Jenny: A Future Companion

Guest contributor Andrew Gledhill-Carr thinks the Doctor’s daughter should become a companion.

In the final moments of Doctor Who’s Eighth series, we see our dear Clara walk away from her life with the rebel Time Lord. Her future in the show still uncertain, we might start looking at who will fill her role in the upcoming series.

I say we need not look further than the Series Four episode – The Doctor’s Daughter. Yes. That’s right. I’m talking about Generated Anomaly, born by a genetic extraction of diploid cells from good ‘ol Ten, better known as Jenny, should join the Twelfth Doctor. The whole of time and space at their whim. There are after all planets to save, civilisations to rescue, creatures to defeat and an awful lot of running to do. And I can’t think of anyone better to do that.

What is most tantalizing about this prospect is the potential dynamic between Georgia Moffett’s Jenny and Peter Capaldi’s Doctor. One is old, wise and grumpy. The other is young, bouncy and naive. They are virtually opposites! And opposites end up attracting, making sparks too.

But perhaps more fascinatingly, Jenny is a soldier. Now the Doctor has always made it clear his disdain for soldiers, but Twelve took it to new extremes. Therefore, given a biological daughter, born in battle with nothing but the knowledge of a warrior, we might just see the Doctor pushed to the very edge as he takes responsibility for her, while understanding their frightful similarities, as both a soldier in the Time War and more recently, the Siege of Trenzalore. I think, with Danny’s sacrifice, he has come to accept soldiers better than he did before and so there is change enough in the Doctor to not outright refuse Jenny like he did Journey Blue in Into the Dalek. But it doesn’t mean he’ll at all be happy about it.

But there is perhaps another advantage of this pairing that might just be what some viewers need to grow to love this new incarnation of our hero. By giving him a daughter, you give him the opportunity to mellow. To become kinder as he teaches young Jenny what it means to be a Time Lord. Fatherly traits could develop and the grumpiness, while still there, falls away behind a wall of unconditional love. Jenny could end up helping the Doctor as much as he could end up helping her. And I think the Doctor needs that more than ever. If he’s about to lose his best friend, and is longing for his home, what better way than to give him a companion who in a way, is a memory of Gallifrey and everything he stands for. A Doctor. The man who makes people better.

And speaking of which, there is poetic beauty in the idea of a search for his home planet with a daughter who wasn’t even born there. It would be a search for home for him as much as for her, if only to show Jenny her heritage and give her the opportunity that she should have been given if born on Gallifrey. And not being sure where you belong, nor who you are could be the two main themes brought up because of this, as Jenny is a soldier, a Time Lady and the Doctor’s Daughter. They seem to conflict. While also not born on Gallifrey, or having spent her childhood with her father and having left her “birth-planet” (which would even be radically different and new after the source cracked), I can imagine Jenny might struggle to understand where she fits into the world. A question I’m sure many of us have pondered.

But I think, truly that bringing Jenny on as a full-time companion would most of all inject a lot of fun into the show. Her naive, but willing-to-learn, almost hyperactive personality mimics perhaps the show’s largest audience. Children. It gives them someone to associate with. While the adults, mothers and fathers, can empathise with the Doctor as he tries to do the best for his child, even if she was born unintentionally in a pretty poor situation. This would be especially true of single parents. She is undoubtedly the family companion. But moreover, she is unique.

After having watched five strong, sassy women, with no connection to the Doctor, whisked away from their lives to travel all of time and space, it would be refreshing to see how the expected relationship norms (of being a daughter, a child of the protagonist even if it’s only a technicality) play off against the ones that actually develop. And there is the whole “being a Time Lord” aspect to play with that really might question exactly what a Time Lord is.

All in all, there is an awful lot of possibility to explore with these two characters travelling together and with the soldier developments of Series 8, it seems like Jenny is the only natural response to that. And besides, a returning fan favourite (or, in some more unfortunate cases, fan least-favourite) is far more exciting than a brand new character we know nothing about. It’ll give the opportunity for Jenny fans to love her even more, and Jenny haters to change their minds. It worked once with Donna. It could work even better here.

Regardless of who becomes the next companion, the show’s future is still incredibly bright and I know, as a keen fan just as all you readers are, most will grow to appreciate whoever takes that spare TARDIS key.