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Thomas (disambiguation)
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Thomas Carruthers was the son of Victorian politician Sir Reginald Carruthers and his wife Anne. After his father's murder in 1885, he sullenly assisted the Time Lord Rollo and his companions in their investigation of the alien conspiracy of which the murder was a byproduct, and one possibility was that he subsequently joined Rollo on his travels as a companion.
Biography[]
In 1885, Thomas was 21 years old, placing his birth around 1864. As typical of a high-born Victorian man, he learned a number of skills over his teenaged years, including singlestick fighting as well as playing the violin. However, he had "never worked a day in his life", relying on his father's money and reputation to live the life of a dilettante. (GAME: "Non-Player Characters" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, J. Andrew Keith, The Doctor Who Role Playing Game (FASA, 1985).)
He was shocked out of his native complacency his his father's brutal murder by Ned Hines. Dissatisfied with Inspector James Newcombe's way of conducting the investigation, he agreed to speak with Rollo and his companions when they called on the Carruthers house immediately after the murder, (GAME: "Murder on Regent Park" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, J. Andrew Keith, The Doctor Who Role Playing Game (FASA, 1985).) secretly being operatives of the Celestial Intervention Agency who correctly believed the murder to be connected to the presence of anachronistic Iytean technology in Victorian London. (GAME: "The Summons" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, J. Andrew Keith, The Doctor Who Role Playing Game (FASA, 1985).)
Ultimately, the time-travellers succeeded in unraveling the plans of the alien murderer, "Ned Hines". Subsequently, one possibility was that Thomas had developed a romantic interest in Julia Fraser, the similarly-orphaned granddaughter of another one of Hines's fictim, Sir Reginald's old friend Colonel Malcolm Fraser. The two might then have decided to elope together and build a new life in "Canada, the United States, South Africa, or Australia". (GAME: "Tying Up Loose Ends" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, J. Andrew Keith, The Doctor Who Role Playing Game (FASA, 1985).) However, another possibility to account for Julia's disappearance from the historical record was that, noticing how aggrieved she was by the death of her only remaining family in Colonel Fraser, Rollo's companion Verika had convinced him to let Julia join him as a new companion, granting her a welcome change of scenery and lifestyle. (GAME: "The Hunters Home from the Hill" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, J. Andrew Keith, The Doctor Who Role Playing Game (FASA, 1985).) Indeed, it was also possible that she and Thomas both joined the TARDIS crew, or that Thomas did so on his own. (GAME: "Tying Up Loose Ends" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, J. Andrew Keith, The Doctor Who Role Playing Game (FASA, 1985).)
Physical appearance[]
At 21, Thomas appeared as a "tall, handsome young man" with "a strong nose and chin and piercing blue eyes". He wore his brown hair "fairly short, but with prominent sideburns"; a rather snobbish young man, he dressed in "an elegant and fashionable manner, never failing to appear in top hat, gloves, and walking stick". The latter concealed a sword. (GAME: "Non-Player Characters" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, J. Andrew Keith, The Doctor Who Role Playing Game (FASA, 1985).)