Jess Collins

Jessica "Jess" Collins was an art history student who grew up in Brixton, London.

Biography
Jess lived in Brixton with her parents Lloyd and Devina, who met on the Windrush while emigrating to Great Britain, and her brother Maxwell. (COMIC: The Pestilent Heart)

In 1972, she went with her boyfriend Dave to find out if the "Highgate Vampire" of Highgate Cemetery was real. Jess discovered a vampire creature, known as a Corvid had killed Dave by draining his psychic essence. Upon realising the cult leader Gabriel Rosewood had used his own followers as bait to easily manipulate so he could gain the Corvids' power, she called him sick, and pushed Rosewood into a tombstone to allow her and the Twelfth Doctor to escape. When the Doctor banished the Corvids to the Time Vortex, Clara Oswald insisted that the memory of Dave would help Jess when she went back to her normal life. (COMIC: The Highgate Horror)

Jess met the Doctor again six months later, and helped him to investigate an alien distress signal which was coming from Brixton tube station, as she knew the area. The Doctor was unable to go pass the ticket barriers without money, so he snuck into the station at night. Jess followed him to the station, where Lloyd worked, and they saw the animated corpse of a Hakuai attack Lloyd. The Doctor electrocuted the creature with the tracks, and had Lloyd taken to Kings College Hospital. Returning to the Hakuai corpse, the Doctor found a telepathic node on it. Activating the node, the Doctor and Jess found a recording, which revealed the creature was a criminal on the run from his own people called Moan'na who rewrote his DNA to hide among humanity on Earth. When the Doctor discovered Moan'na was near a plague pit, he and Jess rushed to Lloyd in the hospital, where Lloyd's mysterious bacterial infection turned him into a Hakuai. Lloyd then fled, taking Jess with him.

When the infection went airborne, Jess and Devina tried getting through to Lloyd, but were unsuccessful. However, the Doctor keyed Moan'na's biological resequencer to Jess and Devina's familial DNA, and fed it to Lloyd to cure him of the infection. He used the TARDIS' telepathic circuits to rewrite the DNA of the other infected humans to return them to normal, but this caused the TARDIS to overload, trapping the Doctor in 1972. With nowhere for the Doctor to go, Devina offered him to stay with the Collins family. (COMIC: The Pestilent Heart)

A few days later, while Jess was reading an Escher book, the Doctor told Jess about how art had to be experienced in person and not. He told Jess about how he wished he could take Jess to when he met Monet, Renoir, and Boucher, and when had his portrait done by the cubist artist Picasso. While trying to light Jess' book with his sonic screwdriver, the sonic ran out of power, and the Doctor was unable to use the TARDIS to recharge it. With no TARDIS to leave 1972 in, the Doctor instead offered to show Jess the universe through the art she was studying. (COMIC: Moving In)

The Doctor took Jess and Maxwell to the National Gallery to show them a Constable painting, when an alien creature was released by alien hunters from Kolothos (where hunting was outlawed) and the hunters sent hounds to chase it into the gallery. The Doctor, Jess and Maxwell followed the creature outside into Trafalgar Square, and witnessed the hunter Skadi murder a policeman. The Doctor used a dog whistle to incapacitate the hounds, and when Skadi's husband Broteas killed another policeman, the Doctor knocked him out by pulling his electric whip into a fountain. Skadi murdered the small creature she was hunting, and she and her son Tarquel kidnapped Jess and Maxwell aboard her ship. While Broteas was arrested on Earth, Jess learnt on board the ship that Skadi kept a whole menagerie of the rarest and most exotic creatures ready for them to hunt for sport.

When the Doctor offered himself and Broteas to Skadi in exchange for Jess, Maxwell, and the menagerie, and Skadi leaving Earth right after, Skadi broke her promise, and had her hounds chase the Doctor and Jess. The Doctor knocked the hounds down using a reprogrammed metal horse belonging to Broteas, and Jess did the same to Skadi after she tried to kill the Doctor. When Skadi then threatened Jess' life, Maxwell appeared to threaten Tarquel, forcing Skadi to drop her sword and subsequently be arrested by DCI Jack Hayes. Tarquel then took Skadi and Broteas out of Hayes' custody to bring them to justice on Kolothos for their killings. (COMIC: Bloodsport)

While Jess and the Doctor were delivering Christmas cards on 23 December, they saw Walter from across the street behaving oddly and then slamming the door. The Doctor kept an eye on Walter's house all night. The following day, Christmas Eve, the Doctor saw Walter throw a snowglobe through his window. The Doctor, Jess and Devina broke in to help Walter, but no-one else was in the house but Walter. Through the guilt of losing his mother Carmen in 1971 and being left alone for too long, Walter imagined the fictional character Obadiah Grimm murdering the Doctor, Jess and Devina with the touch of his hand. Walter was taken away in an ambulance to treat his mental illness. After Devina returned from the hospital, she worked with Jess to prepare a breakfast on Christmas morning, where the whole street was invited as a reminder that they were a community and to remember Carmen. (COMIC: Be Forgot)

In 1973, Jess wanted to join Hayes and the Doctor at the station when he was invited to come down, but Hayes insisted only the Doctor could come. Later, the Collins family were knocked out by Katya Dabrowski and her men, and taken to an apartment in central London. They were greeted by, who told them the Doctor was a threat to them and a powerful and deceitful alien. Ensuring the Collins family that the Doctor would never hurt them again, the Master used the artron energy in their body as a means of opening a portal to a time locked dimension, which they were also sent to. Jess, Devina and Lloyd were separated from Maxwell. A tentacle in the dimension caused Jess' leg to necrotise, making it harder for her to walk. While trying to escape from alien creatures across a ridge, Jess and Devina saw them age Lloyd to dust.

Maxwell reunited with Jess, and a being called Kiadine, who the Time Lords had imprisoned on this world, reversed what had happened to Lloyd. The Master found Kiadine, and was offered his temporal powers, and the Doctor and the Master fought with each other over the power of the chronon storm, when the Collins family pulled the Doctor back, standing together against the Master. The Master attacked them, and this blast was repelled with the same artron energy in the bodies of the Collins family that had brought the Master to the dimension. The temporal effects on Jess and Maxwell were also reversed. The Master survived this attack and left, and with no-one left to keep time in check, the Doctor and the Collins family evacuated. After Gabriel's funeral, the Doctor said goodbye to the Collins family and left in a fully repaired TARDIS, believing he had outstayed his welcome.

Thirty years later, Jess was showing a group of students Constable's painting The Hay Wain, when she saw the Doctor and the TARDIS in the picture. (COMIC: Doorway to Hell)

Behind the Scenes

 * Part of Jess' early biography and appearance is very similar to that of companion Bill Potts, who became companion of the Doctor on television.