Grant Markham

Grant Markham was a late 22nd century human computer programmer residing on New Earth who travelled with the Sixth Doctor for a brief time.

Adventures with the Doctor
Grant was born in 2172. (PROSE: Killing Ground)

He first met the Sixth Doctor in the year 2191 when his home city of New Tokyo on New Earth was transported into a Marston Sphere. Grant used his computer programming skills to defeat a giant robot dinosaur terrorising the city. The Doctor saved New Tokyo. At the end of the affair, Grant went with him to become his companion. (PROSE: Time of Your Life)

Grant's next adventure with the Doctor was on his birthplace, the planet Agora, again in the year 2191. They found the Cybermen had been using the planet to gather strong males for cyber-conversion. Grant met his father, Ben Taggart, who was killed in an unsuccessful attempt to convert him into a Cyberman as Grant watched. This moved Grant to volunteer to become a Bronze Knight, one of a resistance group of Agorans who themselves used cybernetic implants to become stronger to defeat the Cybermen. He was convinced not to give up his humanity by the knights' creator, the scientist Maxine Carter. The Cybermen attacked the Bronze Knights and slaughtered them all, but Grant lowered their base's temperature and deactivated the Cybermen. (PROSE: Killing Ground)

Further adventures
Grant and the Doctor had many adventures over the next years. (NC: Schrödinger's Botanist) They encountered a group of killer Meeps in the Santaland amusement centre in Norway during the 22nd century; (NC: Wish Upon a Star Beast) they were joined in their travels by a Legion; and Grant met a future companion, Carmen Yeh, while in a prison cell.

Ultimately, Grant was seriously injured when he linked his mind to a computer infected by a virus. Unwilling to risk Grant's life any further, the Doctor left him at the Bi-Al Foundation. The Doctor later regretted abandoning Grant and returned to apologise, but Grant did not forgive him, and they parted on bitter terms. (NC: Schrödinger's Botanist)

Erasure
A man resembling Grant later found himself removed from the Web of Time. He was stuck in a limbo-like existence in a zeppelin traversing the Time Vortex. (PROSE: Repercussions...)

Personality
Grant suffered from robophobia, a morbid fear of androids and robots. Through his travels with the Doctor he learned the roots of his condition; he had repressed memories of watching his mother being killed by Cybermen. (PROSE: Killing Ground)

Some time after Grant's departure, the Doctor travelled with Melanie Bush. When Mel scolded him for failing to return a Volkswagen Beetle he'd hired, he protested that Grant would have let him keep the car. (PROSE: Instruments of Darkness)

Behind the scenes
The only illustrated depiction of Grant Markham appears on the cover of Killing Ground. Cover artist Alister Pearson used himself as the model.