Vincey

Vincey (died 1881) served with the British Army in South Africa. He was due to be married, but only once he had earned enough to give his fiancée a comfortable future. Promised Martian treasures by an Ice Warrior, he accompanied his commanders to the Red Planet.

Wedding plans
Vincey had a fiancée called Alice. The pair were due to marry, just as soon as Vincey had saved enough money to keep them both comfy. They were planning to get married in a little church with a twisted spire, down by a river.

Arrival on Mars
In 1881, Colonel Godsacre - under whom Vincey was serving - discovered an interplanetary vessel in the South African veldt. On board was an injured Ice Warrior which Godsacre named "Friday". Friday promised the men Martian treasures in exchange for help repairing his ship, enabling them to reach the Red Planet. The ship crashed upon landing, leaving the soldiers stranded on Mars.

Vincey was part of the team responsible for using the Gargantua, a large piece of mining equipment built with the help of Friday, to mine for gemstones in the Martian rock. He was present when the group uncovered an Ice Warrior Hive and the dormant Empress Iraxxa. Against Vincey's wishes, Jackdaw knocked out Sergeant Major Peach with a spiked cup of tea and asked him to keep an eye out while he stole jewels from the base Iraxxa's sarcophagus. Worried that someone was coming, Vincey ran into the chamber and encountered an awakened Iraxxa. He fled when she killed a soldier in front of him.

Death
Captain Catchlove took over command and locked Godsacre in the brig, just as Iraxxa began to awaken her hive. Vincey panicked as Ice Warriors rose up out of the ground around him. When he questioned as to what he should do, Catchlove pushed him into the path of an Ice Warrior's weapon. His body was compressed into a ball. (TV: Empress of Mars)

Behind the scenes
Writer Mark Gatiss protested against Bayo Gbadamosi's casting, as he believed that "there weren't any black soldiers in Victoria's army". He put historical accuracy over ethnic representation, and "mak[ing] everything less homogeneously white", as he put the BBC's general mission. He claimed an email he wrote to a colleague on the matter was "very difficult". Gatiss eventually backed down when he discovered, on doing some research, that there was one African soldier in the army at the time: Jimmy Durham.

"I got kind of obsessed with this great story," Gatiss recounted. "This boy, when he was 18 years old, was rescued [from the Nile] by the Durham Light Infantry. And they made him their mascot - they called him Jimmy Durham. And he became what was called a listed officer, by special dispensation of Queen Victoria. He retired to the North East, married a white girl, and his descendants still live there. It's an amazing story."