Tardis

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Tardis
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Tardis

Doctor Michael Duncan was an Edinburgh physician and surgeon from the late 20th century who accidentally became a companion of the renegade Time Lord Rollo.

Biography[]

Early life[]

Michael Duncan was born in 1951. At some point in or priot to 1983, now a resident physician and surgeon at a "respected" Edinburgh hospital, he was abducted by the Time Lord Rollo into his TARDIS to tend to one of Rollo's companions, a human whose biology Rollo had no understanding of. Rollo was then forced by circumstance to leave the time-zone before he could let Duncan go. Duncan thus remained as an unwilling companion to Rollo for several adventures in a row, and having "found that he liked travelling the universe", he eventually "stopped asking to be taken home". (GAME: "Player Characters" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, J. Andrew Keith, The Doctor Who Role Playing Game (FASA, 1985).)

The Iytean investigation[]

On one occasion, by which time Doctor Duncan was now 32 years old, Rollo and his companions were summoned to Gallifrey to be briefed by Lady Rowella about a new assignment. The discovery of an energy weapon on 1980s Earth as an heirloom from its human owner's Victorian ancestor Colonel Malcolm Fraser had the Invasion worried about alien, and potentially time-active, activity in 1885 London. (GAME: "The Summons" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, J. Andrew Keith, The Doctor Who Role Playing Game (FASA, 1985).)

There, they discovered that Colonel Fraser had been buying a steady supply of alien artefacts from a pair of crooks called Jack Bannister and Bert Jenkins, who had secretly discovered a buried Iytean starship while trying to dig a tunnel into a bank two years prior. Unbeknownst to them, the ship had been a police vessel transporting an Iytean criminal. With the Iyteans being symbionts, the criminal had hitched a ride in Jenkins's body then transferred itself to Fraser's acquaintance Doctor Henry Jellicoe, causing him to periodically lose control of his body and adopt the malevolent persona of "Ned Hines". With the help of the Colonel's granddaughter Julia Fraser, and that of Thomas Carruthers, the son of his old friend Sir Reginald Carruthers (who had been murdered by Hines), the time-travellers were able to unravel the mystery and eventually neutralise the Iytean as well as ensure the starship would not be rediscovered and thereby derail Earth history any further. (GAME: The Iytean Menace [+]J. Andrew Keith, The Doctor Who Role Playing Game (FASA, 1985).)

Before leaving 1885, Rollo went on one last outing in the city, and had lunch with a writer called Robert Louis Stevenson, telling him about the adventure. It was only when he returned to the TARDIS and told Verika, another one of his companions, about the encounter that he learned he had just inspired Stevenson to write The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. (GAME: "The Hunters Home From the Hill" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, J. Andrew Keith, The Doctor Who Role Playing Game (FASA, 1985).)

Psychological profile[]

Personality[]

Duncan was a deeply compassionate mind, who could never resist the temptation to right every wrong he encountered, no matter the odds. He was excitable and impulsive, with a tendency to make rash judgements about situations even before he knew all the facts. (GAME: "Player Characters" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, J. Andrew Keith, The Doctor Who Role Playing Game (FASA, 1985).)

Physical appearance[]

Doctor Duncan was a short, portly man, once described as being "built like a fireplug topped by an untidy mop of reddish hair". His features were "surprisingly handsome, given his build", but his clothing was "generally shabby", typically including a rumpled medical jacket over an ordinary shirt and tie. He sometimes carried a medical bag, and also kept all kinds of junk stuffed in his pockets at all times. (GAME: "Player Characters" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, J. Andrew Keith, The Doctor Who Role Playing Game (FASA, 1985).)

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