Grant Markham
| Grant Markham | |
|---|---|
| Doctor Who character | |
 Grant Markham, as modelled by artist Alister Pearson after himself | |
| First appearance | Time of Your Life |
| Last appearance | Killing Ground |
| Portrayed by | None |
| Information | |
| Affiliated | Sixth Doctor |
| Species | Human |
| Home planet | New Earth, born on Agora |
| Home era | 22nd century |
Grant Markham is a fictional character originally created by author Steve Lyons as a new companion of the Sixth Doctor in Virgin Publishing's range of original full-length Doctor Who novels, the Missing Adventures. The Missing Adventures were fully licensed novels carrying on from where the Doctor Who television series had left off, and Grant was introduced in Lyons' novel Time of Your Life in 1995.
Grant first met the Doctor in the year 2191 when his home city of New Tokyo on the planet New Earth was transported into a Marston Sphere. Grant used his computer programming skills to defeat a giant robot dinosaur that was terrorising the city. Although the Doctor was able to save New Tokyo, at the end of the story Grant stayed with him to become his companion.
Grant and the Doctor's next adventure was on the planet Agora, Grant's birthplace. Again in the year 2191, they discovered that the Cybermen had been using the planet to gather strong males to use in the cyber-conversion process. Grant met his father, Ben Taggart, who had had Grant sent away from the planet. Taggart was later killed in an unsuccessful attempt to convert him into a Cyberman, watched by Grant. This moved Grant to volunteer to become a Bronze Knight — a resistance group of Agorans who themselves used cybernetic implants to become stronger in order to defeat the Cybermen. He was convinced not to give up his humanity by the Knights' creator, the scientist Maxine Carter. The Cybermen attacked the Bronze Knights resulting in their sustaining a high number of losses, but Grant lowered their base's temperature deactivating the Cybermen. The Doctor then destroyed the remaining Cybermen by sabotaging a cannon from the Cybermen's stolen Selachian warship.
The description of an unnamed character that appeared in the short story "Repercussions" by Gary Russell (in the Big Finish Productions anthology Short Trips: Repercussions) resembled Grant. This character was a passenger on board an airship travelling through the Time Vortex. The airship carried various people whom the Doctor had placed there to stop them from being a danger to the Web of Time. If this was indeed Grant, it may indicate that as far as the Big Finish continuity is concerned, he was written out of history.
Other appearances
The following are from unofficial anthologies that are not generally considered canon.
Grant also appeared in two stories alongside the Sixth Doctor in the charity anthology Perfect Timing (1998). In the first, "Wish Upon A Star Beast" by Steve Lyons, the Doctor and Grant encounter a group of killer Meeps in the Santaland amusement centre in Norway during the 22nd century.
The second story, "Schrödinger’s Botanist" by Ian McIntire, covers a longer span of time, during which Grant and the Doctor have many adventures and are also accompanied by a Legion (a member of a multidimensional alien race that appears in the Virgin novels Lucifer Rising and The Crystal Bucephalus). During the course of the story, Grant links his mind to a computer infected by a virus and is seriously injured. Unwilling to risk his life any further, the Sixth Doctor leaves him at the Bi-Al Foundation. The Doctor later regrets abandoning Grant and returns to apologise, but Grant is unable to forgive him and they part on bitter terms.