Rachel Jensen
Professor Rachel Jensen was the scientific advisor for Group Captain Ian Gilmore of the Intrusion Countermeasures Group during the Shoreditch Incident in the relevant area of London in November 1963. Allison Williams served as her assistant. She replaced Gilmore as the head of Counter-Measures in 1964.
Biography
Rachel was Jewish. (AUDIO: Threshold, 1963: The Assassination Games)
During World War II, as a member of the Cambridge Group, she worked with computer pioneer Alan Turing's team of codebreakers. In the 1950s, she worked in the British Rocket Group (BRG) with "Bernard". (PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy)
As she was Jewish, Rachel never accepted the presence of Professor Heinrich Schumann in the BRG, given that he was a former Nazi who had worked on Adolf Hitler's advanced weapons research programmes and was rumoured to have used human test subjects as part of his experiments. The British government never charged him with war crimes as they sought to make use of his scientific acumen. (AUDIO: Threshold)
Another of her colleagues at Cambridge was Professor Jeffrey Broderick, whom Allison believed still had feelings for her as late as 1964. Rachel claimed that the idea of a relationship with him made her "skin crawl." (AUDIO: Artificial Intelligence)
Other than Allison, her students at Cambridge included Anne Travers and Ruth Ingram. (PROSE: The Scales of Injustice)
Her grandfather suffered from dementia. (AUDIO: The Forgotten Village)
In 1962, she began researching artificial intelligence at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. (AUDIO: Threshold)
Rachel was none too happy about being required to join Counter-Measures, not appreciating Gilmore's having requisitioned her against her will via the Peacetime Emergency Powers Act. She also took issue with his military attitude. When the Seventh Doctor appeared unexpectedly and took charge during the Shoreditch Incident in November 1963, his superior knowledge left Jensen and Allison as little more than observers and commentators. She did, however, examine the ruined body of an Imperial Dalek. She made a half-joking threat about retiring to raise begonias after the Shoreditch Incident (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks) and briefly did this (PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy), but within a matter of months she resumed her research into artificial intelligence at Cambridge. She kept in touch with Allison but otherwise was a workaholic. (AUDIO: Threshold)
In November 1963, she met Sir Toby Kinsella for the first time. She was sent by him to Gideon Vale to investigate him and his work. Here She encountered Ace again. Ace managed to get herself rosterred on to help Rachel, hoping that Rachel could hack the algorithm on a secret door. They managed to get into a vault which contained a lot of nuclear warheads. (AUDIO: 1963: The Assassination Games)
She once said if she were a genius on the same level as Ken Temple, she would never take any time off work. (AUDIO: The Pelage Project)
Thanks to Allison, she was hired by Counter-Measures once again as a consultant and played a key role in stopping the invasion of an alien, energy-based intelligence that Shumann had brought to Earth. After seeing how Counter-Measures barely understood such threats and was not properly funded or equipped, Rachel accepted Sir Toby's offer to join the organisation permanently — on the condition that she was supplied with the facilities to continue her research on site and that she would replace Gilmore as its leader. However, she assured him that she would defer to his judgement in all matters of security. (AUDIO: Threshold) While Gilmore was initially bitter that Rachel had replaced him, he eventually came to respect her not only as a scientist but as his superior officer as well. (AUDIO: Artificial Intelligence)
Her Ministry of Defence contract stated that all of her past, present and future research is the intellectual property of the British government. This allowed Professor Broderick to make use of her theories in creating the artificially intelligent Sentient Engine Generator 2 computer (Sen-Gen). Much to Rachel's annoyance, Broderick also programmed Sen-Gen with her voice. After Sen-Gen had tapped into her mind and amplified her subconscious fears, she left a dictation machine into Sir Toby's office in Whitehall which featured a recording of herself tearing up her MoD contract and telling him that she thought that he was scheming and manipulative. She sent a copy of the tape to The Times. However, the Royal Mail train was intercepted by the MoD and the package was recovered. Sir Toby told Rachel that, had the package been delivered, contingency plans were in place and that the MoD would have claimed that the recording had been faked. (AUDIO: Artificial Intelligence)
She wanted to find out what had caused the chemical spill which Alison had found. She went to Gilmore to get some maps. When she found out all the shoal died of cancer simultaneously, she decided to go visit the Pelage project. She knew of Ken Temple from colleagues at Cambridge. She blew her and Toby's cover by asking to many questions and taking notes in longhand. When the workers went on a rampage, she worked out a way to calm them down by using sounds. (AUDIO: The Pelage Project)
Soon after the 1964 general election, Jensen had corrected Shumann's notes and was able to build a working teleporter. Her notes were used by General Peters to stage an alien invasion as part of a coup — Jensen swiftly realised that a coup was being orchestrated and, with Gilmore, was able to prevent it. She also ensured that the aliens brought from the teleporter would home in on Peters, killing him. (AUDIO: State of Emergency)
She was concerned about Allison after she killed her fiancé. When Gilmore went missing she contacted his aunt to know if he had been in contact. She was chastised by Kinsella to do this. She went with Alison to investigate a former MI5 scientist Kent and the place ransacked. She became irate when James Aster told her that Kinsella had ordered him moved but upon confronting Kinsella she found out that this was a ruse. Sh found it disgusting that Emma Waverly could metamorphose into James Aster. She was concerned for Kinsella after he watched the apparent suicide of Catherine Waverly (AUDIO: Manhunt)
In 1965, Rachel and Gilmore had dinner together but she claimed that it was "perfectly professional." She accompanied Kinsella on a trip down the Central line to see the effects of radiation sickness on the cleaners by examining Bridget. She thought that Kinsella knew more than he led on. She found out that they were searching for the fifth citadel under London and thought it's nuclear generator was leaking. She learnt from Elizabeth Bradley that the government didn't want to save them. She wanted to look at the reactor to learn if she could power it down. (AUDIO: The Fifth Citadel)
She was annoyed when she was sent to Amsterdam on what she thought was a fools errand. Once it was found that they were here to find a psychic defector she became interested. When she talked to Anya Barkov, she became more interested but noticed that something was wrong with Alison. She worked out that the arguments that was happening were due to the psychics abilities. On their way back the psychic aura caused the plane to crash, luckily Rachel and her colleagues survived. She worked out that the Soviet's had created a psychic bomb in Barkov. She was later involved in a riot. (AUDIO: Peshka)
She wanted to investigate Emma Waverly's death and how a whole army squad was attacked but was put down by Kinsella. She again thought that Kinsella was withholding information. She decided to do some off the clock investigation. Upon speaking to Ellard, she worked out that there was a funeral and discovered in was Mary Cleaver. Her Waverly files disappeared when she came back to look for them. She had to go to Templeton to get information about Kinsella's actions. Once Gilmore got the file back from Ray Cleaver, she read through them and found out about Kinsella's involvement. She went with Alison to warn Kinsella and Gilmore of Templeton's plans. She worked out that Kinsella was Cleavers father. (AUDIO: Sins of the Fathers)
She was chastised for giving Gilmore to much leeway in his decisions. She investigated a strange substance which appeared after an arson attack in Soho, and found it to be organic. During her experiments the substance grew larger via cell division and one sample became a crystal in an alcohol solution. She went to complain about Templeton when he disappeared at a vital moment and discovered that his superior was William Heaton. She worked out that Kenny White's plan was to control the criminal underworld of London. (AUDIO: Changing of the Guard)
Her ICMG codename was "Barn Owl". (AUDIO: The Forgotten Village)
Rachel never took sugar in either coffee or tea. (AUDIO: Sins of the Fathers) She was brainwashed by Templeton to think that he was Toby and another Captain was Gilmore. (AUDIO: New Horizons) This came from an implant in her neck. (AUDIO: The Keep)
By 1971, she was acquainted with Professor Bernard Trainor, and had spoken to him about the Doctor, who noted that she spoke very highly of him. However, the Third Doctor expressed ignorance of her when he first met Trainor as his first meeting with her had not yet happened in his personal timeline. (PROSE: The Devil Goblins from Neptune)
Her autobiography, The Electrical Dreamer, made no mention of the Shoreditch Incident at all. (PROSE: Remembrance of the Daleks, Who Killed Kennedy)
She was eventually appointed chief scientific adviser to the Cabinet. She served in that position until 1981, at which time she was succeeded by her former student Anne Travers. (PROSE: Millennial Rites)
Behind the scenes
- The first mention of The Electrical Dreamer, and an excerpt from it, and of the ICMG, occurred in Ben Aaronovitch's novelisation of his Remembrance of the Daleks.
- In the Behind the Scenes feature on Counter-Measures Series 1, it was stated that Jensen was made leader in order to make the series more science-focused to distinguish between Counter-Measures, Big Finish's earlier UNIT series and Torchwood.
