• Markham for a Companion by Kevin M. Baker

Markham for a Companion by Kevin M. Baker 26/8/98

I am still trying to decide whether Grant Markham is a born idiot, or just exceedingly annoying. The best way to describe this companion would be to compare him to the depiction of H. G. Wells in Timelash. Yes, Grant Markham is a lot like that. Intelligent; yet bumbling, annoying, and childish are the words that would properly describe him.

He was quite literally ripped from his own planet, his own time and thrown into a time far in the future where the only excitement is watching bad television. It was made evidently clear that Grant is a very intelligent person, or at least has the capacity to be one. For when he was told to work on a machine that he was familiar with, he knew it backwards and forwards. However, more times that not the types of programs that he was familiar with were antiquated at best. Even in his own time, the knowledge he possessed was rarely used because better systems were being built.

And that almost makes me believe that he did not wish to learn, preferring the old way better. I would compare it with anyone who, today, still thinks that DOS is the best thing since Swiss cheese. He tries to be an adventurer. At the end of the book, he dives into the TARDIS looking forward to the trips through time. But try is all he manages to do. He is a complete and utter coward at heart. For example: when involved in a major conflict, he ducked and covered his head, trying his best not to get hurt while people around him were risking their lives.

At his best, he is unreliable. But Grant Markham was introduced as a companion for one purpose: to show that many things happened to the Doctor between his trial and his regeneration; that he had one and possibly more companions before ever meeting Mel. In doing that, it succeeds splendidly.