Grant Markham Grant Markham was a late 22nd century human computer programmer residing on New Earth who travelled with the Sixth Doctor . Adventures with the Doctor . Grant was born in 2172 . ( PROSE : " Killing Ground " ) He first met the Sixth Doctor in the year 2191 when his home city of New Tokyo on New Earth was transported into a Marston Sphere . Grant used his computer programming skills to defeat a giant robot dinosaur terrorising the city . The Doctor saved New Tokyo . At the end of the affair , Grant went with him to become his companion . ( PROSE : " Time of Your Life " ) Grant ' s next adventure with the Doctor was on his birthplace , the planet Agora , again in the year 2191 . They found the Cybermen had been using the planet to gather strong males for cyber - conversion . Grant met his father , Ben Taggart , who was killed in an unsuccessful attempt to convert him into a Cyberman as Grant watched . This moved Grant to volunteer to become a Bronze Knight , one of a resistance group of Agorans who themselves used cybernetic implants to become stronger to defeat the Cybermen . He was convinced not to give up his humanity by the knights ' creator , the scientist Maxine Carter . The Cybermen attacked the Bronze Knights and slaughtered them all , but Grant lowered their base ' s temperature and deactivated the Cybermen . ( PROSE : " Killing Ground " ) Erasure . A man resembling Grant found himself removed from the Web of Time , making him , in effect , no longer real . He was stuck in a limbo - like existence in a zeppelin traversing the Time Vortex . ( PROSE : " Repercussions . . . " ) Personality . Grant suffered from robophobia , a morbid fear of android s and robot s . Through his travels with the Doctor he learned the roots of his condition ; he had repressed memories of watching his mother being killed by Cybermen . ( PROSE : " Killing Ground " ) Some time after Grant ' s departure , the Doctor travelled with Melanie Bush . When Mel scolded him for failing to return a Volkswagen Beetle he ' d hired , he protested that Grant would have let him keep the car . ( PROSE : " Instruments of Darkness " ) Behind the scenes . The only illustrated depiction of Grant Markham appears on the cover of " Killing Ground " . Cover artist Alister Pearson used himself as the model . Unofficial appearances . Short stories featuring Grant appeared in the unlicenced charity publication " Perfect Timing . " The story " Wish Upon a Star Beast " featured the Doctor and Grant encountering a group of killer Meep s in the Santaland amusement centre in Norway during the 22nd century . The story " Schrödinger ' s Botanist " takes place over a longer span of time , during which Grant and the Doctor had many adventures and were joined on their travels by a Legion . It also features Carmen Yeh as a companion of the Eighth Doctor . The story concluded with Grant linking his mind to a computer infected by a virus and being seriously injured . Unwilling to risk Grant ' s life any further , the Doctor left him at the Bi - Al Foundation . The Doctor later regretted abandoning Grant and returned to apologise , but Grant did not forgive him and they parted on bitter terms .