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The Paradise of Death
(Barry Letts) |
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 Name: Jeremy Fitzoliver, AKA John Doe
Format:
Audio and Book.
Time of Origin: He met the Third Doctor in the
1970s as Jeremy Fitzoliver, died as John Doe on New Year’s
Eve 1993.
Time Span: "The Paradise of Death", "The
Ghosts of N-Space" and "Instruments
of Darkness".
Doctor: Third Doctor, was involved in a later
adventure of the Sixth
Doctor’s as an enemy without ever actually
meeting the Doctor in question
Fellow
Companions: Travelled with The
Brigadier and Sarah
Jane Smith as Jeremy, threatened Melanie Bush
and Evelyn
Smythe as John Doe.
History: Jeremy Fitzoliver is mainly remembered
by The Doctor as a well-intentioned but frustrating incompetent would-be
companion, who originally became involved with The Doctor’s
adventures in UNIT when Sarah
Jane Smith requested a photographer for her current story and
her editor, uninterested in the story in question, sent Jeremy, an
upper-class twit who barely knew which way to hold the camera, instead
of a more experienced photographer. However, since the story in question
- mysterious deaths at the Parakorn Corporation theme park Space
World - featured alien involvement, it was inevitable that Jeremy
would be forced to rise above his original status as he found himself
working with the Third
Doctor, Sarah and The
Brigadier in their latest adventure.
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The
Ghosts of N-Space
(Barry Letts)
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In many ways, Jeremy was the only companion whose presence
was never actually wanted by The Doctor; he would have been perfectly
satisfied with leaving Jeremy on Earth while he and the Brigadier
attempted to track Sarah down after she was abducted by the Parakon
Corporation - revealed to be an alien organisation who were using
an elaborate virtual reality technology to keep the general population
of their world distracted with scenes of wars and hunts - but unfortunately
Jeremy ended up accompanying The Doctor and the Brigadier when they
went to rescue Sarah due to The Doctor asking Jeremy to take his
toolbox into the TARDIS and forgetting to ask him to stop. Despite
the frustration of Jeremy’s presence - with their trek through
a jungle hampered by his complaining more than by the jungle’s
inhabitants - The Doctor, Sarah and the Brigadier nevertheless managed
to defeat the Parakon Corporation by forcing its elderly President
to recognise what his world had become due to him turning a blind
eye to its actions, encouraging him to take action to change its
methods while continuing to help his people.
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The Ghosts of N-Space
(Barry Letts) |
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Jeremy later returned to The Doctor’s life while
The Doctor was investigating the apparent appearance of ghosts at a castle
in Italy belonging to the Brigadier’s his great-uncle Mario, Jeremy
having invited Sarah on holiday with him after his mother fell ill and
left him with an extra ticket. Having determined that the ghosts that appeared
in the castle were the result of it having been built on a fracture in
Null –Space - an alternative dimension where the spirits of the uneasy
dead are trapped, unable to abandon the ties to their earthly lives and
move on to the next level of existence - The Doctor discovered that mobster
Max Vilimo was actually medieval astromancer Maximilian Vilmius, who had
opened the fracture centuries ago while seeking eternal life and power
only to become trapped on the wrong side, and now sought to permanently
escape N-Space while gaining complete control of the N-forms within to
become master of the world. Unlike his last trip in the TARDIS, on this
occasion Jeremy managed to make a positive contribution to their struggle,
taking out a group of Vilimo’s mobsters after they were possessed
by N-forms by shooting one of them while he was hidden, thus provoking
them into attacking and destroying each other while The Doctor cut off
Vilimo’s access to the rift after tricking him into absorbing more
power than he could contain.
Shortly after these events, Jeremy returned to UNIT in
an attempt to visit Sarah Jane during the events of "Planet
of the Spiders", and unfortunately activated the psychic scanner/enhancer
that The Doctor had been using to measure the psychic potential of
Professor Clegg. Somehow, Jeremy’s exposure to the machine
affected his memory, and although the Brigadier discovered him and
managed to get him out before it left him a complete vegetable, The
Doctor never bothered to check on him to see if he had recovered
afterwards because he never particularly liked Jeremy that much.
The machine having left Jeremy totally amnesic, unable even to retain
new information such as languages, his only even vague recollections
of his past led him to conclude that he had once worked for UNIT,
leaving him resolved to find the Brigadier and The Doctor and make
them reveal who he was.
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Instruments of Darkness
(Gary Russell) |
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Using
the name ‘John Doe’, the former Jeremy went on to become
the head of a secret organisation called the Network, based underneath
Paris and apparently connected to the Magnate, the secret criminal
society that many believed was running the world, all the while pursuing
his private vendetta against the Brigadier and The Doctor as he searched
for them (Evidently totally unaware of The Doctor’s ability
to regenerate, as he continued to look for the Third Doctor long
after UNIT began to work with other Doctors). Despite all his efforts,
John Doe never regained more memories than basic flashes in dreams
or reality, such as dreaming of the accident where he lost his memories
only to forget it after waking up, or once automatically speaking
fluent French without realising it.
Over the subsequent years, the Network gathered
together a group of ESPnets - humans with various assorted powerful
psychic abilities - using them to run errands while simultaneously
claiming that they were being employed by the UN. Eventually, John
Doe’s activities brought the Network to the Sixth
Doctor’s
attention in the last few days of 1993, when they abducted Trey Korte
- a powerful psychic whose abilities had been activated after an
encounter with the TARDIS and an old friend of The Doctor’s
current companion Melanie Bush - to replace one of their ESPnet.
The Doctor, Mel, and former companion Evelyn Smythe - whom The Doctor
had left on Earth in 1988 to keep track of a few loose ends due to
his own inability to focus on Earth when there were so many other
worlds that would require his help - managed to follow Trey’s
trail to the Irish twins Ciara and Cellian, former agents of the
Autons.
Their programming had been broken after The Doctor and Trey confronted
the Nestene Consciousness in
1989, the twins were now working with the powerful psychic Sebastian
Malvern to stop the true
face of the Magnate; alien psychics known as the Cylox, who had been
imprisoned in a pocket dimension centuries in the past and now seeking
to escape.
Aided
by Malvern, The Doctor was able to defeat the Cylox by triggering
the destruction of their dimension and - having confronted the Cylox
in the dimension as it began to fall apart - forcing them into another
prison of his own creation by stating that it was The Doctor’s
prison or destruction, but Malvern was confronted by one of Doe’s
agents who had long ago been turned into a ‘sleeper agent’ for
one of the Cylox. Although the agent was defeated, Doe - who had
followed her to Malvern - attempted to force Mel and Evelyn to lead
him to The Doctor by threatening Malvern and their assorted allies,
only for Doe to be shot during the confrontation. Shortly before
he departed Earth, The Doctor, having seen a picture of Doe, mourned
his past dislike of Jeremy, as if he’d simply been a bit more
interested in the man’s fate, so much death might have been
averted. |
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