Everything about Grace Holloway totally explained
Dr. Grace Holloway is a fictional character played by
Daphne Ashbrook in the 1996 television movie
Doctor Who, a continuation of the long-running
British science fiction television series
Doctor Who. A
cardiologist from 1999
San Francisco, she assisted the
Eighth Doctor against the renegade
Time Lord known as
the Master.
Character History
When the
Seventh Doctor lands on
December 30,
1999 in San Francisco, he's gunned down by a gang on the streets of
Chinatown. Unaware of his
alien physiology, Grace accidentally kills him when she attempts to operate. He subsequently
regenerates into his eighth incarnation, and involves Grace in his fight to prevent the Master from opening the
Eye of Harmony and destroying the
Earth at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Day, 2000. At the end, the Doctor offers to take Grace along with him in the
TARDIS, but Grace declines, preferring to stay behind and apply the lessons she's learned from him.
Grace is described by the Doctor as "tired of life but afraid of dying." She is a warm and compassionate person who was disillusioned early in life when she realized that she couldn't hold back death. As a result, she puts on a cold, aloof front in an effort to protect herself from her feelings and to mask her own insecurity. She realizes this over the course of her adventure with the Doctor and learns to feel hope again, placing it in the form of the Doctor, an alien who can literally come back to life, as well as regaining confidence in herself as a medical practitioner and as a person. She also rapidly develops a romantic attachment to the Doctor, stating at one point, "I finally meet the right guy and he's from another planet."
Grace's appearance in the television movie caused controversy because the Doctor kissed her, breaking a longstanding taboo against having any romantic involvement with his
companions (although the series revisited this theme when production resumed in 2005). Some fans also question whether she can be considered a proper companion since she only appears in this one story. However, it's clear that her role within the television movie is the companion's, and she appears listed on most lists of companions, including the one on the
BBC website.
Other Appearances
Grace's life after her encounter with the Doctor hasn't been explored on-screen beyond the television movie, although the Doctor did have to deal with the after effects of those events in the
spin-off Eighth Doctor Adventures novel
Unnatural History, by
Kate Orman and
Jonathan Blum.
Grace appeared in the
Doctor Who comic strip story
The Fallen, published in
Doctor Who Magazine #273-#276, where she'd conducted experiments to merge human and
Time Lord DNA, the latter obtained from tissue left behind by the Master. However, the Master hadn't been in his Time Lord body, but that of a shape-shifting creature known as a morphant. The resulting hybrid began to consume people, but was stopped with the Eighth Doctor's help. Grace promised the Doctor she'd destroy all the remaining morphant DNA samples, and the two parted ways once more. She subsequently appeared as a dream image in
The Glorious Dead (
DWM #287-#296) and made a one-panel cameo in the last regular Eighth Doctor comic strip adventure,
The Flood (
DWM #353). The
canonicity of the comic strips in relation to the television series, like other
Doctor Who spin-off media, is open to interpretation.
Daphne Ashbrook performed in the
Big Finish Productions audio play
The Next Life opposite
Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor, but playing a different character named Perfection.
Legal Issues
Originally, Grace Holloway was to appear in the second eighth Doctor novel,
Vampire Science, but legal issues with the BBC and Universal prevented this from happening. According to Big Finish, their audioplays can't use TV-movie characters Grace Holloway or Chang Lee due to Universal's ownership of the characters. Grace's appearance in the comics appears to have been separately negotiated.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Grace Holloway'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://grace_holloway.totallyexplained.com">Grace Holloway Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
