Toby Kinsella

Toby Kinsella
Species:	Human
Affiliated with:	Ministry of Defence
First appearance:	Threshold
Appearances:	see list
Main voice actor:	Hugh Ross

Sir Tobias "Toby" Kinsella was a British civil servant during the 1960s, and oversaw the Intrusion Countermeasures Group (ICMG). He was known for being inscrutable, manipulative, and ambiguous, and for his good taste in art and wine. In 1965, Rachel described Sir Toby as "pig-headed" and "difficult to get along with". (AUDIO: Changing of the Guard) She later claimed that lying came as naturally as breathing to him. (AUDIO: The Forgotten Village)

Sir Toby was Catholic. (AUDIO: Artificial Intelligence, The Fifth Citadel)

He was at school with Professor Jeffrey Broderick. During his school days, Kinsella engineered a fight between the rugby team captain and a boy who had stolen some of his food. (AUDIO: Artificial Intelligence)

During World War II, he was involved in a eugenics programme to create "super soldiers"; the plan was that if Germany won, the soldiers could be used to retake Britain. (He'd later say: "There was a war on! A lot of people did things they weren't proud of!") He was himself one of the test subjects with Mary Cleaver, his wife, but she faked the abortion of his son, Ray Cleaver, and divorced him. After the war, Sir Toby would remove all traces of himself from these files. (AUDIO: Sins of the Fathers) He'd later knock a man out and remark he hadn't just pushed papers around during the war. (AUDIO: Peshka)

After the war, he continued to be part of the eugenics programme which was now preparing for nuclear war. (AUDIO: Sins of the Fathers)

In the government, he knew many intelligence secrets (such as the fact that it was in actuality the Cambridge Nine instead of the Cambridge Five) and tied to high-ranking figures like General Peters. (AUDIO: Artificial Intelligence, State of Emergency)

In November 1963, he met Professor Rachel Jensen for the first time. (AUDIO: 1963: The Assassination Games)

When pretending to be from the Department of Public Building and Works, Sir Toby was disparaging of the outgoing Prime Minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home, saying that they had been "trying to work out what Earl Home thinks so we can agree with him before he's said it". He admitted that referring to Douglas-Home as "Earl Home", a title that he had dropped by 1964, was a hard habit for him to break. (AUDIO: The Pelage Project)

He made many deals to set up Counter-Measures and keep it going, and discouraged Ian Gilmore from seeking any more resources from the Ministry of Defence: he felt Counter-Measures (and himself) would look more credible if they could handle themselves. After their first post-Shoreditch mission, investigating Heinrich Shumman's teleportation experiments, he agreed to put Rachel Jensen in charge rather than Gilmore. (AUDIO: Threshold) Taking up Counter-Measures meant he lost his place in the nuclear war Citadel bunkers, a fact he was annoyed about. (AUDIO: The Fifth Citadel

The second Counter-Measures duty was to ensure Broderick's artificially intelligent Sentient Engine Generator 2 computer (Sen-Gen) project was working smoothly. Sir Toby was aware Broderick was using Jensen's own research for Sen-Gen and was amused by the idea of Jensen finding out, and even gave Broderick recordings of her voice. Unknown to his old school friend, he was secretly having him watched by Julian St. Stephen, and was also making use of Gilmore's old ties to Sen-Gen's Dr Cervenka. When it was discovered that Sen-Gen was driving people insane, he publicly shut the project done. In secret, he callously broke Broderick's mind so the government could use him to make another such computer. (AUDIO: Artificial Intelligence)

He was annoyed when some of Schumann's work was bought by industrialist Kenneth Temple (AUDIO: Threshold) and wanted to investigate what Temple was doing with it, but couldn't as the man was too connected to the government. As a result, he discouraged Counter-Measures from investigating - in a way that would ensure they would dig up something that meant he 'had' to investigate Temple's Pelage site. Sir Toby personally joined the mission, pretending to be from the Department of Works. When the true extent of Temple's work - forcibly altering humans to breath pollutants as part of a mad scheme to move the species from Earth to Venus - came to light, Sir Toby was sickened and went on a personal crusade to purge the government of anyone who had backed Temple. (AUDIO: The Pelage Project)

Sir Toby was conservative and unhappy with the prospect of Harold Wilson's Labour Party being in power, though he believed that they had to make the best of it.

Due to his political sentiments, Sir Toby was invited by General Peters to be part of his coup against Wilson. Sir Toby pretended to be sympathetic and gave him notes on Schumann's teleporter so they could stage an alien attack, while ensuring Counter-Measures would investigate the teleportation site and that Gilmore would be the one who had secured 10 Downing Street. After the coup was advanced enough for Peters and all his collaborators to be revealed, Sir Toby and Counter-Measures worked to shut it down. (AUDIO: State of Emergency)

In 1965, Sir Toby took on an assistant, Templeton, who he picked for knowing the 'right people'. (AUDIO: Manhunt)