The Doctor's Companions
(The Book and Audio Companions)

Roslyn Forrester Samantha Jones Fitz Kreiner
Book - The Eight Doctors
The Eight Doctors
(Terrance Dicks)
 Name: Samantha 'Sam' Jones.

 Format: Book and Audio.

 Time of Origin: November 1997, Coal Hill School.

 Appearances: "The Eight Doctors - Interference Book One"

 Doctor: Eighth Doctor.

 Fellow Companions: Jo Grant, Sarah Jane Smith, Fitz Kreiner and Compassion.

 History: Sam first joined The Doctor when she was reporting some drug dealers to the police in her area. While running away from the dealers in question, she ran into Foreman's Yard, where the First Doctor had stayed for a while, and met up with the amnesiac Eighth Doctor, who fought off the dealers before leaving to reclaim his memories. However, once he'd finished, he materialised there almost instantly after he'd left, saved Sam once again, and then left, but Sam dived into the TARDIS shortly before it dematerialised, thus becoming The Doctor's new companion.

Book - Alien Bodies
Alien Bodies
(Lawrence Miles)
 Sam was rather different from some other companions of The Doctor, not really showing much shock at the TARDIS interior like some earlier companions, being more used to science-fiction shows than some. She was also in excellent shape and, like Mel, a vegetarian, but she didn't constantly try to force The Doctor into it, possibly since he wasn't as overweight as the Sixth Doctor had been. A clean-living individual, she didn’t drink or take drugs, and was a supporter of Greenpeace - The Doctor once leaving her at a Greenpeace rally for an hour but, for some reason, only returning for her after three years, during which he travelled with companions like Charley Pollard - and gay rights; indeed, coming from relatively liberal parents, she once commented that the only thing that would have shocked her family was if she had ever taken drugs, and it was even hinted at one point that she might be bisexual.


 Her time with The Doctor was a rather interesting point, since it featured the return of several old enemies, such as the Vampires and the Zygons from the Fourth Doctor's era, along with battle against the Daleks and even the return of the Third Doctor's companion Jo Grant when history was almost changed in "Genocide". One of the main enemies at this point however, was Faction Paradox, a cult of time-travelling voodooists that worshiped time paradoxes. In their first appearance against The Doctor, in the book "Alien Bodies", the Faction was attempting to buy the body of The Doctor's future and final incarnation, killed in the Future War between the Time Lords and the Future Enemy, a faceless foe whose origins were revealed in "The Ancestor Cell". The Doctor defeated the Faction and managed to bury himself, but in the process The Doctor discovered that Sam wasn't the original Samantha Jones; there was a second, dark-haired Sam in existence, but the original’s biodata had somehow been rewritten to become the Sam that would travel with The Doctor.

 The most prominent incident during Sam’s time with The Doctor was the ‘Missing Sam’ series, where Sam fled The Doctor after she started passionately kissing him while originally attempting CPR, unable to cope with both his apparent death and her own feelings for him. Despite a brief reunion while dealing with ecological protests on the Dreamstone Moon - a living moon that was being cut up because the rock that formed its brain allowed people to preserve their dreams, - Sam ran again after she was forced to leave The Doctor in an exploding ship. The Doctor’s attempts to find Sam were cut short when he tracked her to the distant planet Ha’olam, where he was arrested and imprisoned for espionage by the company INC, his prison virtually inescapable thanks to the system planting an implant in his eye that created an artificial intelligence based on The Doctor himself that could anticipate his every move. After living on Ha’olam for three years, during which she worked at charitable organisation Livingspace after a brief unsatisfactory stint at INC which ended when she realised she would accomplish nothing there, Sam discovered The Doctor's imprisonment while hacking into the computers of INC in an attempt to expose their corrupt actions after they evicted several people from their homes. Subsequently convincing her friends to help her rescue The Doctor, Sam tracked down the TARDIS, leaving her former lover Paul to operate the ship while she and her friends broke into the prison, The Doctor subsequently directing Paul on how to pilot the ship over the phone. With INC’s alien masters defeated - ironically with the aid of DOCTOR, the artificial intelligence created by the aliens’ attempts to keep The Doctor imprisoned, - Sam decided to return to travelling with The Doctor, having come to terms with her old crush, proven to herself that she could survive alone, and realising that she could do far more good with The Doctor than she could there.

Book - Unnatural History
Unnatural History
(Jonathan Blum & Kate Orman)
Even with her feelings for The Doctor resolved, Sam’s time in the TARDIS continued to be difficult; the most prominent example of this was during the events of “The Janus Conjunction”, where Sam actually died of radiation poisoning at one point, but The Doctor managed to save her by putting the TARDIS into a temporal orbit just before she died, subsequently spending a month analysing the radiation and developing a cure before returning to normal time. Some time after this, the two of them were joined on their travels by Fitz Kriener, a young man from 1963 who made his way by selling flowers at a garden centre and playing at a bar at night. (''The Taint'). He and Sam occasionally had some difficulty getting on, Sam slightly uncomfortable at the presence of another companion after so long with just her and The Doctor, but the two of them generally got along well enough despite Fitz occasionally flirting with her.

During the events of "Unnatural History", The Doctor had landed in San Francisco in 2002, investigating a scar in time and space that had been created as a result of the Master’s attempt to destroy Earth by opening the TARDIS’s Eye of Harmony shortly after The Doctor had regenerated into his current incarnation. When blonde Sam and the TARDIS fell into the scar, the dark-haired Sam was restored to existence, forcing The Doctor and Fitz to contact her to try and solve the mystery. While trying to stabilise the scar before time ran out, The Doctor determined that a naturalist from the higher dimensions was experimenting with his biodata, traces of which were now spread throughout the city as a result of the scar. Although The Doctor was able to recover the TARDIS, the scar remained, leaving dark Sam with no other option but to enter the scar herself when The Doctor was in danger and she herself had no idea how to help him, subsequently merging with The Doctor’s biodata and turning into blonde Sam in order to restore a companion who knew how to help The Doctor. In essence, blonde Sam’s entire existence was a paradox; blonde Sam was created when dark Sam threw herself in amongst The Doctor’s biodata in the scar, but she was only able to do so because The Doctor brought her to the scar he’d created, and he only brought her there because he’d already met blonde Sam (The Doctor’s creation of such a paradox foreshadowing his eventual infection by the Paradox Virus as a result of his altered third regeneration).


Book - Interference Book One
Interference Book One
(Lawrence Miles)
It was shortly after this that Sam decided to leave The Doctor, resolving to leave him the next time the TARDIS landed on 20th century Earth. The Doctor tried to stay away from 20th century Earth for a long time after that, until he was finally summoned to 1996 to help with a UN conference regarding the possibility of negotiating with aliens called the Remote who were offering Earth advanced technology. While The Doctor followed up a lead on the Remote, Sam encountered The Doctor’s old companion Sarah Jane Smith while monitoring Guest, the leader of the Remote, but was subsequently captured by the Remote using this weapon called the Cold that apparently totally destroyed the target but really simply moved them out of time and space until they were recalled. While captured by the Remote - who relied on picking up broadcast signals to understand and interpret the world around them, much like humans base their personalities on ‘signals’ from their parents, - Sam was used to provide the Remote with examples of the principles of sacrifice and duty by playing her in BBC-drama style scenarios involving her and The Doctor fighting an alien invasion and her being forced to save the day by such actions as sacrificing herself, sacrificing The Doctor, destroying the planet, or even killing the baby who would grow up to betray the planet. Although the Remote managed to track down a Time Lord warship from the future war that had been hidden near Earth, nearly releasing the true form of the Cold - a validium-based weapon that tapped into a rift in time, - Sam was able to broadcast a message that relayed the true nature of the Cold, and the Remote thus abandoned their mission. Still resolved to remain behind despite the fact that her younger self wouldn’t even leave with The Doctor until next year, Sam thus stayed with Sarah for a while, until the other her had left with The Doctor, and then rejoined her parents, although it may have been some while before they got used to her having apparently aged almost five years in a couple of days. Before his departure, however, The Doctor visited the present version of Sam while she was suffering from a drug high - having taken drugs to see how far her parents could be pushed - and encouraged her to start a cultural revolution rather than a political one, as the present political system was simply based on the old philosophy of the ‘top ape’ making all the rules.

Sam’s final fate is uncertain. In "Sometime Never...", the Council of Eight - mysterious crystal beings who fought The Doctor with the aid of the ruthless time traveller known as Sabbath - mentioned that they had killed many of The Doctor’s past companions to prevent their continued effect on history, with one of the dead companions being described as “a political activist shot while making a speech”. While this description would appear to fit Sam, the Council’s final defeat restored all the companions they had previously killed, suggesting that Sam’s death may have been restored. However, in "The Gallifrey Chronicles", The Doctor, Fitz Kreiner and new companion Trix MacMillan discovered Sam’s grave during a visit to 2005, stating that she had died in 2002, but the fact that the grave in question stated that Sam’s middle name was Lynne - the name of her dark-haired other self, - combined with the fact that The Doctor was subsequently captured by the Time Lord Marnal in response to his discovery of Gallifrey’s destruction makes it uncertain whether this was the real Sam’s grave. However, The Doctor and Trix nevertheless assured Fitz that, even if the grave was Sam’s, in her time with The Doctor she would have experienced more wonders in a week than most people ever experience in a lifetime, and she would still reappear in the future even if her grave confined her to between 1980 and 2002.
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Memorable Moment
 As with later companion Donna Noble, Sam’s most memorable moment is technically one that she wasn’t responsible for herself. When Sam’s biodata was briefly overwritten to convert her into a version of Samantha Jones who had never met the Doctor and was actually ‘under-qualified’ to be his companion, lacking the blonde Sam’s drive to make a difference, the new Sam nevertheless assisting him in escaping Griffin, a twisted naturalist from the higher dimensions who sought to ‘simplify’ The Doctor’s history, culminating in her allowing herself to be turned back into the blonde Sam The Doctor knew when The Doctor needed help and blonde Sam was the only one who knew how to help him ("Unnatural History").

The Stories
Format Story Doctor Fellow Companions Source
Book The Eight Doctors The 8th Doctor   The Eighth Doctors Stories
Audio Bounty The 8th Doctor   Earth & Beyond (Audio)
Book Vampire Science The 8th Doctor   The Eighth Doctors Stories
Book The Bodysnatchers The 8th Doctor   The Eighth Doctors Stories
Book Genocide The 8th Doctor Jo Grant The Eighth Doctors Stories
AudioBook Dead Time
(also released on audio "Earth and Beyond")
The 8th Doctor   More Short Trips
Book War of the Daleks The 8th Doctor   The Eighth Doctors Stories
Book Alien Bodies The 8th Doctor   The Eighth Doctors Stories
Book Kursaal The 8th Doctor   The Eighth Doctors Stories
Book Option Lock The 8th Doctor   The Eighth Doctors Stories
AudioBook The People's Temple
(also released on audio "Earth and Beyond")
The 8th Doctor   Short Trips
Book The Queen of Eros The 8th Doctor   Short Trips and Side Steps
Book Longest Day The 8th Doctor   The Eighth Doctors Stories
Book Dreamstone Moon The 8th Doctor   The Eighth Doctors Stories
Book Seeing I The 8th Doctor   The Eighth Doctors Stories
Book Placebo Effect The 8th Doctor   The Eighth Doctors Stories
Book Vanderdeken's Children The 8th Doctor   The Eighth Doctors Stories
Book The Scarlet Empress The 8th Doctor   The Eighth Doctors Stories
Book The Janus Conjunction The 8th Doctor   The Eighth Doctors Stories
Book Beltempest The 8th Doctor   The Eighth Doctors Stories
Book The Face-Eater The 8th Doctor   The Eighth Doctors Stories
Book Femme Fatale The 8th Doctor   More Short Trips
Book The Taint The 8th Doctor Fitz Kreiner The Eighth Doctors Stories
Book Demontage The 8th Doctor Fitz Kreiner The Eighth Doctors Stories
Book Revolution Man The 8th Doctor Fitz Kreiner The Eighth Doctors Stories
Book Dominion The 8th Doctor Fitz Kreiner The Eighth Doctors Stories
Book Unnatural History The 8th Doctor Fitz Kreiner The Eighth Doctors Stories
Book Autumn Mist The 8th Doctor Fitz Kreiner The Eighth Doctors Stories
Book Interference Book One The 8th Doctor & The 3rd Doctor Fitz Kreiner, Compassion & Sarah Jane Smith The Eighth Doctors Stories
Book Interference Book Two The 8th Doctor & The 3rd Doctor Fitz Kreiner, Compassion & Sarah Jane Smith The Eighth Doctors Stories
Total Stories:   30
 
Parts of this article were compiled with the assistance of David Spence who can be contacted by e-mail at djfs@blueyonder.co.uk
 
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