Tom Osgood

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Tom Osgood
Species:	Human
Job:	Sergeant
Place of origin:	Earth
First appearance:	The Dæmons
Appearances:	see list
Main actor:	Alec Linstead

Sergeant Tom Osgood was a UNIT technical officer who served under Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart.

Biography

Tom Osgood (PROSE: The Eye of the Giant) was born in the 1940s or early 1950s. (PROSE: The Shadow in the Glass) He joined UNIT shortly before the Third Doctor's arrival, as a corporal. He was the most technically proficient UNIT soldier, having attended universities, where he studied scientific subjects, although he admitted that he was out of his depth where the Doctor and Liz Shaw were concerned. (PROSE: The Eye of the Giant)

After he was promoted to sergeant, (PROSE: The Scales of Injustice) he was called in to assist in the rescue of the Doctor, Jo Grant, Sergeant Benton and Captain Yates from the heat barrier that surrounded Devil's End. With the Doctor's help, he devised a way to penetrate the heat barrier. (TV: The Dæmons)

Soon after this, Osgood became engaged to a woman named Becky, whom he met at a folk festival. (PROSE: Dancing the Code)

Osgood retired from UNIT shortly after the Devil's End incident. (AUDIO: The Scream of Ghosts) By 1983, Osgood and Yates had set up tiny tea-rooms just outside Reading. (PROSE: Business Unusual)

Osgood returns after retrieving a comic for the Ninth Doctor. (COMIC: Official Secrets)

In 2001, Osgood was a civilian in his fifties. He was brought in to help UNIT and the Sixth Doctor with an alien incursion. (PROSE: The Shadow in the Glass)

Osgood was invited by the Eighth Doctor to have Christmas dinner at the Brigadier's house. (PROSE: Faithful Friends: Part 3)

Behind the scenes

Tom uses an inhaler, clearly meant as a reference to his 21st century counterpart. (COMIC: The Heralds of Destruction)

• Osgood's first name was never given on-screen, only in the novels The Eye of the Giant and The Scales of Injustice, as well as in the comic story Official Secrets.
• Osgood shares the same surname as the UNIT scientist Petronella Osgood. Both also sport similar thick rimmed glasses. In DWM 484, Steven Moffat admitted his intention when writing was for Osgood to be the daughter of Tom Osgood. However, he did not want to state this definitively in the script as to not confuse or annoy some viewers. In the audio story Power Cell, Osgood responds to the suggestion that she had an "uncle who used to run around shooting aliens" by saying "Something like that". In the short story For the Girl Who Has Everything, Osgood's father is named Frank, though this confirmation does not negate the possibility of Tom Osgood still being related to Petronella.
• Due to the popularity of Petronella Osgood, Tom has seen more use in Titan comic stories published in the 2010s as part of the UNIT family of the Jon Pertwee era. He has often been illustrated with some similar characteristics -- such as the use of an inhaler.