Rachel Jensen
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Professor Rachel Jensen was the scientific advisor for Group Captain Ian Gilmore of the Intrusion Counter-Measures Group during the Shoreditch Incident in the relevant area of London in November 1963. Allison Williams served as her assistant. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks) She replaced Gilmore as the head of Counter-Measures in 1964. (AUDIO: Threshold)
After Clara Oswald jumped into the Doctor's time stream to stop the Great Intelligence erasing him from existence, (TV: The Name of the Doctor [+]Loading...["The Name of the Doctor (TV story)"]) Rachel was replaced by a splinter of Clara. (PROSE: The Runes of Fenric [+]Loading...{"page":"151","1":"The Runes of Fenric (short story)"})
Biography[[edit] | edit source]
Early life[[edit] | edit source]
As the Jensen family were Polish Jews and her father a communist, in the 1930s they fled to Britain from Poland when Rachel and her sister were young, for fear of the Nazis. (PROSE: Birds of Passage) Rachel grew up in the Jewish community at Golders Green, London (PROSE: Remembrance of the Daleks) and had a grandfather who suffered from dementia. (AUDIO: The Forgotten Village) During the 1930s, Rachel was in the Girl Guides. (PROSE: Remembrance of the Daleks)
During World War II, she served as a radar operator in the WAAF and was stationed on the same base as a young Ian Gilmore; after a severe German bombing raid, where Jensen kept her calm during the assault, the two of them spent the night together. He was transferred to Scotland the next day (PROSE: Remembrance of the Daleks) and she would become a member of the Cambridge Group, working with Alan Turing's team of codebreakers. (PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy) She was never able to eat porridge thanks to Turing comparing the human brain to eight ounces of it. (PROSE: Remembrance of the Daleks)
After the war, she worked alongside Bernard in the British Rocket Group in the 1950s. (PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy) She detested her co-worker Heinrich Schumann, a German professor, on assumption he'd been a war criminal (he had). (AUDIO: Threshold)
In 1962, she began researching artificial intelligence at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. (AUDIO: Threshold) A colleague, Professor Jeffrey Broderick, developed feelings for her, but the idea of being in a relationship with him made her "skin crawl". (AUDIO: Artificial Intelligence) Her students at Cambridge included Anne Travers and Ruth Ingram. (PROSE: The Scales of Injustice)
Temporary work with Counter-Measures[[edit] | edit source]
In November 1963, Rachel was requisitioned by Group Captain Gilmore via the Peacetime Emergency Powers Act, forcing her to join the Intrusion Counter-Measures Group as chief scientific advisor. She deferred to the Seventh Doctor during the Shoreditch Incident and was, with Allison Williams, left bored and frustrated by his refusal to discuss Dalek technology with them. She did, however, examine the ruined body of an Imperial Dalek. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks) The repeated display of advanced tecnhology and its implications left her quietly shaken, which would lead to a decision to retire in 1964. (PROSE: Remembrance of the Daleks)
Disregarding a note left by the Doctor which thanked her for her "open-mindedness and enthusiasm", but advised her that the world was not ready for knowledge of extraterrestrial technology, she conducted autopsy of two recovered Dalek mutants, one Imperial, one Renegade. She submitted the report to the Ministry of Defence on 3 December, with a top-secret rating. (PROSE: The Shoreditch Incident)
Shortly after, Rachel was sent to Sir Toby Kinsella by Gideon Vale to investigate him and his work, encountering Ace again in the process. The two managaed to get into a vault which contained a number of nuclear warheads. (AUDIO: 1963: The Assassination Games)
Rachel briefly retired to Cambridge to raise begonias and write her memoirs (PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy) but, within a matter of months, she resumed her research into artificial intelligence at Cambridge, keeping in touch with Allison but being a workaholic. (AUDIO: Threshold)
Joining Counter-Measures[[edit] | edit source]
Thanks to Allison, Rachel 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 was 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, only for the Royal Mail train to be intercepted by the MoD and the package 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)
Rachel decided to investigate what had caused a chemical spill which Alison had found. When she found out all the shoal died of cancer simultaneously, she decided to go visit the Pelage project, but she blew her and Toby's cover by asking too 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, Rachel 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 —Rachel 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 hone 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 went with Alison to investigate former MI5 scientist Kent. She became irate when James Aster told her that Toby had ordered him moved but upon confronting Kinsella she found out that this was a ruse. She found it disgusting that Emma Waverly could metamorphose into James Aster. She was concerned for Toby after he watched the apparent suicide of Catherine Waverly. (AUDIO: Manhunt)
In 1965, Rachel and Gilmore had dinner together but Rachel claimed that it was "perfectly professional". She accompanied Toby on a trip down the Central line to see the effects of radiation sickness on the cleaners by examining Bridget. She thought that Toby knew more than he let on. She found out that they were searching for the fifth citadel under London and thought its 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)
Rachel was annoyed when she was sent to Amsterdam on what she thought was a fools errand. Once it was found that they were there 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 Allison. She worked out that the arguments that were happening were due to the psychic's abilities. On their way back, the psychic aura caused the plane to crash, though Rachel and her colleagues survived. She worked out that the Soviets 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 Toby. She again thought that Toby was withholding information and decided to do some off the clock investigation. Upon speaking to Ellard, she worked out that there was a funeral and discovered it was for Mary Cleaver. When Rachel went back to look for her Waverly files, she found they had disappeared. She had to go to Templeton to get information about Toby actions. Once Gilmore got the files back from Ray Cleaver, Rachel read through them and found out about Toby's involvement. She went with Allison to warn Toby and Gilmore of Templeton's plans. She worked out that Toby was Cleavers father. (AUDIO: Sins of the Fathers)
Rachel was chastised for giving Gilmore too 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)
She realised that there was something unusual happening at a construction site. On the 22nd floor, Rachel started to feel claustrophobic and thought that there was something in the building materials that was causing hallucinations. Upon investigating the building she saw an old women near a fire talking about a bomb in the war. Rachel analysed the air samples and didn't find anything so decided to take more samples. She got lost in the building. (AUDIO: The Concrete Cage)
At one point, Rachel experimented on a monkey. She later went for a meal with Gilmore but this was interrupted by Millard with a message from Allison. She thought that Jack Craddock and Williams had early dementia. Rachel was placed in quarantine and tested everyone in the town for an infection that had appeared. She ordered Gilmore to evacuate the village. She was then taken as a hostage by a soviet spy before Gilmore got there and released her. She ordered that the village be permanently evacuated. (AUDIO: The Forgotten Village)
Toby told Rachel about an alien incursion in East Berlin and ordered her and Gilmore to West Berlin and eventually to the East. She was given a fake identity and had to pose as a married couple with Gilmore. She was concerned for her life when she realised that there was no plan. She managed to get into the facility which contained the alien, and saw the appropriate medical equipment so assumed they were in the right place. She realised that the alien was able to change its appearances and could be used to create perfect sleeper agents. She decided that the best thing to do was to kill the creature to save it being used by either side. She went against her natural free will and Toby realised she was being manipulated. (AUDIO: Unto the Breach)
She was brainwashed by Templeton to think that he was Toby and another Captain was Gilmore. She went to help Allison in an investigation but was almost killed from the debris in an explosion. Toby then placed her on enforced leave. Rachel worked out that the explosion was sabotage when she found the wreckage. (AUDIO: New Horizons) She worked out that she was being controlled and that it came from an implant in her neck. After contacting West, she realised that her fears were true. She disabled the implant and helped Toby and Gilmore escape their prison. (AUDIO: The Keep)
Upon learning about the Light Sleepers, she thought that William Heaton could stop them. She thought the Sleepers would make it seem like the human race had destroyed themselves. Rachel traced signals of the Orthello technology and became concerned when they had found the base of operations apparently too easily. She used the signals to provide a feedback loop to disable the guards at Battersea Power Station. (AUDIO: Rise and Shine)
Rachel was distraught when the Counter-Measures base was destroyed and all her research had gone. Toby asked her and Allison to make a detector to find The Light. An old friend, Hilary, recognised Rachel in Oxford, blowing her cover. Toby told her that he was trying to keep her alive. She decided later to whistleblow what Counter-Measures was doing. She managed to capture Perks using a ruse. Shortly afterwards she was apparently caught in an explosion. (AUDIO: Clean Sweep)
By 1971, she was acquainted with Professor Bernard Trainor, and had spoken to him about the Doctor. Trainor noted that she spoke very highly of him. However, the Third Doctor expressed ignorance of her when he first met Trainor. (PROSE: The Devil Goblins from Neptune)
In 1973, she was posing as a physics teacher named Miss Carol Hartigan when Ian Gilmore came back into contact with her. She was saddened to hear of Toby's death and was determined to go to his funeral. She was questioned by Overton about how she knew Toby. Rachel and Gilmore later had to escape an assassination attempt at Routledge's place. (AUDIO: Who Killed Toby Kinsella?)
After being threatened by armed guards, Rachel brought Gilmore and Allison to a Synagogue to plan a kidnapping attempt on Prince Hassan Al-Nadyr. She later asked the prince for information about Toby. Rachel was used as a decoy by Mikhail to trap MI5 agents. Toby returned, having never actually died, and told her that he was resurrecting Counter-Measures. (AUDIO: The Dead Don't Rise)
The new Counter-Measures[[edit] | edit source]
She was tasked with Allison to find out how a bank robbery occurred when the perpetrators were invisible. She theorised that the machine Edwige Ponzi had created generated a Somebody-Else's Problem field. She reverse engineered Ponzi's device and went to test it at the grand opening of a hotel which Toby knew Balthazar Schrek planned to rob. (AUDIO: Nothing to See Here)
Toby took Rachel to investigate a sunken submarine. Upon exploring the ship, she was tasked with checking that the radiation hadn't leaked. She was able to crack the safes in the captains quarters. Toby told her about a set of psychic spies on board. She realised that Alex had convinced the medical officer not to sedate him as much. She resisted Alex's attempts to control her because he had her mum's way of manipulating her. (AUDIO: Troubled Waters)
Rachel and Allison attended a funeral of an old friend of theirs they knew from University. After the funeral, Starling slipped a letter into Rachel's pocket, which said that her friend’s death was no accident. She was worried about Starling and thought that there wasn't a coincidence between the bird attacks and Starling's warnings. They were attacked by pigeons in the countermeasures office. (AUDIO: The Phoenix Strain)
Rachel posed as a Lady Hall in an undercover mission in Monte Carlo. She thought that Gus Kalwarowsky was selling a time machine to Suzanne Clare. She was tasked with spying on Kalwarowsky. She was used as a hostage by Clare. (AUDIO: A Gamble With Time)
Rachel gave a lesson to students about famous female scientists. Soon after, Allison told her that Toby had sent her on a mission to investigate an exploded lab. After hearing that Javier Santos might have cloned himself, Rachel decided to check if this was true by looking at the dead body. She theorised that the clone was mentally unstable as the clone mouse killed the original one. She started to think she was wrong to not accept Henry Cording's hand in marriage. She tried to negotiate with Javier to stop him from killing them. (AUDIO: The Splintered Man)
Rachel woke up in a hotel room without any windows and couldn't work out how she got there. Dr Jayne Smythe explained to her that she was there to investigate something strange happening on the cruiseliner. She posed again as Toby's wife. She observed the effects of a pill that was being taken by the passengers that made them more compliant. (AUDIO: The Ship of the Sleepwalkers)
Rachel was concerned about why Suzanne Clare wanted sanctuary. She then spent most of her time trying to get the systems online which occurred when Clare and Allison went missing. She followed them to Piccadilly. Returning back to the Post Office Tower, she found it wired up to explode. She then distracted Allison to stop her killing Toby. (AUDIO: My Enemy's Enemy)
She realised that the transmissions were concentrated in London. Gilmore and Rachel found some strange footprints in Hyde Park. Toby told her to look at the Yeti control sphere and use it to track a Yeti. She examined a deactivated Yeti. She learnt from Edward Travers that the monks from Det-Sen Monastery thought that the Intelligence came from a being that was constantly re-incarnated. With Travers' help she took apart a Yeti. She saw Yeti constructing more Yeti in the middle of London. (AUDIO: Time of the Intelligence)
She visited Patricia in a hospital as she was experiencing something that made her feel hollow. This was connected to the "Open Band" philosophy that Allison was sent to investigate. She thought that it might have been caused by a local variety of mushrooms. She worked out that the songs affected the growth of mushrooms. (AUDIO: The Hollow King)
Toby brought his team together to investigate the Robo-Helper 2000 learning it was developed by an escaped Lady Clare. She examined the robot to work out if it was a weapon or not but couldn't find anything so decided to investigate the factory they were produced in. She was duplicated by the Movellan Maurice Vallan. He later showed her about what the Movellans were creating in that factory. Rachel told him that there was reasons why humans weren't slaves to logic. Gilmore managed to rescue her. (AUDIO: The Movellan Manoeuvre)
She used some salvaged Movellan technology to try and make a portable electromagnetic pulse device. Rachel and Gilmore went to talk to those who had helped Clare create the robots but found him dead. She thought that there was something familiar in how he died. They later found a Dalek was doing all the killings. After Vallan died, she stayed behind to deactivate the bomb but ran out of attempts to diffuse it and was in the explosion. She escaped using Suzanne Clare's personal teleporter but didn't tell her colleagues so that she could start a new life. (AUDIO: The Dalek Gambit)
Later life[[edit] | edit source]
Rachel wrote an autobiography titled The Electrical Dreamer, in which she made no mention of the Shoreditch Incident at all nor why she'd retired. (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)
Rowan Sesay's 1983 book The Women That Science Forgot devoted space to Jensen, saying she was "hardly recognised outside the scientific community despite her pivotal work with Turing during the war". (PROSE: Remembrance of the Daleks)
Personality[[edit] | edit source]
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. (AUDIO: Threshold)
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)
Rachel never took sugar in either coffee or tea. (AUDIO: Sins of the Fathers)
Other realities[[edit] | edit source]
On the Inferno Earth Jensen married James Lethbridge-Stewart and, despite her racial background, made a positive impression on his father, Gordon. (PROSE: I, Alastair) The couple had a son, Dylan, in 1960.
She was killed by Axonite-infected soldiers before she could flee with James and Dylan to N-Space Earth. (PROSE: Night of the Intelligence)
Behind the scenes[[edit] | edit source]
- 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.
