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Time of Your Life
(Steve Lyons) |
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 Name: Grant Markham
Format:
Book.
Time of Origin: Born on Agora; grew up on New
Earth in Neo Tokyo, late 22nd century
Appearances: "Time
of Your Life", "Killing
Ground" and "Schrödinger’s Botanist".
Doctor: Sixth
Doctor
Fellow
Companions: None
History: Although Grant has only a few recorded
adventures with The Doctor, he joined the Time Lord at a difficult
point in his life, when The Doctor was contemplating abandoning his
travels through time and space and living in exile in order to escape
his apparent ‘destiny’ as The
Valeyard ("The Trial
of a Time Lord"). Although The Doctor had not sought adventure,
a new mission from the Time Lords forced him to recognise his responsibilities
to the wider universe and his need for companionship when the Time
Lords sent him to investigate the Meson Broadcasting System, the
local news station for the planet Torrok, and their recent discovery
of dimensional transcendental technology.
Meanwhile, computer programmer Grant Markham of New Earth
became involved in The Doctor’s investigations when his attempt
to track the origin of the suspiciously advanced technology provided
by the mysterious Network led him to discover a strange computer
code just before Neo Tokyo became the site of MBS’s attempt
stage real dramas by using advanced technology to create threats
that their ‘heroes’ could respond to, only for everything
to backfire when the monsters they were using went out of control.
Realising that his entire city was trapped in a Marston Sphere -
one of MBS’s dimensionally transcendental spheres -, Grant
was able to escape onto the station where the sphere was kept, eventually
encountering The Doctor after The Doctor had discovered a hostile
artificial intelligence in the station’s virtual broadcasting
system, the creature identifying itself as Krllxk. Although Neo Tokyo
was sent back to New Earth before Grant could return home, and several
station residents died during the entity’s attack, The Doctor
was eventually able to destroy Krllxk by trapping it in an android
body inside the TARDIS and beating it to death with the TARDIS hatstand,
leaving the former MBS staff to help rebuild Torrok while he took
Grant with him as his new companion.
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Killing Ground
(Steve Lyons) |
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In his early twenties when he began travelling with The
Doctor, Grant was a highly capable computer programmer by the standards
of his time, but suffered from an acute form of robophobia, dating
back to his childhood. Although unused to dangerous situations when
he met The Doctor, Grant demonstrated an ability to think on his
feet when in danger from the beginning when he escaped Neo Tokyo
and gained access to the MBS space station despite the unique and
confusing circumstances facing him. His computer skills were so exceptional
that he was even able to trick the Cybermen into thinking that their
conversion equipment was working properly after The Doctor had deactivated
them, later devising a means of defeating the Cybermen by exploiting
the fact that they had been designed to be cryogenically frozen despite
his current panic at facing the origins of his long-seated robophobia.
The mystery of Grant’s past was solved when The
Doctor, believing that there was more to his fear than the obvious,
took Grant back to Agora to investigate his robophobia ("Killing
Ground"), the two swiftly discovering that the colony was controlled
by the Cybermen when The Doctor was captured and Grant was forced
to assist a group of rebels prepare for an attack against the Cybermen.
As The Doctor discovered, Grant was born on Agora as the son of Ben
Taggart and Jean Markham - the low male population meant that children
were identified by their mothers’ surnames -, with his parents
being part of a rebellion against the Cybermens’ regular conversion
of most of the planet’s male population, his robophobia being
the result of the young Grant witnessing the Cybermen kill his mother
as punishment for her role in the rebellion before he and other children
were smuggled off the colony when he was six in a damaged timeship
(The Doctor and the adult Grant learning the ship’s origins
in the process). Although Grant nearly allowed himself to become
partly cybernetic to fight the Cybermen as part of the ‘Bronze
Knights’ - a resistance group who used Cyber-technology to
fight them - after they killed his father, he was convinced not to
forsake his humanity, managing to defeat the Cybermen after the death
of the Bronze Knights by turning down the temperature in the room
where their army had just been activated. The Doctor subsequently
destroyed the frozen Cybermen using a cannon on the Cybermen’s
stolen Selachian warship, tricking the Cyber-leader into firing the
gun after it had been reprogrammed to backfire.
Although
the two generally got along well, The Doctor eventually abandoned
Grant at the Bi-Al Foundation ("The
Invisible Enemy") after
Grant nearly died when he linked his mind up to a computer that had
been infected by a highly dangerous virus, The Doctor still feeling
guilty about the possible death of his previous companion Peri Brown
("The Trial of a Time Lord: Mindwarp"). The Doctor attempted
to visit Grant later to apologise for his abrupt, but Grant was too
bitter to accept the Time Lord’s apology, although he did encourage
The Doctor to remember that his companions are always aware of the
risks when they decide to travel with him ("Schrödinger’s
Botanist"). |
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