Georgia Tennant was quite annoyed when her Doctor Who character was killed off-screen
The actor, who played the Doctor’s daughter Jenny in 2008, sent Steven Moffat and Russell T Davies a rather testy email when she discovered they’d offed her character without talking to her
For many years, one of the great loose ends in modern Doctor Who history was the whereabouts of Jenny, a specially generated “daughter” of the Tenth Doctor who appeared in 2008 episode The Doctor’s Daughter.
At the end of the episode Jenny flew off to embark on new adventures. Fans at the time presumed this ending meant we'd see her again in the BBC sci-fi series – but when she never turned up, everyone began to wonder where she’d got to.
The mystery was made even more intriguing because Jenny was played by actress Georgia Moffett (now Georgia Tennant), the future wife of David Tennant.
However, in 2015 series showrunner Steven Moffat delivered the devastating news: Jenny was dead.
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“I’ve got [former showrunner] Russell T Davies’ answer,” Moffat told fans at the time.
“Apparently it was me that kept her alive, because I said – when I heard about the idea – ‘Oh don’t kill her at the end, that’s the Star Trek thing to do.’ So he kept her alive just because I said that.
“And I wrote to him after and said, ‘Well I didn’t know that I did that,’ and he said, ‘Oh it doesn’t matter, Steven, she flew straight into a moon!'”
At the time, many fans were saddened to hear of Jenny’s apparent fate – but perhaps nobody was quite as wrongfooted by the revelation as Tennant herself, who recently revealed to RadioTimes.com that she ended up complaining to the two ex-showrunners about killing off her character.
“Is this where I crash into a moon?” she deadpanned. “Yeah, I heard about that. That's nice, isn't it?
“I sent [Steven] and Russell an email, with a link to the story, going, 'WTF?' To which they both wrote back slightly panicked replies, about it being sort of a joke. Clearly wasn't a joke.”
But weren’t they just giving her an escape from fans constantly asking about what Jenny was up to?
“I don't think they were being that generous, sadly!” she laughed. “But I have high hopes for Chris Chibnall. So, it's all going to be fine.”
Tennant makes it clear that there are no hard feelings, and now she’s bringing Jenny back to life anyway, in a series of audio stories for Big Finish that will see the character embark on further adventures without her more famous father.
“I suppose I feel like there's been enough time now that I feel like I wanted to revisit it, and I could do that with a sort of fresh head on,” Tennant explained of her return to the role, which comes 10 years after she appeared in the main series.
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“Because I've been talking about that one episode I did for quite a long time," she added. “It's very difficult to come up with anecdotes. I just felt that I needed to give everyone a break and stop talking about it!
“But now, I'm going to have LOADS of stuff to talk about, so they're going to have at least another 10 years of me banging on,” Tennant said. “So that'll be fun for everyone.”
We can hardly wait – and assuming Jenny doesn’t have another nasty planetary collision, we live in hope that we could see her in many more adventures to come.
Jenny: The Doctor’s Daughter will be available on CD and on download from Big Finish in June 2018
Authors
Huw Fullerton is a Commissioning Editor for Radio Times magazine, covering Entertainment, Comedy and Specialist Drama.
