Sam Bishop

Lieutenant Sam Bishop was a soldier and a troubleshooter for UNIT.

Early life
Sam Bishop's mother was a teacher and his father was an accountant. (AUDIO: Game Theory) He once described himself as coming from a family of bookkeepers and teachers but also had a great-grandfather who fought with the Eighth Army in North Africa during World War II and served in battlefronts such as El Alamein, Tobruk and Gazala. (AUDIO: Earthfall)

Inspired by his great-grandfather's stories and the video games that he enjoyed playing as a child - ones concerning secret agents - Sam joined the British Army (AUDIO: Earthfall, Game Theory) and ascended to the rank of lieutenant. (AUDIO: Vanguard) Whilst posted in Edinburgh, he found Fiona McCall sheltering in the abbey ruins on Inchcolm and gave her coffee after she missed the last ferry. The two entered into a relationship. (AUDIO: Way of the Burryman)

Joining UNIT
Sam was recruited into UNIT by Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart after he helped him and the Ninth Doctor face the Cybermen. (AUDIO: The Forth Generation) He became a troubleshooter, a job which entailed a large amount of travelling (AUDIO: Earthfall) and long periods of being away from the United Kingdom. (AUDIO: The Sontaran Project)

Sam once went on holiday for three weeks, but the paperwork was misfiled and UNIT believed that he had gone missing. In fact, he was scuba-diving. (AUDIO: The Dalek Transaction) He encountered time loops during his time at UNIT. (AUDIO: Game Theory)

The Nestene invasion
After capturing a woman in Bangkok who had been infected by an alien crystal, Sam was called by Kate Stewart and sent to the Gobi Desert to recover a Nestene energy unit with the assistance of Petronella Osgood, whom he had not met before. He convinced Tarkhan to hand the unit over to him and he was injured in a fight between Tarkhan's tribe and the Autons, but the mission was successful and Kate sent him to the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico to track the other units. (AUDIO: Earthfall)

Sam became aware of the anti-plastic at Black Archive 5 and contacted Kate and Colonel Vikram Shindi from Puerto Rico HQ to tell them about it. He lost contact with them due to the attacking Autons and communicated with Kate and Shindi further using an infrawave field receiver, telling them exactly what it was that they were after. (AUDIO: Armageddon)

Investigating Lyme
Before heading to Johannesburg to investigate lights in the sky, Sam stopped by Kate's office and found that she had left for Geneva. He spoke with Captain Josh Carter about the Tengobushi attack he had suffered and helped him realise that Corporal Anna Burges might have been taken and killed for information on Osgood's whereabouts. (AUDIO: Death in Geneva)

Learning that Felicity Lyme was heading to Santiago, Kate decided to send Sam ahead of her to find out the reason for her visit. (AUDIO: The Battle of the Tower)

Sam pretended to work for a power company and infiltrated Ice Station Alpha. He met with Kate, Osgood and Josh in Port Stanley and took them to Antarctica in a mini-submarine where he was captured by Lyme and imprisoned. After escaping by using his camouflage field, he demanded that Cerberus leave per the Antarctic Treaty and got the other territorial powers on the continent to intimidate them. He was briefly taken aboard the Kamishi ship and later headed to the Bermuda Triangle to give it a check-up. (AUDIO: Ice Station Alpha)

Silent exodus
Sam was owed leave and took several weeks off. (AUDIO: House of Silents) Despite this, he still wrote up a report on the Valartis Incident and dropped it into the Tower of London for Kate.

Sam was surprised and appalled to learn that Josh agreed with and supported Kenneth LeBlanc. He went with Osgood to Helena Faversham's house and found a UNIT-issue cartridge case, leading them to visit Kate's house and inform her that there had been a shootout that they had subsequently forgotten about. They went through the list of people who visited the house and visited Derek Butler, who was killed in front of them by a Silent, and found messages from the Silents in said people's videos. (AUDIO: Square One)

After finding the Silents' message in the footage of the Moon landing, Sam informed Kate and went with Osgood to track down military hardware that Josh had requisitioned. The three of them went to LeBlanc's constituency before the results of the vote were announced and Sam found a bomb and killed several Silents. Afterwards, he, Kate and Osgood watched footage of the riot caused by the Silents and were told by a Silent to forget about them. (AUDIO: Silent Majority)

Sam and Osgood went to the Unified Space Platform to upgrade the communications satellites and encountered the Silents, although Sam was insistent that they had already been dealt with due to their influence. They found that everybody else aboard had been drowned, but the Silents made them forget about the corpses and had them expose all spy satellites around Earth to stoke war amongst humanity. After being knocked out by the Telokni's sonic wave, they trapped the Silents on the platform and escaped to Earth in a capsule. They were recovered from the ocean by Josh. (AUDIO: In Memory Alone)

Jastrok's revolution
Kate asked Sam to join her and Osgood at a Silurian research base in Greece, but he was unable to get there immediately as he was being shot at when he received the invitation. He saved Kate by administering a broad-range antivenom after she was poisoned by Tryska and later broke Tryska's fear trigger, which she had used on Osgood, and took her captive. Tryska escaped and activated the self-destruct before the humans could gather any technology; to escape, Sam attached a device that attracted reptiles to her before they swam to safety and were rescued by Josh. (AUDIO: Retrieval)

Sam informed Kate that conventional weapons could not harm Krelix's hybrids which were besieging Great Britain. She later sent him to a Lyme Industries weather station to change the Gulf Stream and make it snowy and thus inhospitable for the Silurians. This also enabled UNIT to get past the sea creatures keeping them at bay. Once Jastrok and Kalana were arrested, Sam headed to South America with Osgood and Jo Jones to relocate the sea creatures. (AUDIO: United)

Auctioneers and Cybermen
Sam investigated the Auctioneers and tracked an alien artefact, which turned out to be a Dalek, to Captain Maria Gonsalves in Monte Bosque. He set up a meeting and Jacqui McGee put together false identities for Kate, Osgood, Shindi and Josh. (AUDIO: The Dalek Transaction)

Leaving Kate a message which she would not receive for some time, Sam went to investigate an Auctioneer warehouse in the Mendips and was shot and captured. Julia Hartley-Price had him put into virtual reality to serve as a reference for a video game and, after playing through the game with Julia pretending to be a captive like him, he realised the truth. With the game complete, Julia left him in a container outside Windsor Castle to be recovered by UNIT. He suffered from malnutrition and had to use crutches to walk. (AUDIO: Game Theory)

Sam was cared for in the medical facility on Fortress Island by Lt Commander Parsons. Because of his use of the virtual reality technology, he heard the Voice of the Machine and was, like Osgood and Shindi, cyber-converted virtually and awaited the arrival of the Cyber-Controller. (AUDIO: Telepresence)

Osgood kept the Cybermen from fully converting Sam and Shindi in order to make better use of them. Kate gassed the two of them to knock them out after damaging the Cyber-Controller with a grenade. (AUDIO: Code Silver)

Sam and Shindi were sent by Osgood to capture Kate, Josh and. They went to the Tower of London and used UNIT technology to track them to the Whitehouse Gallery, where the Master used the Auctioneers' corrosion virus to reverse their conversion. They then transmatted away to UNIT Costermouth and Sam, Kate and the Master returned to Fortress Island to shut down the dimension bridge, which the Master ended up using to power his TARDIS. (AUDIO: Master of Worlds)

Investigating Christina
Bishop was ordered by UNIT to investigate Lady Christina de Souza. (AUDIO: It Takes a Thief) Soon after, he received a phone call from Christina to help clean up the mess left by the Amber. (AUDIO: Skin Deep) Bishop became aware of a person by the name of El Guapo, who was picking up where the Auctioneers had left off. El Guapo had hired two robbers to steal a sentient, alien painting. This led Bishop to go under deep cover as Juan Pablo in Spain, posing as a worker of El Guapo, and interim boss of the two hired hands. Before long, Bishop and the two robbers became aware of a second party trying to steal the painting from them, one of whom was a Sontaran. At this point, El Guapo, who revealed herself to be Lady Christina de Souza in disguise, rendered the Sontaran unconscious.

Bishop, de Souza and the other two travelled to the auction house at Argentina to rescue to the painting. Believing that she could trust neither Sam Bishop nor UNIT, Christina used alien technology to force him off her modified, flying double decker bus and escaped his potential custody. (AUDIO: Portrait of a Lady)

Hot on her tail, Bishop followed de Souza to Edinburgh Castle. While performing the heist of a lifetime, Christina herself was foiled by the Slitheen family, who planned to sell the castle's riches in order to pay off their off-world debts. Armed with a jar of pickled onions, a captured Bishop and Christina de Souza were rescued by Jacqui McGee, who was herself investigating a case of her own.

Escaping in the 200, the three of them used Christina's alien technology to tunnel through the old town beneath the city to divert the lava from a Slitheen lava bomb. When the last survivor of the Slitheen created a volcano in Edinburgh, Lady Christina used her alien tech to fly Edinburgh Castle into the volcano, plugging it, seemingly dying in the process. According to Bishop's update from UNIT, this was a diversion from de Souza to ditch them and escape from UNIT custody. Her bus was sighted flying over Skye Bridge. This time round, Bishop wasn't disappointed in her escape. (AUDIO: Death on the Mile)

New incursions
Sam went with Jeff to Abbey Marston after Kate called for an emergency response team to assist with the Static. They landed ten miles away in Topbridge due to the mist and requisitioned a vehicle after encountering people whom the Static had resurrected. When they arrived at Abbey Marston, Kate had them evacuate the people that the Static had kidnapped. (AUDIO: This Sleep of Death)

Initially believing that a call from Mother McCracken about a voice in the wind was nothing to be concerned with, Sam travelled to the Outer Hebrides with Osgood to meet her after unusual hurricanes and tornadoes were predicted. They were almost sucked up the chimney and, at Osgood's suggestion, Sam went onto the roof and saw the coordinates of the Animoi ship carved into grass nearby. He and Osgood later gave instructions to the Animoi to get them off-world safely and helped tidy up Mother McCracken's cottage. (AUDIO: Tempest)

In Kent, Sam was joined by Jacqui whilst investigating reports of monster sightings near Exousia Solutions' new power station. They encountered a Baryonyx on the moors and Sam was knocked out by the Clan of War Bears, whom they eventually convinced to defeat the Wampeerix in 1971. Afterwards, Josh used Wampeerix technology to return Sam and Jacqui to the 2010s. (AUDIO: The Power of River Song)

Alfred's infection
Sam met with Christina off the coast of Zanzibar after she called UNIT about Bunny Warren's infection. They placed the bodies of two slaves whom Alfred de Souza had raised from the sea into a sunken spacecraft which Christina sent into space and Sam decided to have the area marked as off-limits. After Alfred stole his motor boat, Christina admitted to Sam that he too was infected. (AUDIO: The Wreck)

Searching for Alfred, Sam and Jacqui tracked the energy signature of the 200 to the Outback and found it outside Eugenia de Souza's home. After Sam detected unusual activity, they flew to Jajutama crater by helicopter and were forced to parachute out when a giant caterpillar attacked. They descended into the cavern and Sam shot and killed Eugenia after she mutated into a human larva. Afterwards, he kept UNIT from bombing the crater and got Christina to agree to let him know if she heard from Alfred. (AUDIO: Outback)

Sam learnt of Alfred's murders from Jacqui and was told by the General to assassinate Alfred at the Royal Northcote Races, although he did not want to after killing Eugenia. He got the charges against Christina dropped after she pretended to kill her father, which he suspected was faked after learning that an alpha wave gun was stolen from UNIT. He later went to Christina's penthouse with a bottle of champagne and was caught in a compromising situation with Ivo Hislop-Cannon by Jacqui, who took a photograph of them. (AUDIO: Long Shot)

Appearance
The Ninth Doctor said that Sam was "gorgeous". (AUDIO: Way of the Burryman)

Personality
Josh Carter described Sam as a "good man". (AUDIO: Earthfall) He claimed that 39 was his lucky number. (AUDIO: Square One)

Behind the scenes

 * The character of Sam was written for Warren Brown. (BFX: Extinction)
 * Promotional images of Jake Willis, also played by Warren Brown, was used to represent Sam in Old Friends.