Katy Manning has shared a sweet photo of her reunion with her fellow Doctor Who actor Sir Derek Jacobi.
Manning is best known for her portrayal of Jo Grant, companion to the Third Doctor, as played by Jon Pertwee. The character first appeared in Doctor Who's eighth series in 1971 and featured in 77 episodes. Jo was a junior civilian operative for UNIT, who was initially assigned as the Doctor's assistant on Earth, and later travelled with him in the TARDIS.
Jo left the Doctor's company in 1973's The Green Death, after she fell in love with Professor Clifford Jones (Stewart Bevan) and left to marry him. Manning returned to the role of Jo more than three decades later in the 2010 Sarah Jane Adventures story Death of the Doctor, which featured Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor.
Acclaimed actor Sir Derek Jacobi appeared as Professor Yana in the 2007 Doctor Who episode Utopia, alongside David Tennant's Tenth Doctor. It turned out – spoiler alert – that he was actually the fifth incarnation of The Master, and by the end of the episode regenerated into a younger version of himself (played by John Simm).
View oEmbed on the source websiteJacobi had previously appeared in the Doctor Who audio drama Deadline in 2003, and the web series Scream of the Shalka in the same year, but it wasn't until the 2021 Big Finish audio drama The War Master: Killing Time that he worked alongside Manning, with her returning to the role of Jo and him playing the Master once again.
Since the pair made the audio drama, Manning has returned to the Doctor Who universe. She voices Iris Wildthyme, a renegade Time Lord, in Big Finish's spin-off audio plays, and she also made a cameo appearance as Jo in the 2022 Doctor Who episode The Power of the Doctor, and in Russell T Davies's companion series Tales of the TARDIS in 2023.
As well as sharing her photo with Jacobi, Manning also posted a photo alongside another stage and screen legend, Brian Blessed.
Blessed was offered the chance to play the Doctor himself in the 1960s, potentially taking over from William Hartnell, but he said that he believed his thoughts on the character did not fit with the BBC's vision at the time.
Blessed is still a part of the Doctor Who universe, however, having appeared in the 1986 story Mindwarp as King Yrcanos, alongside Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor.
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