Moderator's Note: This is Mike's original Jo summary:

I think Jo was supposed to be considered sexy, but with her peculiar baby-doll face and early 70's attire, it just didn't work (for me, anyway). She did manage to keep the amount of her screaming to an reasonable minimum; on a scale of 1-10, Ace being 1 and Mel being 10, Jo was a 5. She also admirably performed her role as a cabbagehead (for you non-Star Trek fans, a cabbagehead is the person that asks someone to explain a bit of technobabble, so we in the audience will understand. Example--Chief O'Brien: "We've hit a cosmic string." Troi: "Cosmic string? What's that?" O'Brien: Well, blah, blah, blah.").



I've never minded Jo as much as I ought to, since as you (and the brigadier) say, she was perfect for her position - 'What you need, Doctor, is someone to pass you your test tubes and tell you how brilliant you are.' In many ways she was preferable to Sarah Jane, who started off mouthing about Women's Lib (the BBC production team having belatedly discovered the existence of such a concept) and ended up screaming like the rest of them. I've always thought of Jo as a terrible screamer, but now you mention it, I suppose she wasn't. All that posing in the nude with daleks didn't exactly help the image of the Companion, though.

The nude layout was a very 70's thing to do; shock the conservatives with outlandish behavior. Nowadays, Katie would have to put out a sex tape to get anybody's attention (especially with her body).

What kept Jo from sinking into total dumb blondeness was Katie Manning. She seemed very comfortable being an assistant, as opposed to Teegan or Peri, who constantly bickered with the Doctor. I don't know why TV viewers are supposed to enjoy watching someone argue but, judging from the number of shows that use that format, TV producers think we do.

Other than her nude picture in THE COMPANIONS, I don't have any of her other pictures! Would someone please email them to me and post them to news:alt.binaries.drwho.pictures, among other newsgroups? She's beautiful!

Wasn't Jo trained in espionage? Did we ever see any evidence of that?

She could open (very occasionally) pick a lock. In those few times when the Doc's sonic screwdriver wasn't available.

I think she had a bunch of skeleton keys, rather
than actually being able to pick a lock. I seem to
remember her managing to untie herself once -
Terror of the Autons?

What about Frontier in Space?

What ABOUT Frontier in Space? As far as I remember, her great escape plan involved pretending to be ill and yelling for the guard so that the Doctor could take him hostage and demand to be taken to Earth. The Doctor then pointed out that they WERE going to Earth.

Of course, the Doctor and Jo were captured and escaped/were rescued/kidnapped at least 14 times during Frontier in Space, so I might be missing something...oh yes, Jo did manage to escape from the Master's dungeon on the Ogron planet, but then he set it up so she could.

I guess I was thinking of when they filed through the jail cell bar but I remember it was the Doctor who did that now.

Jo was actually a trained UNIT agent.She even took a course in escapology before becoming the
Doctor's assistant.Of course the Brig.did have her spend most of the time she wasn't assisting
or traveling with the Doctor either filing or
getting the tea!
Jo also got her job with UNIT because she had an
uncle who was high up.
Finally after having been hypnotized once too often by the Master she learned how to resist further hypnotism,something she could have taught
Sarah Jane!

Yeah, now you mention it, it WAS odd that strong-willed Sarah was more susceptible to hypnotism than squeaky little Jo.

Don't know how I missed it on the internet, but I just read today that Jo Grant will be appearing in a "Sarah Jane Adventures" 4th series two parter, along with Doctor #11. Maybe this could be part of a new trend--all the contemporary (i.e., 21st century) companions popping up on SJA. We've already had the Brig; can Mike Yates or Sargeant Benton be far behind?

I read somewhere that they only brought the Brig in as a last-minute replacement for Martha. (MARTHA! What an insult to our beloved Brig. And ditto for Lois in Children of Earth...what the hell IS it with the Martha-obsession?) ANYWAY...the thought of the Eleventh Doctor, Jo and Sarah together is about the only thing making my life worth living at the moment...

Anyone seen pics of Yates/Benton recently? Are they still...recognisable?

We've already had the Brig; can Mike Yates or Sargeant Benton be far behind?

If Ian Marter were still with us, I'm sure Harry Sullivan would have shown up on SJA by now.

Normally, I wouldn't expect Sarah to know Jo, especially as Sarah was never a member of UNIT.

But having had my disbelief stretched to the limit by having Peri recognize her from a painting behind a crumbling wall....

Ha, good point...

And don't forget that Sarah was hanging around with that UNIT bunch, who no doubt shared many happy memories of the Good Old Days when the Doctor's Companion was a little less feminist.

Plus, Sarah's an investigative journalist. She'd've ASKED about the half-wit who sent that blue crystal that got her Spider-infested and Pertwee killed...

You can see a picture of Katy Manning with Liz Sladen at the Doctor Who News Page here:
http://gallifreynewsbase.blogspot.com/2010/06/sarah-jane-adventures-series-four.html

SEVEN CHILDREN? Why in hell's name would ANYONE have SEVEN CHILDREN??? Let alone an environmentalist - a) she KNOWS every child is a devastating attack on what's left of the environment, and b) she knows what godawful life they'll have on the pitiful remains of this planet. So what is her PROBLEM?

Not to mention the fact Jo seems to have spawned half of 'em in the Amazon. Presumably she gave birth to twice that number of rug-rats, and half of 'em died of tropical diseases. Cos it would be staggeringly unlikely if they all survived under THOSE circumstances. GROSS irresponsibility.

And anyway, I thought the trip up the Amazon was a scientific expedition and then it'd be home to Wales to spread the happy word of the meat-replacing mushroom to the masses? Why would a brilliant scientist like Cliff throw himself into protests instead? There are plenty of thicker people to do that, AND they're futile. The human race will never stop being greedy - what Cliff was on course to do was allow us to satisfy our greed with renewable energy and low-carbon-footprinted food. HE should have stayed at the nut hutch inventing stuff and getting the commune to rear his population explosion, while SHE went round chaining herself to Mugabe...

Re: "Meat Replacing Mushroom"
Unfortunately, for Joe & Cliff, Unilever had already discovered said mushroom in a dung heap in Berkshire, & were busy "Beta-Testing" Mycoprotein based products derived from said extremely small mushroom, on farmers at around the time that The Green Death was first transmitted...
In short, given Quarn's reportedly dire reputation, would you really want to claim the credit for it...?
(Note: This is how the Mycoprotien used in Quarn products was discovered in real life...).

'Jo - bless her little heart - was so in love with the Doctor, and she was prepared to lay down her life for him' - Katy Manning on the Curse of Peladon DVD.

Alright, so OBVIOUSLY she was prepared to DIE for him, but...WAS she in love??

Pertwee was a raging misogynist.
Of course we also had Troughton's "Maybe my Doctor should be blacked up and turbaned".

Pertwee was a raging misogynist.

HELL yes. Just read Elisabeth Sladen's autobiography...

Of course we also had Troughton's "Maybe my Doctor should be blacked up and turbaned".

I just don't see actors playing someone of a different colour as intrinsically racist. Any more than I see actors playing someone of a different gender (as in pantomimes) as intrinsically sexist.

Terror of the Autons:

'That container held a form of alien intelligence.' 'You've just got to be joking' - er...did UNIT actually employ Jo WITHOUT MENTIONING THE ALIENS, by any chance...?

Why doesn't UNIT give the Doctor any input into choosing his new assistant?

WHAT exactly did Jo THINK the Doctor was getting at, with his excruciatingly-embarrassed mumblings as he was trying to sack her? The Brig was in the room, so at least she'd've assumed he wasn't trying to proposition her in front of their boss...

I just don't see actors playing someone of a different colour as intrinsically racist.

No, I never did either.

WHAT exactly did Jo THINK the Doctor was getting at...

Jo thought? I must have missed those parts.

There's a wonderful photo of Pertwee and his second wife where Pert is all white haired and lined face but his wife is dark haired and smooth skinned.

"They say I'm robbing the cradle but I say she's robbing the grave!"

WHAT exactly did Jo THINK the Doctor was getting at...

Jo thought? I must have missed those parts.

Oh, how mean!

Alright, so Jo didn't actually give any sign of thinking ANYTHING at that point, but...she MUST have done. In 900 years (or several thousand, according to THIS Doctor) the Oncoming Storm has just never been so...flustered.

Jo Grant is ENORMOUS fun and far more successful as a Companion than Liz Shaw ever was.

I think Jo is a lot like Baldrick... she leaves nursery school at 20 and by 25 she's back in nursery
school

TARDIS Eruditorum:

'The thing about Jo Grant is that in the course of trying to create a dumb broad who exists only to get captured, Terrance Dicks inadvertently created one of the great feminist icons of Doctor Who.'

'All we're really doing is praising her for handling her marginalization as a silly little girl in a particularly artful way. It's lipstick on a pig at best.'

'Jo Grant was conceived of, from day one, as a character who needed a man to look after her. Given this, the psycho-sexual dynamics of her relationship with the Doctor are disturbing in the extreme. The Doctor is ostensibly a paternal figure. And yet his relationship with Jo has an odd element of the romantic to it...It is on the one hand perhaps over-egging the pudding, and on the other necessary to point out the systemic horror of this elision between paternal care and sexuality...Savile's status as a kindly man who helped children was...how he got away with raping them. At the same time, Doctor Who was busily teaching the youth of Britain that girls need a kind father figure to protect them, and that this figure was interchangeable with their husband.'

Blimey.

https://twitter.com/ManningOfficial/status/515752094750744576

ADORABLE!

I suppose it IS just a photo and we can't hope for Jo to pop up in a real Who episode...?

She'd just be so RELIEVED to meet the Twelfth Doctor, having had understandable problems coming to terms with Matt's youth in SJA...

I assume it is just a photo, but there's a little spark of hope that won't die until I hear for sure or the series has run its course.

At Jo's best, like in The Green Death, you're seeing what is very clearly a parental relationship. And that really works for me, as it confirms what they'd been aiming for all along; Jo as the Doctor's trendy young daughter.

That's muddled by the age Katy actually was playing Jo and the fact that meant that there was a very real possibility of hanky panky in the TARDIS.

I'm fine with a parental relationship - really, absolutely fine with it - but for that to totally work, I think Jo would've had to have been portrayed as another character's daughter who gets embroiled in UNIT investigations, or a girl just out of school taking up secretarial work, or something. The fact that she's depicted as an independent young working woman with a certain skill set is...troubling...to me, when she's so often written in a "child" manner.

At Jo's best, like in The Green Death, you're seeing what is very clearly a parental relationship.

It's in The Green Death that I start suspecting the relationship might not be entirely parental...

Also, a father might actually expect to attend his daughter's wedding and actually bother to SEE her ever again.

Chicks Unravel Time: 'It surprised me to see what a cohesive arc builds throughout [Season Ten] towards Jo's decision to leave. As determined as the Doctor is to ignore subtle hints like "take me back to Earth right now," it's obvious the TARDIS life isn't for Jo.' - Actually that's true. What kind of maniac can cope with aliens invading Earth on a weekly basis, but not with whizzing round time n'space with the Doctor?

'By the middle of episode one [of Green Death], she's already left the Doctor for good without having met her future husband yet' - that's another thing that never occurred to me. I thought she was just taking a short break.

Terrance Dicks: 'The casting director said "There is one more. She came late and went to the wrong studio and missed the audition...will you see her?"...Barry had an immensely kind heart and said, "Yeah, alright"...Katy came in, and she's short-sighted and doesn't wear her glasses for auditions, so she was bouncing off the furniture, stumbling all over the place, dropping her papers and her scripts, and made a total shambles of the audition. When she'd gone, Barry and I looked at each other and said, "Well, that's the one, isn't it?"' - bless!

Made slightly less heartwarming by the unspoken end of that clause: "Well, that's the one who'll look good draped over a Dalek, isn't it?"

Though I do wonder if Barry Letts got a visit from 'Mulholland Drive's Castigliani Brothers during the casting sessions and ended up having to plead with "the Cowboy" for his BBC career back.

Made slightly less heartwarming by the unspoken end of that clause: "Well, that's the one who'll look good draped over a Dalek, isn't it?"

Now, now. No one saw THAT coming.

Though I do wonder if Barry Letts got a visit from 'Mulholland Drive's Castigliani Brothers during the casting sessions and ended up having to plead with "the Cowboy" for his BBC career back.

UH?

Katy Manning did at least two episodes of the Australian animated series Prisoner Zero.

Not THE Prisoner Zero, one assumes...?

Isn't it interesting how whenever Jo is climbing a ladder or riding something in long-shot, she takes on the physique of Dolph Lundgren?

Hang around with a Time Lord and their morphic field for long enough and REALLY WEIRD things start happening to your body. Just look at Ben and Polly in Twice Upon a Time...

In which case, 'long enough' is only from War Machines to Tenth Planet.

Timey wimey.

Yeah, it may have looked stupid at the time, but shoehorning novels into the apparently-non-existent gap between Smugglers and Tenth Planet is becoming more plausible by the minute...

And...why were her dresses so short? She showed up on DW & her dresses were shorter than most blouses!

So were Liz Shaw's, and SHE was a genuine scientist!

Jo's love of the Beatles reminds me of that scene from the Simpsons...

Benton: There's a letter for you, Jo! From Merry Old England!

Jo: From the Desk of Ringo Starr!

Katy Manning's Wikipedia entry states that she's the last surviving Companion from the Pertwee era. Well, there were only two of them.

However, that's not true if you include the UNIT family. Both Richard Franklin (Yates) and John Levine (Benton) are still around.

Well, there were only two of them.

Three. Excluding our UNIT chums.

Caroline John: [to Tim] "Seven days!"

(a The Ring reference, Emily)

Whoops, forgot Sarah Jane. Who's actor, is also sadly gone.

In that term, then yes, Katy is the last Pertwee Companion standing, excluding the UNIT family.

Who's actor

Who is the actor, indeed.

When one says Pertwee era Companion, one thinks of Jo.

I sure do. That was when I discovered the show, so Pertwee is 'my' Doctor.

---

quote:

Many speculated that had Cliff not existed, and the BBC higher-ups would've allowed it, Jo and Three would've gotten together.

---

Well, who wouldn't secretly like Josephine Lucille Grant? In fact, I still strongly suspect that she was the reason for Mike's eventual betrayal of UNIT.

Long before Karen, Katy was the first Who girl that I really liked.

That is because of that photoshoot with the Dalek which I discovered when I was a schoolboy.

who wouldn't secretly like Josephine Lucille Grant?

Lucille?

In fact, I still strongly suspect that she was the reason for Mike's eventual betrayal of UNIT.

What! Why!

They went on ONE DATE, wiping out the human race when she marries someone else seems excessive. And he didn't look overly upset in Green Death.

Long before Karen, Katy was the first Who girl that I really liked.

That is because of that photoshoot with the Dalek which I discovered when I was a schoolboy.

*Sigh*

THAT photoshoot casts a long shadow.

The Dalek's probably still in therapy.

Maybe that Dalek ended up in the Asylum?
"What are you in here for?"
"THE HU-MAN FE-MALE, GRANT STRADDLED MY PLUNGER... NA-KED!"

No, it was a life changing event for the Dalek, he spent a week at the Playboy mansion, later opening a casino in Vegas, before finally dying of a cocaine overdose in the '80s.

;-)

And then the Dalek met the KarTRASHian creatures... Poor sod.

Happy Birthday Katy, this October 14 2020:
https://imgur.com/a/Ff49A0X

She's 74 now.

Jo and 9.
Picture taken at Big Finish studios.
https://imgur.com/a/XLLsx0k

Weirdly enough, that freaked me out more than THAT Jo-naked-with-a-Dalek picture....

Jo and 9? There's a team-up I'd actually enjoy seeing!

Katy in Melbourne in 1989:
https://imgur.com/a/NZ6bkeA

Happy Birthday Katy, this October 14 2023:
https://imgur.com/a/KQu21gJ

Katy with boats nearby:
https://imgur.com/a/qZG8LJ5

Watching out for Sea Devils. ;-)

A lovely picture of Katy sitting on the floor:
https://imgur.com/a/ODP58ol

https://www.ncls.it/unigaia/fivey-jo-al-cricket/

Fivey and Jo at the cricket!