Yasmin Khan
PC Yasmin "Yaz" Khan was a companion of the Thirteenth Doctor and a junior police officer with Hallamshire Police. She lived in Sheffield and was also a practising Muslim of Pakistani descent.
Biography
Early life
As a child, Yasmin attended Redlands Primary alongside Ryan Sinclair. (TV: The Woman Who Fell to Earth)
Her best friend was Poppy Hillman. When they got to high school, their friendship ended because Taylor Grant called Yaz an "Islamist terrorist". Even ten years later, this experience still hurt. (PROSE: The Good Doctor)
Yasmin was placed in a class named for Rosa Parks. In year 10, she snuck into Danny Biswas' house through the window. (TV: Rosa)
Some years later, she joined Hallamshire Police as a junior officer. (TV: The Woman Who Fell to Earth)
Yasmin encountered the effects of racism in the 21st century. She often had racial slurs like "paki" directed at her during her work as a police officer, and she was labelled a terrorist due to her Muslim faith. (TV: Rosa, PROSE: The Good Doctor)
Meeting the Doctor
As a trainee on second-year probation, Yaz was often sent by her superior, Ramesh Sunder, to deal with small-time petty disputes. After vocalising her need for something more, she was sent to investigate an unidentified object in the Peaks outside Sheffield. There, Yaz found the caller was Ryan Sinclair, whom she recognised from school. Ryan insisted the call was not a prank and, though Yasmin didn't initially believe him, touching the cold object lead to her doing so.
After Ryan received a call from his grandmother, Grace, Yaz accompanied him to check on her, finding her train under attack from a mysterious creature. There, she encountered the Thirteenth Doctor. Yasmin, along with Ryan, Grace and the latter's husband Graham O'Brien, helped the Doctor investigate and stop the pod's occupant, a Stenza named Tim Shaw, from abducting Karl Wright. After Grace died while disabling the coil, Yasmin attended her funeral.
Yasmin later helped the Doctor construct a teleporter to get her to her TARDIS. Though meant to stay whilst she left, Yasmin, Ryan and Graham were also teleported into deep space with her. (TV: The Woman Who Fell to Earth)
Believing the pair to be bonuses in the Rally of the Twelve Galaxies, Epzo scooped Yasmin and the Doctor out of deep space and transported them aboard his ship - the Cerebos. Yaz awoke in a MediPod, stepping out to find the Doctor preparing to jettison the back of the ship, initiating a speed boost which caused them to crash onto the surface of Desolation.
On Desolation, she found Ryan and Graham, who had been similarly saved by Angstrom, Epzo's rival in what would become the final stage of the rally. The rivals, with the Doctor and her friends in tow, were tasked by Ilin, master of the rally, to race across the planet; the first to reach the finish line at the Ghost Monument would win 3.2 million krin and salvation from planet's hostile surface. The Doctor discovered that the Ghost Monument was, in fact, her TARDIS, phasing in and out of reality. After the Doctor stabilised the TARDIS, Yasmin entered it for the first time and the Doctor attempted to take them home. (TV: The Ghost Monument)
Travels in the TARDIS
Attempting to land the TARDIS back in 21st century Sheffield, the Doctor failed several times to bring Yasmin home. Explaining that the TARDIS had latched onto nearby Artron energy and that they were in 1955 Montgomery, Alabama, Yaz was excited to begin her first adventure in the past and was astonished to meet Rosa Parks. In Slim's Bar and the Sahara Springs Motel, she recounted the famous historical event of Parks refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger, starting the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
She also endured many of the effects of racial segregation in the 1950s. She was misidentified as Mexican instead of a British woman of Pakistani descent and this caused her to be denied service at the bar and had to discretely enter the motel room through the back window. However, she was permitted to enter the buses in Montgomery through the front door and sit in the "white-only" section, unlike the black people who had to sit at the back of the bus. She remarked that she was unsure in her place in Montgomery due to the lack of citizens with Pakistani heritage.
Attempting to stop Krasko's plans to alter history, Yasmin and the Doctor made sure Rosa Parks left work as a seamstress on time by giving her their clothes to mend. Yasmin chatted with Parks about her life, and the latter was surprised to hear that Yaz was permitted to be a police officer.
By making sure that the bus was crowded enough that Parks's moment of defiance could happen, the Doctor, Graham, and Yaz reluctantly became the three extra "white" passengers that required Parks to move back. The three, as well as Ryan, then witnessed Parks's historic arrest. Back in the TARDIS, the Doctor explained how Parks would be commemorated in the future, and Yasmin saw Asteroid 284996, also named Rosaparks, in space. (TV: Rosa)
Psychological profile
Personality
Yasmin was ambitious. Although outwardly confident, she wasn't overly so, and was aware that she still had much to learn; she viewed "every day [as] a learning day". (TV: The Woman Who Fell to Earth) She held high aspirations, telling Rosa Parks that she wanted to be at the top of the police force. Despite enduring racism in American 1955, she spoke positively, thanking Rosa Parks for making it possible for her to be a police officer, and that (despite the hard times) America would eventually have a black President. She had a sense of humour and joked about her supposed Mexican blood when she was misidentified in Montgomery. (TV: Rosa)
Skills
Her police experience meant that she was a good negotiator, capable of forming a truce between two opposing civilians. (TV: The Woman Who Fell to Earth)
She had a good knowledge of history, recounting the significance of Rosa Parks's refusal to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. She knew what time of day Parks was arrested and had some idea about her profession. This knowledge would help the Doctor keep history in order when Krasko's actions put the past in jeopardy. (TV: Rosa)
Yasmin had a lovely singing voice. (PROSE: The Good Doctor)
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