Otto Bruger

Otto Bruger was a human scientist from the 20th century, and the subject of one of the Fourth Doctor's many "time tales".

Bruger believed, in error, that he had discovered the secret of time travel. He kept trying to convince his colleagues to lend him the necessary equipment to build a prototype time machine, but they always refused, insisting that time travel was impossible. Eventually, Bruger began building the machine in secret, and broke into the laboratory where he and the other scientists worked, intent on stealing the final pieces he needed. When one of his colleagues tried to stop him, he shot him non-fatally to buy himself time, and hurried to the warehouse where he had begun building the machine.

He completed his device and activated it, but instead of transporting him through time, it simply short-circuited and sent a large voltage through his brain. Going insane from the shock, Bruger hallucinated that he had indeed travelled in time and ended up in the Dark Ages, thrown into a dungeon by a barbarian warlord. Despite the bleakness of the hallucinatory circumstances, Bruger was happy, declaring that he didn't even care if he spent the rest of his life in the cell, as nothing could take the victory of having mastered time travel from him. In the real world, Bruger had actually been committed to a mental hospital. The doctors handling his case were unsure whether he would ever recover his grasp on reality, and, assuming he did, how long that process might take. (COMIC: Dr. Who's Time Tales)