that of an average human. At first the Doctor flatly denied that she should be considered a Time Lord, because she lacked the shared culture, code, and knowledge. However, as he later admitted to Donna, "when I look at [Jenny] now, I can see them. The hole they left, all the pain that filled it. Just dunno know if I can face that every day." (TV: The Doctor's Daughter)
Other information
The presence of Jenny drew the Doctor's TARDIS to Messaline, paradoxically before her creation, so that she, in effect, caused herself to exist. (TV: The Doctor's Daughter)
Behind the scenes
Companion status
Prior to November 2013, Jenny was considered a "companion presumptive". It is clear, once the Doctor accepted her as his daughter, that she would travel with him and Donna. Her "death" ended these plans. In the Prisoners of Time comic story released five years after The Doctor's Daughter, all of the Doctor's companions were kidnapped by Adam Mitchell. Jenny was revealed among those kidnapped, marking her inclusion as a companion.
Resurrection
According to the reference book The Time Traveller's Almanac, which is not accepted as a valid source for in-universe articles on this wiki, Jenny's revival was not due to regeneration, but instead the hidden properties of the Source.
Return?
Steven Moffat is credited with suggesting that Jenny be brought back to life at the end of the episode. This led to rumours that Georgia Moffett was in the running to return as a companion for the Eleventh Doctor. Ultimately, Karen Gillan was cast in this role as Amy Pond.
Although The Sun, a UK tabloid newspaper, speculated that Georgia Moffet would appear as Jenny in one of the 2009 specials, she did not make an appearance. No further appearances of the character have been announced. Moffett did return to the franchise in other roles, providing the voice of an unrelated character named Cassie Rice in the animated serial Dreamland, and continuing to do voice work for Big Finish Productions in 2010.
In August 2013, Steven Moffat said "the door is open" for Jenny to return to the series.[1] Moffett told Doctor Who Magazine in 2015 that she was desperate to return and would be happy to play even a character with a single line, but that it was not likely, as her character had only ever been conceived as a one-off. Additionally, Russell T Davies told Steven Moffat that Jenny crashed into a moon.[2]
The Prisoners of Time comic was Jenny's first appearance, not including the archival footage, since her appearance in The Doctor's Daughter.
Other matters
- In the Tenth Doctor's flashbacks during Journey's End, Jenny's death is emphasised by being the only one that has its original sound clip attached: the sound of the shot that "killed" her.
- According to the reference book The Doctor: His Lives and Times, which is not accepted as a valid source for in-universe articles on this wiki, after leaving Messaline Jenny met a man in a cantina who told her about how messages used to be placed in bottles and thrown into the sea. Jenny then wrote a letter to her father, explaining that she wasn't dead and while she didn't know how to find him, she was having fun and hoped to make him proud. She placed her letter in the bottle and hoped that one day her father would find it.
Footnotes
- ↑ 'Doctor Who's Steven Moffat acknowledges regeneration limit. Radio Times. Radio Times (21 August 2013). Retrieved on 21 August 2013.
- ↑ http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2015-11-14/steven-moffat-finally-reveals-the-fate-of-the-doctors-daughter---sort-of
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