In 2000, Denise was one of the long-term patients at St John's Hospital.
However, she was not under the care of psychiatrist Doctor Lauren Anderson; as she put it herself, she was not "one of the crazy ones". Instead, she went in for physiotherapy; though once an athlete, she'd had an accident which robbed her of the use of her legs. All throughout her stay, Denise trained extensively in the hospital's gynmasium, wanting to keep her arms and upper body fit even if she could no longer run.
She was one of the patients on whom Cyberon was tested. She responded quickly to the "new drug", having a vision of a Cyberon humanoid helping her up from her wheelchair, whereupon she resumed her habit of jogging. Her strong connection to the drug enabled her to talk with the Cyberon intelligence inside her mind; nicknaming it "Cy", she perceived it as a "she", and thought of her as her guardian angel.
After Lauren discovered the truth about Cyberon and Tom Mordley disappeared, meaning the permanent end of Cyberon trials, Denise returned to her state of lower-body paralysis as the effects of "Cy's blessing" wore off. Like many of the other Cyberon trial patients, she was extremely disraught over these news. (PROSE: Cyberon)
Behind the scenes[]
Camilla Ochlan as Denise as seen in the original Cyberon home video drama.
Denise originated in the 2000 BBV Productions video drama Cyberon, which also featured the debut of Lauren Anderson. There, he was played by Camilla Ochlan (credited as Camilla Aitken). Though having evolved out of a project initially planned to star the Cybermen, the finished movie had no legal ties to the Doctor Who universe, having replaced the Cybermen with a new species, the Cyberons. For this reason, it is not covered by this Wiki.
Instead, we consider Arcbeatle Press's prose retelling of Cyberon in their anthology of the same name, which consciously retrofitted the movie's narrative into "in the Doctor Who world" by involving other pre-existing DWU concepts under licence from their creators, to be Denise's debut as a DWU character.