Ruth Jones

  This article is from an Out-of-Canon perspective  Ruth Jones (born Ruth Voelker 17 March 1953 in Port Elizabeth, South Africa) played Chief Engineer Coriola from 1980-1984, beginning with Bricks and ending with Last Best Hope.

Before Station Zero
Ruth was born in Port Elizabeth in 1953 to a British mother and Afrikaner father. Her father, Peter Voelker, left the family when Ruth was two years old, an event which she later recalled troubling her greatly throughout her early life.

She emigrated to the United Kingdom with her mother, Marjorie, in 1966.

While in drama school she became involved in anti-apartheid activism and at the age of 19, legally changed her last name to Jones, her mother's maiden name, in protest. She continued to be involved in the boycott movement up to and continuing beyond her time on Station Zero.

She began her career as a stage actress, and is probably best known for her portrayal of Emilia in a West End production of Othello in 1976.

In 1977, Jones became interested in pursuing a television career. The former Station Zero actress Ginger Atkins took her on as a client. She made several one-off appearances before being cast in a recurring role in the Q6 soap Wensley Downs. During filming in late 1978, she met Station Zero producer Paul Kerridge. When the cast was being changed in anticipation of the introduction of the Fifth Commander, she was invited to audition for one of several roles currently in development.

In September of 1979, she was cast in the part of Coriola.

On Station Zero
Jones made her first appearance in the role of Coriola in the episode Bricks, which aired x April 1980 and established the major characters and themes of the Fifth Commander era. She appeared in every episode of the show up until the character's departure in the 1984 story Last Best Hope. She would later reprise the role in several Talking Brain audio dramas as well as in the Zeropoint story Strange Matters.

While not a fan of the show at the time of her casting (as John Peeves was), she continued following the show after her departure and in interviews speaks of her fondness for the Seventh Commander character of Ensign Rebecca Tate as well as the alternate continuity franchise of Zeropoint. She also contributed commentary and was consulted during the production of the docudrama We Who Serve (2004), about the making of the show.

While she enjoyed a close relationship with fellow cast members past and present, her relationship with the crew and with producer Kerridge was rocky from the start. Jones was unhappy with the costuming decisions for her role and famously gave an interview shortly after filming started in which she lambasted it as "idiotic" that an engineer would be expected to run around the station in a catsuit and high-heeled boots. She received a public warning from the studio for the interview, and while she never repeated the stunt, she did not shy away from criticism when she felt the program was deserving.

Her temper did have a habit of getting the best of her, especially when it came to the set crew. Aside from the costume and makeup departments, the crew was overwhelmingly male with an entrenched "lad culture," and Jones had no patience for harrassing or sexist remarks addressed at her or any of the other women on set. As well, she was sharply defensive and private, and would turn snappish at the first percieved slight. On several occasions prop malfunctions resulted in rather one-sided arguments with the set crew that one visitor to the set at the time commented "bordered on verbal abuse." During filming, yelling matches with crew members could be near-daily occurances. In an interview with the crew in 1984, one anonymous crewmember called her "that harpy."

Scandal of 1982-83
By the start of filming for the 1981 season, Jones had begun a sexual relationship with co-star Ann Morrison which, while concealed from the public, quickly became something of an open secret on the set. Before broadcast of the 1982 season began, rumours leaked of an on-set romance.

Producer Paul Kerridge is believed to have been the originator of the initial rumours. He had never been one to shy away from using his actor's personal lives for the show's gain; he admitted in 1980 to have leaked the news of Ingrid Spenser's pregnancy to the press before broadcast of Spenser's final episode. How aware he was of the on-set situation is unclear.

While the initial rumours were dismissed as a ploy for publicity, they had their desired effect, producing a flurry of gossip around who the possible couple was and a brief spike in viewing numbers at the start of the season.

When filming resumed for the 1983 season, additional rumours surfaced, including specific incidents, and Jones and Morrison's names began to be circulated. While Kerridge may have used the rumours to drum up public interest in Morrison's departure story, by this point the story was mostly out of his control.

Speculation intensified early in 1983, culminating wih Jones giving a magazine interview coming out as a lesbian, but denying any relationship with Morrison. Moral guardians, led by Stella Blackman, began agitating for her removal from the show, and protestors joined the crowds outsided the studio when filming for the 15th anniversary special began.

When Jones arrived on the third day of filming, she was struck in the head by a rock thrown by an angry protester, necessitating a two-day halt in the filming schedule to allow her to recover. For the remainder of shooting she was assigned a security detail when travelling to any location shots, and she stayed as a guest with various cast members.

After filming ended, speculation abated for a short time, until the broadcast of Outbreak, Morrison's departure story, on x March 1983. A few days after airing, the most infamous leak of the scandal, "the chair incident" was made public. Jones was caught by surprise and issued no immediate denial.

Jones's rocky relationship with the crew came back to haunt her throughout the scandal, as most if not all of the specific incidents are known to have been leaked by disgruntled crewmembers.

After Station Zero
While Ginger Atkins remained unwavering in her support of her client through the scandal, Jones's television career after leaving Station Zero was limited to a handful of small roles between 1985 and 1987.

Pulling away from acting, she went into full-time activism for several years, increasing her activity in the anti-apartheid movement and advocating for AIDS awareness. In 1991, she accepted a position with the Women's Acting Coalition.

Shortly after Broadly and Morrison divorced, she moved in with Morrison, effectively acting as second parent to Morrison's daughter Louise. Sensitive to her own memories of growing up without her father, she reached out to Tom Broadly in 1989, and over the next few years the two reconciled.

In 1991, Jones and Morrison expanded their family with the birth of a son, David.

Following the passage of marriage equality in England and Wales, Jones and Morrison married in April 2014 in a small civil ceremony.