Jo Grant

Josephine "Jo" Jones (née Grant), known simply as Jo, was a civilian employee of UNIT. The Brigadier decided that Jo could replace Liz Shaw, who had returned to Cambridge, as the Doctor's research assistant during his exile on Earth. Though the Doctor initially rejected Jo as scientifically incompetent, the Brigadier was correct in his prediction that what the Doctor needed was "someone to pass [him his] test tubes and tell [him] how brilliant he was". (DW: Terror of the Autons) Jo and the Doctor quickly became almost inseparable. She stayed with him for the latter portion of his Time Lord-imposed exile, and adventured with him for a short while thereafter. During her time with the Doctor, she arguably became more familiar with the Master than any other companion, and even learnt how to resist his direct attempts at hypnotism. (DW: Frontier in Space)  She was also one of the first people to witness a meeting between different incarnations of the Doctor. (DW; The Three Doctors)

The duo were parted only when she married Professor Clifford Jones and became passionately involved in the growing ecology movement of the 1970s. (DW: The Green Death) She then spent the next four decades travelling the globe with her husband and her increasingly large family, until finally she reunited with a much older incarnation of the Doctor. (SJA: Death of the Doctor)

Early life
Jo, who was born in 1951 or 1952 (SJA: Death of the Doctor), had taken an A-Level in science, but did not pass. Nevertheless, she was accepted into employment at UNIT — largely because of the influence of her uncle. (DW: Terror of the Autons)

Life with the Doctor
Jo first met the Doctor when the Master was using the Nestene Conciousness to conquer Earth. (DW: Terror of the Autons)

On one particular evening Jo was dressed up ready for a night on the town with Captain Mike Yates, which proved to be fortunate as she and the Doctor landed on the planet of Peladon. Jo was introduced as an Earth Princess, as she was dressed in an appropriate manner - and only those of Royal blood were allowed to enter the conference chamber. King Peladon was smitten, and later proposed marriage, but Jo wasn't impressed. Over the time she and the Doctor were on Peladon, Jo did grow to like the King, but decided that she really must return to her own planet. (DW: The Curse of Peladon)

Jo learnt well with the Doctor, and when he was unwilling to complete the Time Ram, it was she who finished the action. She realised why the Doctor was reluctant, but saw the potential outcome of not completing it. (DW: The Time Monster)

Departure
Once Jo arrived in Llanfairfach, she met Professor Clifford Jones. Over the short time that UNIT were in Llanfairfach, Jo and Cliff fell in love. Jo agreed to marry him and left UNIT. The Doctor was devastated about Jo's departure from UNIT, he drank his champagne in one gulp and left on his own after giving Jo a blue crystal from Metebelis III. Before Jo and Cliff left for the Amazon, she asked her uncle to get UN status for the Wholeweal community. (DW: The Green Death)

Later life
A few months later, the couple, who were already on their trip up the Amazon River, returned the crystal to the Doctor via mail, as they felt it was bringing them bad luck. (DW: Planet of the Spiders) Jo later tried called the Doctor at UNIT to keep in touch, but she was told that he had already left. Jo waited to see the Doctor again, but he never came. Jo later lived with the Nambikwara tribe in Mato Grosso, Brazil for six months in 1983. Although he could never come back, the Doctor was aware of incidents where she lived in huts, climbed up trees, tore down barricades, flew kites on Mount Kilimanjaro and sailed down the Yangtze River in a tea chest. (SJA: Death of the Doctor)

There are two conflicting accounts of the Joneses' life after their last contact with the Doctor; one states that they had a son named Matthew and became estranged from one another by the 1990s (EDA: Genocide) and another presented them as still happily married as of the late 2000s. (BFA: The Doll of Death) A later account showed Jo and Cliff to still be married with seven children, twelve grandchildren and expecting a thirteenth. The Joneses led a life of environmental and political activism, including an incident where Jo handcuffed herself to Robert Mugabe. (SJA: Death of the Doctor)

Reunions with the Doctor


Jo was later informed of the apparant death of the Doctor, and brought her grandson Santiago with her to the funeral at UNIT Base 5. There, she met Sarah Jane Smith, another former companion of the Doctor. Jo later found that the Doctor had not died but had been stranded on a deserted planet by the Shansheeth. Jo, with the help of Sarah Jane, stopped the Shansheeth from stealing the Doctor's TARDIS and went back home to her husband, travelling by hovercraft to Norway. (SJA: Death of the Doctor)

In Christmas 2010, Jo encountered an alien narrator from Verbatim Six, who believed her past adventures had been as the companion of Iris Wildthyme, a different Time Lord. To work out the truth, Jo and Iris travelled back to the 1970s. After finding the truth from the Doctor, Jo and Iris set off to have adventures of their own. (CC: Find and Replace)

Death
Jo died in a house fire in 2028 aged 77. (ST: Carpenter/Butterfly/Baronet)

Personality
Jo's first meeting with the Doctor didn't bode well for the future, as she mistook an important experiment for an accidental fire. She ruined it by dousing it with a fire extinguisher, which earned her the Doctor's wrath. Despite this initial clumsiness, her failures fueled her enthusiasm, and she became more determined to prove people wrong about her. When, for example, she recovered from the Master's hypnosis, she disobeyed orders and followed the Doctor to Rossini's Circus. There, she proved her competence by rescuing the Doctor. Having been hypnotised by the Master once, Jo was able to resist his hypnosis on further encounters by reciting nursery rhymes. (DW: Frontier in Space)

Jo claimed to be a qualified agent, but she may have exaggerated about this, in the same way she exaggerated the extent of her A-Levels. After saying she took an A-Level in Science, she later revealed that "I didn't say I passed." That said, there can be no doubt of Jo's escapology abilities. She could ride a motorbike, use karate, pick locks, abseil, and even pilot a helicopter - all of which came in very useful during her time as the Doctor's assistant. These abilities combined with her enthusiasm proved Jo to be an asset to UNIT.

Jo did not initially believe the Doctor when he said he was a time traveller. For a substantial period of her time with him, she thought his tinkering with bits of TARDIS was pointless. In fact, she may have been with the Doctor for as much as a year before she even stepped foot into the TARDIS. she was extremely tentative during her first trip away from Earth. She repeatedly begged to be taken back home, before she realized that the Doctor had little ability to grant her wish. After the Doctor coaxed her, she did eventually step out of the TARDIS and into her first adventure on another world. (DW: Colony in Space) Whilst Jo was certainly a member of the team, her individualism made her stand out in UNIT, and her desire to follow her own instincts and speak her mind brought her and the Doctor close. They were both very different from the norm in UNIT. Nearing the end of her time with UNIT, Jo told the Brigadier that she was going to Llanfairfach even if it meant resigning. (DW: The Green Death)