Tommy Pierce

Thomas "Tommy" Pierce (also known as Old Tommy) was Head of Alien Acquisitions at Torchwood One.

Early life
Tommy was born in 1931 or 1932 and lived in Greenwich. He joined Torchwood One at the age of twenty-five and was forbidden from telling his wife Sandra about his profession. He lied to her, telling her that he was a bus mechanic (AUDIO: Retirement Plan) whilst, in reality, he rose to become a head of department as Head of Alien Acquisitions. (AUDIO: New Girl)

Tired of lying to Sandra, Tommy brought her a device from Torchwood headquarters that allowed the user to absorb the contents of a book. The two were happy but, shortly after, Tommy returned home to find that Sandra had been retconned. Because of this, he became an alcoholic and she left him. (AUDIO: Retirement Plan) He eventually accepted Pippa's help for his alcoholism and was given counselling by her. (AUDIO: New Girl)

Whilst communicating with an alien, Tommy briefly met cleaner Dave Cooke. He attended the small party that Yvonne Hartman held for him in the basement, but quickly made his excuses to leave, saying that he had left his oven on, "so to speak". (AUDIO: Locker 15)

Tommy was in charge of the Arachmed, which he forbade from being used too often due to Moira breaking the charger. Tommy saved Yvonne and Ianto Jones from Blind Summit and was unsurprised that Matthew was a mole, having been suspicious of a male secretary from the start. He decapitated Pascal Babich and threw his head to Matthew. They blew up the facility. (AUDIO: Blind Summit)

In 2005, his personal assistant resigned, with Guleraana Arbid later claiming that he could not handle Tommy. (AUDIO: New Girl) Tommy did not vote for Fiona McAndrew in the mayoral election. (AUDIO: The Law Machines)

Rachel's takeover
Yvonne Hartman hired Rachel Allan as Tommy's new assistant. He looked at the transmat that Kenny and his team retrieved from Royal Hope Hospital. During a meeting with Millidar of the Korvax First Brood, Rachel caused a fight between Tommy and Kieran Frost by telling them that Patrick had told her that Yvonne planned to fire Tommy and replace him with Kieran.

Rachel got Tommy drunk by giving him coffee laced with alcohol before suggesting he test out the transmat on Moira, sending her to a ship in the North Sea. She then planted retcon on him, which everybody saw as an obvious framing. Nonetheless, Tommy was suspended and Rachel was given his job. This had the effect of sowing distrust amongst Torchwood. Yvonne ensured that he was given help for his alcoholism.

Rachel called Tommy to ask if there was any evidence of who had framed him. He told her that CCTV had been down and refused to meet, not wanting her to risk her job. He told her to watch out. (AUDIO: New Girl)

Tommy returned to Torchwood after Yvonne was framed for the death of Dean and Pippa appointed Rachel as director. Like the others, he believed that Yvonne had indeed killed Dean. He joked about Pippa's reliance on alternative medicine after she died on a Torchwood Away Day. Over the month of Rachel's directorship, Tommy and the others had to do compulsory overtime, meaning that he stayed far later than he would normally have done were he not drunk. Yvonne was later reinstated and Rachel exposed and retconned. (AUDIO: Uprising)

The Law Machines
When the Law Machines were activated, Tommy attempted to deactivate them with the master switch at Torchwood Tower. However, it did not work and he instead took to the streets with the other weapons-trained agents to destroy them when Code Black was called. Yvonne called him and he told her that Lawrence had been killed and that no help could come to her. A large amount of his team died.

Tommy arranged to meet Yvonne and Ianto in the Docklands where he set up a mobile incident room. He met Fiona McAndrew, who he was attracted to. The four took the train to Torchwood Tower, where McAndrew was killed by a Law Machine. Whilst Yvonne went with Julian Delaware as "Annie Jones", Tommy and Ianto avoided falling under WOTAN's control by putting cotton in their ears. The two stopped WOTAN's signal. (AUDIO: The Law Machines)

Tommy was tasked with reducing the hard drives from the Brett Archive to scrap to avoid a repeat of Julian Delaware. He almost slipped that Ianto had been involved in the Excellium ordeal, but Yvonne caught him. (AUDIO: Blind Summit)

Later career
Having reached the age of seventy-five and having worked at Torchwood for fifty years, Tommy was unhappy with his life and his ageing body. He appropriated technology that he did not think Torchwood needed in order to make a simulated reality populated by characters derived from the DNA of his colleagues in which he could life a life in retirement, knowing that Yvonne would never allow him to do so. His plan was to kill himself and upload his consciousness into said reality.

As the machine neared completion, he showed it to Ianto Jones so that he might keep an eye on it after he uploaded himself. Ianto demanded entry into the simulation before he would agree and so the two entered the world, which was inhabited only by characters based on Yvonne and "Jerky John" from Human Resources. One such character took on Sandra's form in order to convince him to stay, but he declined and shut the programme down. Yvonne was aware of the goings on and told them to destroy the machine, reminding Tommy that he was to work at Torchwood for life. (AUDIO: Retirement Plan)

Tommy and his department were charged with investigating Locker 15, which resulted in Kara and a number of other operatives suffering psychic damage. He met Dave Cooke again when Yvonne asked people to go to the lobby to jog his memory and mistakenly called him Derek. Yvonne later had him stand his people down to allow Dave to approach the locker and worked to combat it once it was open. (AUDIO: Locker 15)

Personality
Tommy was a genius, but was very much a member of "old Torchwood" and was misogynistic. He resented going to meetings and, like the other heads of department, neglected to prepare for them. He was a recovering alcoholic. By 2005, Tommy was known as one of the old guard, having worked there before the move to Canary Wharf Tower and being rather old-fashioned. (AUDIO: New Girl)

Tommy was attracted to women in power, namely Fiona McAndrew. (AUDIO: The Law Machines) As he grew older, he became unhappy with his ageing body and his life and hoped to retire. However, Yvonne would not allow him to. (AUDIO: Retirement Plan)