Top (Four) Big Damn Hero Moments: Dr. Grace Holloway (Doctor Who)

Only four Big Damn Hero moments for Grace, not the usual five. But considering that her tenure as a companion has just a 90-minute runtime, four is pretty good. Here are my favorite Grace moments (spoilers.)

 

Getting a Read on Chang Lee (Doctor Who)

Let’s leave aside the fact that Grace is wearing a gown because she came straight from the opera to perform surgery on a man she didn’t know was an alien with an unfamiliar biovascular system, although really, props. She goes out to the waiting room to deliver the bad news of the Doctor’s apparent passing to Chang Lee, but her compassion turns to suspicion as she realizes that Chang Lee isn’t a friend of the Doctor’s like he said, just someone who’s hoping to score the dead guy’s things. She confronts him, and when he bolts, she gives chase (and by the way, when he gets away, it’s because of an unfortunately-timed gurney, not Grace being in an opera dress.)

 

Standing Up to Her Administrator (Doctor Who)

When the (apparently-late) Doctor’s x-rays show up, everyone else is amused at the “double exposure,” but Grace sees it for what it is: proof that the Doctor had two hearts, a fact she couldn’t possibly have known and led to the vital mistakes she made during his operation. She brings it to her administrator, who, she’s surprised to learn, has chalked up the Doctor’s seeming death and the subsequent disappearance of his body (unbeknownst to them, he’s regenerated and left the morgue) as wins. Where Grace sees the x-rays as proof that she wasn’t to blame, her administrator sees them as the only remaining evidence that the Doctor was ever there and burns them, destroying the last remnant of Grace’s “error.” Grace is resolute, both in her insistence that the Doctor really did have two hearts and in her conviction that it’s wrong for her administrator to get rid of the x-rays. Ethically, she argues that it’s wrong, and what’s more, her desire to know more about the Doctor’s unique physiology trumps any concern over how his “death” might affect her career. I really love that.

 

Stopping the Police Officer (Doctor Who)

Desperate to get somewhere fast, the Doctor tries to commandeer a police motorcycle. Grace first runs interference for him with the officer, recognizing the warning signs that the Doctor has no idea how to act safely around an American cop, and she buys the Doctor a little lenience by indicating to the cop that he’s off his head. Then, once the Doctor manages to steal the officer’s gun, Grace takes charge of the situation and fires a warning shot, getting the cop to hand over the bike.

 

Jump-Starting the TARDIS (Doctor Who)

With the Master near victory, the Earth in imminent danger (isn’t it always?), and the Doctor captured, it’s up to Grace to save the day. Falling back on the Doctor’s earlier plan to go back in time in order to undo the damage caused by the Eye of Harmony, she frantically jumpstarts the TARDIS, rerouting power from the Eye to get the boost the TARDIS needs for a jump back in time. Not only does this thwart the Master’s plan and allow her to save the Doctor, it also saves herself: the Master kills Grace in retaliation for her actions, but because she’d put the TARDIS in a temporal orbit at the time, her death is reversed.

Character Highlight: Grace Holloway (Doctor Who)

(TV movie spoilers ahead.)

Grace doesn’t feel out of place to me now, but I’m sure that, when the TV movie came out, a lot of people probably didn’t know what to make of her as a companion.  These days, absolutely no romantic interest (requited or otherwise) between the Doctor and a female companion is no longer SOP.  In ’96, though, anything resembling a Doctor/companion romance had up till that point been strictly subtext.  I imagine that for some, it was hard to adjust to Grace.

Because it seems that’s what’s best remembered about Grace, what comes up first when she comes up at all.  Since she’s only in the one televised adventure, you can’t really call her relationship with the Doctor a romance, but it’s definitely flirtier than what generally came before.  He kisses her in a moment of exhilaration (so I guess there’s precedent for Eleven doing the same,) and she dazedly requests that he “do that again.”  Later in the story, she laments, “I finally meet the right guy, and he’s from another planet!”  I can’t quite tell how much of this is their actual dynamic versus how much is the way Grace interprets it.  While the Doctor is definitely taken with her, Eight has this romantic, whirlwind personality that can be misleading.  But whatever the case may be, Eight and Grace are credited with paving the way for Nine/Rose and further developments in the new series.

But there’s more than that to Grace as a companion.  She has a tall order to fill – again, she’s only in the TV movie and, 90 minutes or not, that’s still just one story to go through her entire character journey.  It doesn’t help that, as a surgeon meeting a recently-regenerated, wildly discombobulated Doctor, she naturally assumes he’s escaped from the psych ward.  Even as things go all weird and sci-fi, she continues to insist that there must be a rational, non-alien explanation for everything, and we don’t get a ton of time to see her come around.  Since we of course know the truth, that means Grace spends a big chunk of her only screentime playing catch-up to us.

Luckily, she has some good traits to balance that out.  She’s very dedicated to her work and cares a great deal about it.  And while she’s not quite ready to believe in aliens, she is willing to believe in things that seem impossible.  She insists to her superior that the Doctor has two hearts, to the detriment of her boss’s confidence in her; even though she doesn’t know how it could be true, she knows that it is.  She’s a good judge of character, she’ll help a stranger in a pinch, and her scientific curiosity usually wins out over any other instinct.  Plus, I like that she likes opera.  True, it’s a bit of shorthand to help the Doctor recognize her after his regeneration, but it’s also rare that a companion has a really specific, concrete interest, and I wish it happened more often.  Yes, the companion is the audience insert, there for us to imagine ourselves in their place beside the Doctor, but they’re also people, and people have hobbies, pet peeves, and favorite songs.  Madame Butterfly provides a nice extra character wrinkle for Grace.

(Also?  I love the shot of her running down the hall to the O.R. in her opera gown.  It says a lot about her – that work always comes before fun, that she likes to look nice but isn’t afraid to look messy – and it’s a gorgeous moment to boot.)