Jennifer Buckingham

Jennifer Buckingham
Species:	Human
Affiliated with:	Women's Volunteer Reserve
Place of origin:	Great Britain
Spouse:	Jeremy Carstairs
First appearance:	The War Games
Appearances:	PROSE: Players
Main actor:	Jane Sherwin

Lady Jennifer Buckingham was a nurse and ambulance driver who served in the Women's Volunteer Reserve during World War I.

Biography

While on her way to Ypres in 1917, Lady Jennifer was abducted by the War Lords and hypnotised into participating in their simulated version of the war. She and Lieutenant Jeremy Carstairs overcame their conditioning thanks to the Second Doctor and they helped him organised the resistance against the War Lords. Like all the surviving victims of the War Lords, she was returned to her proper time and place on Earth by the Time Lords. (TV: The War Games)

The Second Doctor met Lady Jennifer and Lieutenant Carstairs again in 1915, wanting to confirm that they had been returned to Earth safely, quickly ascertaining that they had no memory of having met him. The three of them helped Winston Churchill escape from the Players who had captured them, with the Doctor staying behind to keep the Players at gunpoint while the other three escaped in a plane that would have taken Churchill to Germany, the Doctor advising Carstairs and Lady Jennifer to recognise that they were made for each other.

Over the next two decades, Lady Jennifer and Carstairs were eventually married, with Jennifer dropping her title (although she jokingly commented that she was waiting to use it again when Jeremy got his knighthood). She later met the Sixth Doctor when he collaborated with Churchill and Carstairs to thwart a Nazi coup of Britain, although he posed as a different man to avoid awkward questions. (PROSE: Players)

Behind the scenes

• Sherwin's portrayal of Lady Jennifer and her interactions with Fraser Hines's Jamie McCrimmon were an inspiration for the series Outlander, which centres around a World War II nurse transported back in time to the Scottish Highlands, where she falls in love with Jamie Hines. Before being transported back in time, the character was married to a former officer, much like Lady Jennifer's relationship with Lieutenant Carstairs.
• The character also appears in Kim Newman's non-Doctor Who universe novel The Bloody Red Baron, which features the appearances of many characters from various novels, films, and TV series.