Whatever happened to the Doctor's daughter? It's a question that Doctor Who fans will have to ponder no longer, as the character of Jenny (Georgia Tennant) returns in a new series of audio plays from Big Finish.
Jenny – a genetic anomaly artificially created from the Doctor's DNA – debuted in the 2008 TV episode 'The Doctor's Daughter'. But while her Time Lord genetics allowed Jenny to escape a brush with death, the character hasn't been seen since she hijacked a rocket and jetted off into outer space at the episode's climax.
Looking back on her TV debut as the character, Georgia told Digital Spy that she wasn't totally satisfied with her performance, explaining that – as the daughter of fifth Doctor actor Peter Davison – she felt overwhelmed by the pressure of appearing in the iconic BBC sci-fi series.
"It's been such a massive part of my life, and then to get to the point where I'm in it, I just thought, 'If I can just get through this, it'll be fine. If I can just say the words in the right order and put one foot in front of the other...'
"Now of course I look back and go, 'Oh, I could've done so much more with that!' I think it would've been really great if I'd done that character now. I felt such pressure back then to just sort of get through it."
A decade later and Georgia is reprising the role, having recorded four stories for a new boxset release in December of last year. "I've enjoyed it much more than I thought I was going to enjoy it," she admits. "The pressure that I felt back then has lifted, and I've just had a bit of a laugh!"
Jenny – The Doctor's Daughter has the character as a universe-trotting "Time Lord in training", with Harry Potter's Sean Biggerstaff cast as Noah, "Jenny's mysterious, unknown, but knowing companion".
Big Finish explores various realms of the Whoniverse on audio, from Torchwood to Class to the further adventures of Lady Christina de Souza (Michelle Ryan) and had been trying to secure Georgia to appear in a Jenny spin-off for "quite a long time".
"Enough time needed to have had passed after the TV episode, so that I felt like I could put my own mark on her," she explains. "Because obviously she was effectively born at the beginning of the TV episode, so by the end of it, she's not formed a massive personality.
"I wanted to make sure that I could create a well-rounded, interesting, fun version of her that I would be happy to commit to. It's a slightly weird thing in that you're reprising a role, but actually you're sort of creating it fresh, because she wasn't particularly fully-formed [on television]."
As part of that process, Georgia was also involved in Jenny's new adventures as an associate producer – advising on story ideas, scripts and casting. "It's a power thing!" she jokes. "They didn't at any point say, 'Step back, madam!' so that was good."
In fact, Georgia is now regularly working as a producer alongside her acting gigs, having most recently put out the romantic comedy You, Me and Him, co-starring her on-screen father and off-screen husband David Tennant.
She's not sure if future Jenny boxsets will reunite the character with the tenth Doctor or even see her cross paths with the fifth, with the focus right now being on cementing the series as a standalone. "[The Doctor] gets referred to every now and again," she says. "But Jenny is very much a separate character in her own right."
One thing's for certain, though: having experienced a wealth of enthusiastic reactions from fans when her spin-off was officially announced back in November, she's keen to keep carving out adventures for Jenny for the foreseeable future.
"I only saw positive things, which is good – I didn't delve into the depths of the internet to find the negatives! But the fans are really excited to see what she's been up to. And that's really nice. There's no fans quite like the Doctor Who fans!"
Jenny – The Doctor's Daughter is available to buy now on CD and as a digital download from Big Finish.
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