Janis Goblin was a singing goblin (PROSE: A Message from Janis Goblin [+]Official Doctor Who Twitter fiction (BBC Studios, 2023).) in a band in the Goblin ship. The Fifteenth Doctor, unaware of her name, called her "Janice". (TV: The Church on Ruby Road [+]Doctor Who Christmas Special 2023 (BBC One and Disney+, 2023)., PROSE: The Church on Ruby Road [+]Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson, adapted from The Church on Ruby Road (Russell T Davies), BBC Books novelisations (BBC Books, 2024).)
Biography[]
Accompanied by her band and cheered on by her peers, Janis sang "The Goblin Song" as Lulubelle was fed to the Goblin King and the Fifteenth Doctor and Ruby Sunday struggled to save her. The Doctor and Ruby fell onto the conveyor belt leading to the King, interrupting the song. Thinking quickly, the Doctor asked the band to keep going, improvising the rest of the song with Ruby, until he and Ruby could escape with Lulubelle.
The goblins decided to feed a baby Ruby to the King instead of Lulubelle. The Doctor traveled back to Christmas 2004 to stop this, killing the King in the process. The goblins and their ship were erased from existence, Janis assumedly being among the casualties. (TV: The Church on Ruby Road [+]Doctor Who Christmas Special 2023 (BBC One and Disney+, 2023).)
Undated events[]
Janis thanked a number of humans for listening to "The Goblin Song", as all the proceeds would go to Children in Need, and that would mean that she would get to eat more children. When she realised that this was not, in fact, the case, she briefly considered promising to not eat any more children if people continued to support "The Goblin Song", then decided against it, and asked somebody to pass her some twins, which she ate. (PROSE: A Message from Janis Goblin [+]Official Doctor Who Twitter fiction (BBC Studios, 2023).)
Janis performed in concerts throughout the universe as part of a tour entitled Janis Goblin: The Immodest Proposal Tour. At least one concert was held at the Intergalactic Fringe Festival. (AUDIO: War Stories [+]Patrick Ross, Short Trips (Big Finish Productions, 2024).)
Personality[]
Janis claimed to have bile in her heart. (PROSE: A Message from Janis Goblin [+]Official Doctor Who Twitter fiction (BBC Studios, 2023).)
Behind the scenes[]
- Janis Goblin's name, as depicted in A Message from Janis Goblin [+]Official Doctor Who Twitter fiction (BBC Studios, 2023)., is a play on Janis Joplin, a singer-songwriter.
- Russell T Davies later clarified on Instagram that he had named the character "Janice", at odds with the short story, as her name was a reference to the Muppet of the same name, the lead guitarist and singer in The Electric Mayhem, due to the similarity in hairstyles. However, he found the pun "Janis Goblin" was a funnier joke, so he pretended it was his.[1]
- Her singing voice for "The Goblin Song" was performed by an uncredited Christina Rotondo.
- In response to the song's popularity, Rotondo named her Twitter account "The Real Janis Goblin".
- In an interview with Radio Times, Rotondo revealed that she was originally unsure of what the song would be used for, and that fan reaction to the song had been mixed. She said she enjoyed all the theories about how it could fit among the fans, and that she "saw Janis Goblin the same time everyone else did".[2]
Information from invalid sources[]
For Smashed Bits, Elven Starbush conducted an exclusive interview with Janis. Janis refused to reveal the secrets of her "golden locks" for free, threatened those who accused her of only being successful due to her close personal relationship with the Goblin King to be fed to the King, revealed that she only bathed "once in a blue moon" to preserve her aroma, said that she got along well with the rest of her band so long as they remembered she was in charge, and claimed that she relaxed like any other goblin girl and that her heart was a "ka-zillion" times better than the readers of the magazine. (NOTVALID: Smashed Bits [+]DWM short stories (Panini Magazines, 2024).)
