Grace Holloway

Portrayed by: Daphne Ashbrook
Travelled with: Eighth Doctor
Series: Doctor Who 1996 Television Movie

Grace Holloway was companion to the Eighth Doctor in the 1996 Television Movie with an interest in the art of da Vinci and Puccini’s operas. Grace was a medical doctor, a cardiologist, in San Francisco as well as being a member of the board of trustees for the Institute for Technological Advancement and Research. Known as “Amazing Grace” by her colleagues at Walker General Hospital, Grace worked as the on-call cardiologist, the ‘on-call’ bit annoying her live-in boyfriend, Brian, in particular. On the 30th December, 1999, Grace was watching an opera with her boyfriend when she received a page to attend an unusual cardiac case, a middle-aged man who had been admitted with minor bullet wounds but a heart defect causing a very irregular heart-beat. Grace was unaware that the man had been x-rayed earlier with the x-ray appearing to reveal two hearts within the man. Grace chose to conduct exploratory surgery to find out what was going on, during which she used a fibre-optic camera. She was unable to navigate the camera within the man’s circulatory system and in the process, inadvertently causing a fatal injury, causing the man to die on the operating table. The surgery was being watched by a group of hospital financial supporters, and upset at losing a patient; Grace ordered an autopsy of the man. However, the incident coupled with man’s body subsequently disappearing from the morgue overnight led Grace to resign the next morning under pressure as Brian also left her.

Grace Holloway on the back of a motorbike being ridden by the Doctor

After leaving the hospital, Grace was met by a strange man who claimed to be the man she had killed the night before, to which Grace refused to believe he was, as he looked completely different. However, after watching the man remove the remains of her probe from his chest in her car, she became convinced that the new man in front of her was the same as the one that had died the night before. She learnt that the man had undergone a process of regeneration, allowing him to change his personality and appearance, but because he had been knocked unconscious with anaesthetic when he had died, he was now suffering from memory loss with no knowledge of who he was. Some hours later, after returning to Grace’s house, the man regained his memories of being the Doctor, a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey and celebrated by kissing Grace on the lips. With his memory restored, the Doctor enlisted Grace as his companion to help defeat the Master who had caused the TARDIS to crash after his execution on Skaro. During this time, Grace being slightly upset that she had finally found the right guy for her only to then discover that "he's from another planet!"

The Doctor and Grace Holloway kiss

During battle with the Master, Grace was briefly possessed by him, during which time she ended up betraying the Doctor and later, unwillingly opening the Eye of Harmony within the TARDIS before being killed. However, the TARDIS chose to use the Eye of Harmony following the Master’s defeat to bring Grace back to life. Following the Master’s defeat and Grace’s resurrection, the Doctor invited her to travel with him as part of the TARDIS crew, but she declined, asking instead if he would travel with her, which he also declined. Before the Doctor departed, he and Grace shared a romantic kiss before both continued on their separate ways.