Yasmin Khan

PC  Yasmin "Yaz" Khan was a companion of the Thirteenth Doctor and a junior police officer with Hallamshire Police. She lived in Flat 34 of the Park Hill estate in Sheffield with her parents Hakim and Najia, and her sister Sonya. She was also a practising Muslim of Pakistani descent.

As part of Team TARDIS, Yaz often made use of her investigative skills to help the Doctor solve problems; versatile in the area, Yaz either questioned people for information or investigated items of interest. In addition, Yaz also had training in helping reassure and calm victims and survivors of horrible incidents. This often came in handy during adventures where they needed to gain the confidence and trust of people who could help out.

Early life
Yasmin was born in late 1998, (COMIC: A New Beginning; PROSE: The Secret in Vault 13) the daughter of Hakim Khan and his wife, Najia. (TV: Arachnids in the UK)

Yaz begged her parents for a pet rabbit but was not allowed one because Hakim was allergic to animal fur. Instead she had a cuddly toy named Mister Hoppy. (PROSE: The Secret in Vault 13)

Education
As a child, Yasmin attended Redlands Primary alongside Ryan Sinclair. (TV: The Woman Who Fell to Earth) Yasmin was placed in a class named for Rosa Parks. (TV: Rosa) Her best friend was Poppy Hillman. Around 2008, when they "got to high school", their friendship ended after Taylor Grant called Yaz an "Islamist terrorist". (PROSE: The Good Doctor) Yasmin was also bullied by Izzy Flint, who left Yasmin feeling afraid for a whole year. (TV: The Witchfinders)

In Year 10, she snuck into Danny Biswas' house through the window. (TV: Rosa)

Work with Hallamshire Police
Around 2016, Yasmin joined Hallamshire Police as a junior officer. (TV: The Woman Who Fell to Earth) Her police officer training included learning about measures to help children feel safe in stressful circumstances. (TV: It Takes You Away)

Yasmin encountered the effects of racism in the 21st century. She often had racial slurs like "paki" directed at her during her work as a police officer, and she was labelled a terrorist due to her Muslim faith. (TV: Rosa)

She was sometimes stationed at the city centre on a Friday night. (WC: Case File Two) Though she hoped for more high-stakes assignments, (TV: The Woman Who Fell to Earth) Yaz was dedicated to her responsibilities as a police officer, which she took seriously. As she did not pursue a social life outside of work, Yaz's family considered her to be "married to her job." (TV: Arachnids in the UK)

Meeting the Doctor
As a trainee on second-year probation, Yaz was often sent by her superior, Ramesh Sunder, to deal with small-time petty disputes. After vocalising her need for something more, she was sent to investigate an unidentified object in the Peaks outside Sheffield. There, Yaz found the caller was Ryan Sinclair, whom she recognised from school. Ryan insisted the call was not a prank and, though Yasmin didn't initially believe him, touching the cold object lead to her doing so.

After Ryan received a call from his grandmother, Grace, Yaz accompanied him to check on her, finding her train under attack from a mysterious creature. There, she encountered the Thirteenth Doctor. Yasmin, along with Ryan, Grace and the latter's husband Graham O'Brien, helped the Doctor investigate and stop the pod's occupant, a Stenza named Tim Shaw, from abducting Karl Wright. After Grace died while disabling the coil, Yasmin attended her funeral.

Yasmin later helped the Doctor construct a teleporter to get her to her TARDIS. Though meant to stay whilst she left, Yasmin, Ryan and Graham were also teleported into deep space with her. (TV: The Woman Who Fell to Earth)

Believing the pair to be bonuses in the Rally of the Twelve Galaxies, Epzo scooped Yasmin and the Doctor out of deep space and transported them aboard his ship - the Cerebos. Yaz awoke in a MediPod, stepping out to find the Doctor preparing to jettison the back of the ship, initiating a speed boost which caused them to crash onto the surface of Desolation.

On Desolation, she found Ryan and Graham, who had been similarly saved by Angstrom, Epzo's rival in what would become the final stage of the rally. The rivals, with the Doctor and her friends in tow, were tasked by Ilin, master of the rally, to race across the planet; the first to reach the finish line at the Ghost Monument would win 3.2 million krin and salvation from planet's hostile surface. The Doctor discovered that the Ghost Monument was, in fact, her TARDIS, phasing in and out of reality. After the Doctor stabilised the TARDIS, Yasmin entered it for the first time and the Doctor attempted to take them home. (TV: The Ghost Monument)

Trying to return home
Attempting to land the TARDIS back in 21st century Sheffield, the Doctor failed several times to bring Yasmin home. Explaining that the TARDIS had latched onto nearby artron energy and that they were in 1955 Montgomery, Alabama, Yaz was excited to begin her first adventure in the past and was astonished to meet Rosa Parks. In Slim's Bar and the Sahara Springs Motel, she recounted the famous historical event of Parks refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger, starting the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

She also endured many of the effects of racial segregation in the 1950s. She was misidentified as Mexican instead of a British woman of Pakistani descent and this caused her to be denied service at the bar and had to discretely enter the motel room through the back window. However, she was permitted to enter the buses in Montgomery through the front door and sit in the "white-only" section, unlike the black people who had to sit at the back of the bus. She remarked that she was unsure in her place in Montgomery due to the lack of citizens with Pakistani heritage.

Attempting to stop Krasko's plans to alter history, Yasmin and the Doctor made sure Rosa Parks left work as a seamstress on time by giving her their clothes to mend. Yasmin chatted with Parks about her life, and the latter was surprised to hear that Yaz was permitted to be a police officer.

By making sure that the bus was crowded enough that Parks's moment of defiance could happen, the Doctor, Graham, and Yaz reluctantly became the three extra "white" passengers that required Parks to move back. The three, as well as Ryan, then witnessed Parks's historic arrest. Back in the TARDIS, the Doctor explained how Parks would be commemorated in the future, and Yasmin saw Asteroid 284996, also named Rosaparks, in space. (TV: Rosa)

Returning home
Yaz returned home to Sheffield in 2018 just half an hour after being transported into deep space. Noticing the Doctor's sadness at the prospect of travelling alone, she invited her to tea at her family's flat, along with Ryan and Graham. There, Hakim and Sonya teased Yaz who rarely brought friends home. However, her mother rang Yaz shortly after, asking her to pick her up and to not tell her father about it.

Claiming she was taking a parcel to Najia, she left her father, sister, Ryan and the Doctor and drove to Jack Robertson's luxury hotel. She seemed impressed, but her mother confided that she had just lost her job as general manager. Robertson then appeared and had Kevin hold Yaz and Najia at gunpoint for trespassing, to which Yaz protested, asserting that they had no right and demanding to know why her mother had been sacked.

Yaz and Najia were shown a hotel room full of cobwebs, which no-one could explain. Left in the room, she was phoned by the Doctor, and the TARDIS team regrouped in the lobby, joined by Najia and Jade McIntyre. Her mother embarrassed Yaz when asking if she and the Doctor were in a relationship though was more irritated when asked the same of Ryan.

After the giant spiders were contained, she offered to get her family their bread. Promising her mother she would tell her the truth about the Doctor when she returned, she had already decided to stay travelling in the TARDIS with the Doctor, a decision also followed by Ryan and Graham. (TV: Arachnids in the UK)

Team TARDIS
Team TARDIS found themselves on Seffilun 27 in the 67th century. When they unearthed a sonic mine that the Doctor could not disable, all four were rendered unconscious. They were recovered by the medical ship Tsuranga and Yaz woke up after several days. Bound to Resus One, the ship was attacked by a Pting that Yaz helped the Doctor defeat. (TV: The Tsuranga Conundrum)

Yaz and Team TARDIS travelled to the planet Gatan, arriving in the City of Radiant Stone in the midst of war. A lost young girl called Tondi took a shine to Yaz as she promised to help her find her mother while the Doctor, Graham, and Ryan investigated the area to see why it was destroyed. When two super-soldiers called Tumat and Kraytos appeared, Yaz ran with Tondi despite wanting to help the Doctor. Safely out of the fighting, Yaz and Tondi hid from a group of drunken revellers, celebrating the collapse of society, as they attempted to find Tondi's Aunt Vela instead. Yaz eventually had to use her powers of command presence to intimidate a crook into leaving an innocent old man alone and quickly found Vela, who revealed that Tondi's mother had died. With the Doctor eventually returning to Gatan, she reunited with Yaz as she helped lure Tumat and Kraytos into a teleport pad, forcing them to re-emerge in the same place as one combined being. With the new Chimera stopping the war, Yaz and Tondi visited The Freedom Thoughtcasting Network where the battle was being broadcast from and used Tondi's painful memories to shut down the operation before Yaz had to go on her way. (COMIC: The Warmonger)

On Proxima Ceti, Yasmin witnessed the Doctor outwitting carnivorous chessmen. (PROSE: The Secret in Vault 13)

For Yasmin's birthday, the Doctor brought her a Sontaran Frosted Boom Cake from Sontar, two zeppelins from the London Blitz and a candelabra from Paris. (PROSE: Dr. Thirteenth)

The Doctor and her team were tasked with preventing the Genesis Seed stored in the secret Vault 13 within the Galactic Seed Vault from falling into the hands of Nightshade. (PROSE: The Secret in Vault 13)

Yaz returned home to celebrate her grandmother Umbreen's birthday. Umbreen told Yaz she was her favourite granddaughter and gave her a watch with a shattered face that was precious to her. However, Umbreen did not elaborate on the sentimental value of the watch, nor the lifelong accomplishments she spoke of. This caused Yaz to grow curious and she asked the Doctor to take her to see Umbreen when she was younger.

With the watch being put into the telepathic circuits, the TARDIS took the Doctor, Yaz, Ryan and Graham to a rural area in the Punjab on 17 August 1947, though Yaz had been expecting to be taken to Lahore in the 1950s from what her grandmother had told her of her youth. There they met Prem, who offered to take Yaz and the rest of Team TARDIS to Umbreen's house.

Upon arriving at Umbreen's house, Yaz claimed to be the sister of a third cousin of Umbreen's uncle Malik from fifteen valleys away. However, her confusion intensified when she learned that Umbreen was engaged to Prem, who looked nothing like her grandfather in the photos she had seen. Prem was also Hindu, whereas all of Yaz's family was Muslim. Realising she might not know her nani as well as she thought, Graham comforted her.

Yaz received henna art from her great-grandmother Hasna and spent the night before Umbreen's wedding with them and the Doctor. The following morning, she witnessed her grandmother marry Prem at the Pakistani border with India, tying their hands together as part of a Hindu wedding rite. Later, she witnessed how Prem gave Umbreen his watch, the face shattering as he passed it over.

When the Doctor realised that Manish was a murderer, Umbreen fled to Lahore. While she was taking her possessions, Yaz found a map with Sheffield marked on it, with Umbreen explaining how she wished to travel to the "exotic" city.

Back at the TARDIS, she and the Doctor spoke of Umbreen's life yet to come. She returned home to Umbreen in 2018 again. With henna still on her hands, Umbreen once again expressed distaste for her mother's designs. Yaz asked her if she was happy with her life and Yaz's grandfather; Umbreen said she was and expressed her love for Sheffield. Offering to tell Yaz the story of the watch, Yaz declined as she knew how much pain it had caused Umbreen. The two affirmed their love for each other once more. (TV: Demons of the Punjab)

Team TARDIS arrived on Kandoka's moon in +135 following the Doctor receiving a disturbing message in her Kerb!am delivery. Assuming positions as employees in the warehouse, Yaz was assigned to work in storage, where she quickly struck up a good working relationship with her new colleague Daniel Cooper. Yaz found Dan's Arcadium necklace after his death, and when she asked a TeamMate for help, she was surrounded by delivery bots and ran away.

When Yaz met with the rest of Team TARDIS at the Home Zone, she mentioned Dan's disappearance as one of the strange goings-on in Kerb!am. Subsequently, the Doctor, Ryan and Yaz left to confront Jarva Slade and Judy Maddox, and then discreetly investigated Slade's office and found his paper records, circumspect in the heavily-automated systems at Kerb!am.

Once the suspicious activity was attributed to the system, Ryan took Yaz and Charlie Duffy to save Kira Arlo from the TeamMates, riding the conveyor belts to reach the Foundation Levels of the warehouse. Yaz watched in horror as Kira was killed by exploding bubble wrap. She witnessed the resulting confrontation as Charlie was revealed as the saboteur that planted deadly bubble wrap in packaging in protest of the low quotas on human labour in Kandokan law. In the TARDIS, Yaz requested taking Dan's necklace to his daughter and telling her how much her father loved her. (TV: Kerblam!)

Although the Doctor attempted to take Team TARDIS to see the coronation of Elizabeth I, Yaz and Graham noticed the location did not seem correct. In fact, they had landed in Bilehurst Cragg in the early 17th century, during the reign of James I. Yaz was shocked when shortly after she arrived, she witnessed a witch trial where Old Mother Twiston was drowned. Yaz was introduced to Becka Savage as a witchfinder alongside the rest of Team TARDIS. While travelling to Becka Savage's manor, she cast doubt on the superstitious traditions of the era.

Shortly after their arrival at the manor, the Doctor told Yaz to go to Willa Twiston and find out what she knew about the area. Coming across Willa's ritual in memory of her grandmother, Yaz saw a mud tendril coming from the ground and violently smashed it with a shovel before Willa ran away. Yaz informed the Doctor about her encounter with the tendril. Analysing the sample, the Doctor expressed confusion that the mud read as no different than usual on her sonic screwdriver. Yaz and the Doctor visited Willa's home, where she was served tea by Willa and comforted her due to the mistrust and suspicion of witchcraft that Willa experienced. Yaz, the Doctor, and Willa visited Mother Twiston's burial site once more and encountered the living mud tendrils yet again, as well as the corpse of Mother Twiston which was possessed by the Morax.

When the encounter ended, Yaz witnessed the Morax take Becka Savage's axe from the manor, before returning to Bilehurst Cragg in time for the Doctor's trial for witchcraft. After yelling at the townsfolk to let the Doctor go free, she witnessed the Doctor's escape from chains, and Becka Savage being revealed as the cause of the Morax's presence in the village. When Yaz tried to defend King James from being kidnapped, she was knocked out by Morax energy. After defeating the Morax for good, Yaz departed Bilehurst Cragg with the rest of Team TARDIS. (TV: The Witchfinders)

After helping the Doctor halt a war on the planet Lobos between the dog-like loba and human colonists, they had to return to retrieve Ryan's mobile phone. Accidentally, the TARDIS slipped almost six hundred years into the future, where the planet was now ruled by human zealots, served by slave loba. The zealots derived human superiority over loba from one joke by Graham, now worshipped as "the Good Doctor" while the real Doctor was forgotten. With women treated barely better than loba, Ryan and Yasmin were conflated into "St Rasmin". Almost immediately Yasmin was arrested for walking without a male relative. In prison, she met and befriended Pry, the leader of the resistance. This helped the Doctor learn both sides of the story. In the end, the Doctor succeeded in uncovering the lie of the zealots, setting the record straight and brokering a lasting peace between humans and loba. (PROSE: The Good Doctor)

Visiting 2018 Norway, the Doctor and friends discovered a strangely boarded-up and quiet cottage in the middle of nowhere. Exploring, they found a girl called Hanne hiding, terrified, as her father Erik had left her and she believed there was a monster in the nearby woods that took him. Yaz helped calm Hanne's nerves and explored outside with Ryan. Meanwhile, when an upstairs mirror began to distort, the Doctor determined that it was some form of dimensional portal. Promising to find Erik, Yaz entered the mirror alongside the Doctor and Graham.

They ended up in an anti-zone, an area made to protect space-time, and after being led through by Ribbons and avoiding the flesh moths inside, they discovered the other side: a mirrored world where Erik was safe alongside Hanne's mother, Trine, and Grace - both of whom had memories of dying and could not explain their presence. The Doctor explained to Yaz that they were in the Solitract plane, a conscious alternate universe that was exiled at the beginning of time as it was incompatible with the main universe and was now seeking friends, creating the figures of Grace and Trine as a result. With the reality falling apart, Yaz rejected the reality and was sent back into the anti-zone, just about managing to escape with the rest of the group. (TV: It Takes You Away)

In the TARDIS, the Doctor discovered nine separate distress signals all coming from the planet Ranskoor Av Kolos, which they followed to meet a man called Greston Paltraki, a commander who had visited the planet to stop a threat there. They eventually discovered that he was being threatened by Tzim-Sha, the Stenza they met on their first adventure, over the safety of some strange mineral-shaped objects. Yaz was tasked with accompanying Paltraki to find out his original mission purpose while the Doctor met with Tzim-Sha and after they were nearly attacked by SniperBots, they found more of the strange objects.

Yaz eventually discovered Andinio and Delph of the Ux, being forced by Tzim-Sha to use their powers with his technology to stasis freeze entire planets, starting with Earth, with the objects being previously attacked planets. Eventually saving the Ux, Yaz worked with the Doctor to connect the TARDIS to Delph, using his memory of the planets' original locations to teleport them back before they overwhelmed Ranskoor Av Kolos. It eventually worked, and with Graham and Ryan sealing Tzim-Sha in one of his own stasis pods, the Ux decided to see the universe with Paltraki and the Doctor's group headed on their way. (TV: The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos)

Yaz and the rest of Team TARDIS accidentally landed in 1601 Bohemia where they met famous astronomers Tycho Brahe and a young Johannes Kepler and joined them on a gathering of scientists in a nearby castle laid out by Baroness Dagmar Ruskovitch. Yaz struck up a friendship with Johannes and stayed with him in case anything bad happened. However, when the Baroness took an interest in him, he was forced to leave and Yaz accompanied Graham and a furious Tycho through the castle to find out why. After receiving directions from a mysterious washerwoman, they encountered Ruskovitch attempting to show him knowledge from the future, and when they were spotted, she transformed into a centaur to try and kill them. When Johannes stopped her, she ordered Yaz, Graham and Tycho to the dungeon, where Yaz scared the gatekeeper into letting them out by recording a video of him on her phone. Escaping, the three discovered how the assembled astronomers had been paralysed by the Baroness' orbs. (COMIC: Herald of Madness)

Personality
Yasmin was ambitious. Although outwardly confident, she wasn't overly so, and was aware that she still had much to learn; she viewed "every day [as] a learning day". (TV: The Woman Who Fell to Earth) She held high aspirations, telling Rosa Parks that she wanted to be at the top of the police force. Despite enduring racism in American 1955, she spoke positively, thanking Rosa Parks for making it possible for her to be a police officer, and that (despite the hard times) America would eventually have a black President. She had a sense of humour and joked about her supposed Mexican blood when she was misidentified in Montgomery. (TV: Rosa) She rarely brought friends home and her family considered her to be "married to her job." (TV: Arachnids in the UK)

Yasmin was known for her strong will. Despite numerous racial slurs hurled at her during the course of her life, Yaz refused to let it get her down. Instead she worked hard to be the better person. (PROSE: The Good Doctor, TV: Rosa, The Witchfinders) Though she was bitter at the memory of such things costing her friends. (PROSE: The Good Doctor)

Yaz had a dislike of "being on duty at the city centre on a Friday night". (WC: Case File Two)

She was not arachnophobic. (WC: Case File Four)

Skills
Her police experience meant that she was a good negotiator, capable of forming a truce between two opposing civilians. (TV: The Woman Who Fell to Earth) Her family liaison training helped her to provide support to those recently bereaved. (TV: The Witchfinders) She was also skilled in helping calm people by reassuring them of something they believed in already. (TV: It Takes You Away)

She had a good knowledge of history, recounting the significance of Rosa Parks's refusal to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. She knew what time of day Parks was arrested and had some idea about her profession. This knowledge would help the Doctor keep history in order when Krasko's actions put the past in jeopardy. (TV: Rosa) Yaz was quite good at keeping herself from making verbal slip-ups when visiting the past, especially if it would affect her future. (TV: Demons of the Punjab)

Yasmin had a lovely singing voice. (PROSE: The Good Doctor)

Behind the scenes

 * Yaz is the first televised companion of South Asian descent.

Yasmin Khan