Brak

Brak
Main aliases:	Bios
Species:	Sontaran
Job:	Commander, Field Marshal
Place of origin:	Sontar
First appearance:	Old Soldiers [+]Loading...["Old Soldiers (BBV audio story)"]
Appearances:	HOMEVID: Fog [+]Loading...["Fog (home video)"]
Main voice actor:	John Wadmore

Commander Brak, (AUDIO: Old Soldiers ^[+]Loading...["Old Soldiers (BBV audio story)"]) later code-named "Field Marshal Bios", (HOMEVID: Fog ^[+]Loading...["Fog (home video)"]) was a Sontaran soldier who, having crashed on Earth in 1916, went on to become the longest-lived Sontaran in recorded history, living for over a century in total.

Biography

Crashing into World War I

Brak was originally the pilot of a one-man craft within General Dakaal's Sontaran fleet. His wing was assigned to bomb Satellite Neutreet, a long-standing outpost opposed to the Sontarans, as a detour on the way to a larger, unrelated battle. During the operation, something went wrong and blew Brak's ship out of the fleet and into the inner part of the solar system; he crashed on Earth, in the midst of the 1916, Battle of the Somme. Overwhelmed by the fighting he could not understand, he was captured by humans and held as a prisoner. (AUDIO: Old Soldiers ^[+]Loading...["Old Soldiers (BBV audio story)"])

Twenty years of apathy

Though initially held by the Germans, (HOMEVID: Fog ^[+]Loading...["Fog (home video)"]) he passed into British custody in 1918, with his status later changing to that of a "guest of the United Nations" after World War II, though his safehouse-slash-prison was still located on British soil. Every Prime Minister of the United Kingdom would visit Brak upon being elected, including MacDonald, Baldwin, and Chamberlain. Believing himself a failure for having abandoned his unit partway through a battle — albeit involuntarily — Brak spent the first twenty years of his captivity with the British in a state of near-catatonic apathy, wrestling with his conscience. Unaware that humans normally ate meals that were mostly vegetables with only a little meat, he believed his rations were a means of torturously slow execution via starvation. (AUDIO: Old Soldiers ^[+]Loading...["Old Soldiers (BBV audio story)"])

An agenda arises

After his election to the premiership, Winston Churchill visited Brak, and, unperturbed by his appearance asked him point-blank to build him weapons to defeat his enemies. Brak's Sontaran fighting spirit was awakened by Churchill's bloodthirsty practicality, and he devised a plan of action to accelerate Earth's weapons development in the hope of moulding humanity into a warrior race who would be a worthy foe for the Sontaran Empire — which he believed to be the only honourable course of action left to him. Transferred to a military airbase, he worked throughout World War II to help scientists develop advanced weaponry, primarily succeeding in synthetising the chemical Cobalt Blue. Cobalt Blue-based bombs were notably employed at the bombing of Dresden. As Brak had anticipated, the secrets of Cobalt Blue eventually began to get out, with more and more militaries and terrorist groups around the world gaining access to the substance without fully knowing how to control it. (AUDIO: Old Soldiers ^[+]Loading...["Old Soldiers (BBV audio story)"])

Trip to Geneva

In 2000, Brak was visited by UNIT Captain Alice Wells, who came on behalf of a Weapons Crisis Committee in Geneva dealing with the pile-up of mysterious deaths relatng to malfunctioning or misused Cobalt Blue technology. They had several long conversations on human and Sontaran values and ways of life, first at the safehouse, then on the plane to Geneva, and finally in Brak's own bedroom at the secure Site B9 where the conference was to be held. Though initially clashing, the two came to understand each other better as the argument progressed, with Wells eventually delivering an incensed dressing-down of the pettiness of Brak's destructive, self-pitying outlook. He eventually, reluctantly, declared her the winner of the argument, and agreed to speak at the Conference to give world leaders more reliable information on how to control Cobalt Blue. (AUDIO: Old Soldiers ^[+]Loading...["Old Soldiers (BBV audio story)"])

Apparent death in 2000

The night before he was supposed to speak at the Conference, a significantly emotionally-unbalanced Brak was confronted in his quarters by the long-expected Sontaran envoy. Brak outlined his true motives for disclosing the secrets of Cobalt Blue to the other Sontaran, but, although appreciative of the plan, the envoy still felt that Brak had been changed irreparably by his time and collaboration with humanity, and was not worthy of returning into the fold of the Sontaran Empire, let alone with the hero's welcome he was now demanding. He even denied Brak the honourable execution he expected, intending to simply leave his fate up to the humans with whom he had thrown his lot in. Brak was outraged at this disgrace, and attacked the envoy with the concealed C12 pulse rifle he had built for himself, forcing the envoy to take a fatal shot at him in self-defence. Angered that Brak had tricked him into giving him the honourable death in combat he desired, the envoy left the complex unseen, leaving Alice Wells to discover the wounded Brak and frantically call for a medic. (AUDIO: Old Soldiers ^[+]Loading...["Old Soldiers (BBV audio story)"])

Survival into the 21st century

Brak was unable to speak at the conference, and Captain Alice Wells understood him to be dead, recording a mournful report on his death which turned into something of a eulogy and meditation on Brak. (AUDIO: Old Soldiers ^[+]Loading...["Old Soldiers (BBV audio story)"])

However, he was actually kept alive on life support, and brought back to his safehouse with increased security; his name was no longer spoken even in secret documentation, with him being referred to as "Field Marshal Bios", named after a post-WWII British program similar to the Americans' Operation Paperclip and of which the prisoner, as a "foreign" "expert" originally recovered from German custody, could be considered an unusual example.

More dependent on the humans' goodwill than ever, he resumed sharing advanced technology with them, now playing with electromagnetism; the directions he provided were crucial to many technical innovations of the 21st century, such as 5G phone signals. (AUDIO: Old Soldiers ^[+]Loading...["Old Soldiers (BBV audio story)"])

Death in 2021

Due to his disgrace and dependence on humans, Brak had become downright suicidal. Hoping to attract attention, he planted a hidden signal within one of his creations which caused a mysterious fog to fall upon the United Kingdom starting in mid-February 2021, caused multiple phone blackouts, and also caused random bouts of amnesia among members of the public. He eventually managed to catch the attention of, and contact, P.R.O.B.E. director Giles, giving him the coordinates of his safehouse. After some difficulties, Giles was given clearance to enter the house and meet with "Bios", though he was unable to put any footage of him, or even his real name, within the video case file he recorded. "Bios" was interested in Giles's work, and particularly in the presence of an alien, Maxie, on his team, as a free woman and equal to the humans rather than a prisoner to be used.

Giles made several repeat visits to the Field Marshal after that first encounter. Communicating back and forth with Maxie through an oblivious Giles, Brak was able to get it across to his fellow nonhuman that he was looking for a deniable way to commit suicide that would evade the understanding of his guards. He eventually asked Giles to buy him a simple human burger, a request Maxie helped Giles fulfill, being aware — unlike Giles and the guards — that some ingredients within the fast-food item would prove lethally poisonous for Brak. He expired soon after being given this last meal by Giles, and Giles quickly realised that Maxie had expected this to happen. Although resentful of having been used without his consent, Giles understood and respected Maxie's actions. He later observed a few aftershocks of the amnesia-causing fogs, being bitterly amused that one of the only things Brak had left the world to remember him by was fields that caused people to forget things. (AUDIO: Old Soldiers ^[+]Loading...["Old Soldiers (BBV audio story)"])