Roderick Mitchell
- You may wish to consult
Mitchell (disambiguation)for other, similarly-named pages.
Lieutenant Roderick Mitchell, sometimes called Rod for short, was an Ameican UNIT officer who became a companion of the Renegade Time Lord known as the Colonel.
Biography[[edit] | [edit source]]
Early life[[edit] | [edit source]]
Roderick was born in the small Texan town of Bay City. In love with the idea of military service, he lied about his age to join the US Army, and quickly managed to be approved as an officer. He fought in the Vietnam War against the Viet Cong. In 1985, he was transferred to Special Forces, and again from there to UNIT/NA in 1988. (GAME: "Player Characters" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedpart":"Player Characters","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"})
Employment at UNIT[[edit] | [edit source]]
At UNIT, Sergeant Mitchell served under Colonel Martin. Martin deemed the overzealous, battle-hungry Rod to be something of a liability, especially as he didn't yet believe in "extraterrestrial invasions and UNIT's whole concept"; Mitchell found himself assigned to Colonel Martin's "other chief problem", the cantankerous Renegade Time Lord known as the Colonel who served as Martin's Scientific Advisor. Taking his new position as Scientific Liaison Officer more seriously than Martin expected, Mitchell kept such a close watch on the Colonel that he soon discovered the Colonel's TARDIS, subsequently being taken on by the alien as his new companion in his adventures through time and space.
Rod quickly adapted to "the reality of life on a TARDIS", happily "rush[ing] into battle against Cybermen, Daleks or Sontarans" to the point that the Colonel and his daughter and occasional companion, Leora, often had to talk him down from overly reckless courses of action. As the Colonel and Leora's TARDIS parties began to frequently travel together, Roderick entered a belligerent courtship with one of Leora's companions, the haughty Victorian Sandra Cathcart. (GAME: The Legions of Death [+]Loading...["The Legions of Death (game)"])
Roman Invasion: Britain 43 A.D.[[edit] | [edit source]]
At some point, with Rod now 28 years old, (GAME: "Player Characters" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedpart":"Player Characters","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"}) a mysterious signal seemingly coming from a TARDIS stationed in 43 AD Britain drew any of the Colonel's TARDIS, Leora's TARDIS and the Third Doctor's TARDIS to investigate. Unable to pinpoint the exact location of the rogue TARDIS, they could only land within a few miles of the pulse-wave's source, in what turns out to be southwestern Roman Britain, somewhere between Londinium and Camulodunum, in an empty battlefield. (GAME: "Temporal Anomaly" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"Temporal Anomaly","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"}) Lurking on the edges of the battlefield, a group of Roman soldiers who had survived the ahistorical skirmish — led by Marcus Cornelius Falco — witnessed the arrival of the TARDIS or TARDISes. (GAME: "Field of Battle" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"Field of Battle","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"}) Taking them prisoner, Falco was willing to trust that they were not spies, (GAME: "Falco's Story" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"Falco's Story","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"}, "Field of Battle" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"Field of Battle","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"}) but insisted on having them accompany his men back to Emperor Claudius's main camp in an effort to warn him about the new, massing force of barbarians they had encountered — which the Time Lords and their companions knew should not have existed, and could only be the work of the other renegade Time Lord. (GAME: "Player Options" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"Player Options","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"})
The journey was long and arduous, and may have involved some members of the party being captured by further barbarian ambushes; (GAME: "Player Options" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"Player Options","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"}, "In the Briton camp" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"In the Briton camp","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"}, In the Roman camp [+]Loading...["The Legions of Death (game)","In the Roman camp"]) the captured companions may have included Sandra (GAME: "In the Roman camp" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"In the Roman camp","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"}) as well as Rod himself (GAME: "In the Roman camp" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"In the Roman camp","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"}, "General Adventure Procedures" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"General Adventure Procedures","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"}) and Mikhyl Nevenskoi. (GAME: "In the Briton camp" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"In the Briton camp","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"}) Taken to the Briton camp, they would then have borne witness to internal politics within the camp, learning of Princess Branimandua's distrust for the "god of the Inner Mysteries" and the power struggle between Calagundus and Cunovellasus. Ultimately, after summary interrogation, the prisoners were taken to the Sacred Wood itself, (GAME: "In the Briton camp" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"In the Briton camp","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"}) where they were taken into the War Chief's TARDIS and placed by him under a hypnotic compulsion which made them believe that they were in the middle of a completely different adventure and had been tasked by the Doctor with rescuing Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart from a Sontaran camp — actually a ploy to make them infiltrate the Roman camp and abduct Emperor Claudius for him. (GAME: "Under Compulsion" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"Under Compulsion","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"})
Eventually, the remainder of the group made it to the camp, where, if Falco had not been among those captured, he was able to confirm that the strange travellers were not spies, and secure them an interview with the Emperor. However, due to internal politics of the camp, Claudius was not sure whether to believe their claims of a new army. He agreed to stay the advance for a day or two, however. (GAME: "In the Roman camp" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"In the Roman camp","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"}) In the night, the camp was infiltrated by the group of would-be kidnappers under hypnotic control. Recognising some of his men among them, Falco realised the truth of the time-travellers' claim that the locus of the mystery was in the Sacred Wood, and helped them sneak away from the camp. (GAME: "Shadows in the Night" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"Shadows in the Night","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"})
Though ambushed by the Britons, they did end up back at the Sacred Wood when the hypnotised barbarians opted to drop the prisoners there as tributes for their god — who turned out to be none other than a regenerated form of the War Chief. Upon realising that there were members of his own kind among the party, the War Chief was eager to gloat, and explained the nature of his scheme, whose ultimate aim was to take control of the entire Roman Empire by capturing and hypnotising Claudius, then outfitting the brainwashed Roman army with laser pistols. (GAME: "In the Briton camp" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"In the Briton camp","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"}, "The Sacred Wood" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"The Sacred Wood","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"}, "The War Chief" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"The War Chief","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"}) Dumped in a containment cell within the War Chief's TARDIS until it was time to brainwash them, the time-travellers managed to escape, possibly with the use of the non-brainwashed Briton Branimandua, (GAME: "Escape" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"Escape","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"}) and the War Chief's plan was foiled when his hypnotic machines were destroyed. However, the War Chief managed to escape, either making it back to his TARDIS after narrowly escaping a gunshot Rod, or else being cut off from his TARDIS's controls but escaping in a SIDRAT he had stored in one of its rooms. Vespasian was then safely returned to the Roman camp, allowing history to go back on track. (GAME: "Ending the Adventure" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"Ending the Adventure","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"})
Personality[[edit] | [edit source]]
Fond of all things military (notably enjoying playing war simulation video games with the Colonel), Rod Mitchell was always eager for "action and excitement", but also deeply loyal, and sincerely dedicated to whatever he perceived to be his duty. Though he had a "bull-headed" tendency to "rush headlong into dangerous situations", he was at his core quite intelligent and articulate, even being described a a "surprisingly smooth operator" who was able to con his way out of much of the trouble his impulsiveness got him into. He was also an "indefatigable ladies' man" with an "unerring instinct for finding damsels in distress, or just damsels of any kind". Though he slipped into a "broad East Texas accent" at "times of stress", he usually tried to disguise his exact origins. (GAME: "Player Characters" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"Player Characters","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"})
Physical appearance[[edit] | [edit source]]
At 28, Mitchell was "rugged", "muscular and strong"; he was "large-boned" but most of his weight "was muscle, not fat". Even off-duty in his adventures with the Colonel, he wore US Army camouflage combat fatigues, his UNIT beret, and his UNIT insignia. (GAME: "Player Characters" [+]Part of The Legions of Death, Loading...{"namedep":"Player Characters","1":"The Legions of Death (game)"})
