Madame Vastra, Jenny Flint and Strax

Madame Vastra, Jenny Flint, and Strax (informally known as the Paternoster Gang, together with the Doctor), are a trio of recurring fictional characters in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, created by Steven Moffat and portrayed, respectively, by Neve McIntosh, Catrin Stewart, and Dan Starkey. The three characters first appear in the sixth series episode "A Good Man Goes to War." Madame Vastra (a Silurian) and Jenny Flint (a human) are a married couple. In later stories we see them living in London during the Victorian era. Strax, a Sontaran, is seen in his first appearance to be acting as a nurse, caring for wounded soldiers on another planet as penance for a failure. They are all recruited by the Eleventh Doctor to help him rescue Amy Pond. Despite the success of the effort, Strax apparently dies in the battle. He is, however, shown to be awakened by Vastra and Flint a couple of days later, in the webisode "The Battle of Demons Run: Two Days Later"; he then became their butler in the 19th century. Since their first appearance, the trio have appeared various times to help the Doctor, even having a central role in the first half of "The Crimson Horror" (2013). Their last episode was 2014's "Deep Breath", the first episode starring the Twelfth Doctor. They also have their own spin-off novella, Devil in the Smoke (2012), and spin-off novel, Silhouette (2014), and the trio have appeared in several online "minisodes", with Strax additionally appearing in a series of "Field Report" videos posted to the Doctor Who website. In 2014, they appeared without the Doctor in the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip in the storyline The Crystal Throne (DWM #475–476). Since 2015, an ongoing series of short stories and a comic strip titled Strax and the Time Shark, featuring the three characters, has been a regular feature in Doctor Who Adventures magazine. The three characters became popular with audiences, with the presence of an inter-species same-sex couple also leading to some attention.