"Bilis Manger"
"Bilis Manger" was the alias (COMIC: Broken) adopted by a servant of Abaddon and an ally of the Light. He had the power to effortlessly time travel, apparently without technical aid, and saw himself as an enemy of the Committee.
Biography
Early life
In 1876, the Rift opened up in Tretarri, releasing Abaddon and Pwccm. Bilis Manger and his opposite, Cafard Manger, were both present to help their lords. Abaddon faked defeat, allowing Pwccm to take control. He gave Gideon ap Tarri, who was watching the proceedings, a diary to write down the events and had him bury the diary in Cardiff. He intended to use the diary in the future to help Abbadon take back power. (PROSE: The Twilight Streets)
Trapped in Wales
- Manger's ability to travel through time makes it difficult to put together a linear chronology, from his point of view, so the following presents his encounters with Torchwood from their perspective.
Bilis sought access to the artefacts of the Torchwood Archive, playing a game of "cat and mouse" with the archivist. He discovered that during World War II all the artefacts were stored together in a Welsh mine, however upon infiltrating the mine found himself unable to leave due to radium in the earth surrounding the mine. A creature formed from his own frustration acted as his jailer as he attempted to use the artefacts to create a way to escape. As he searched he put pieces of art also stored in the mine on display. Eventually Jill Anderson was sent to catalogue the artefacts and Bilis was friendly to her, working with her on her efforts. After sometime she realised his supernatural nature and helped him escape, by smuggling him past the creature into the mine's lift in an empty wine barrel. (AUDIO: Curios)
The Rift ploy
Bilis appeared as a greeter in the Ritz dance hall in January 1941, immediately taking a sinister interest in Jack Harkness and Toshiko. Manger's possession of a file with the hand-lettered label "Torchwood" indicated he had some connection with the Torchwood Institute of that era.
Simultaneously, he seemed to exist in the early 21st century, managing the now-abandoned dance hall. In possession of a missing component of the Rift manipulator found at the Hub, it seems possible that he deliberately allowed Owen Harper to find it in a grandfather clock and to take it. At the same time, he deliberately scratched out numbers in Toshiko's rift equations so that the manipulator would not function properly and so cause the rift to widen after Owen used the manipulator to bring Jack and Toshiko back to the 21st century. (TV: Captain Jack Harkness)
Shortly after, Manger's appearances took an even more ominous tone. Jack and Gwen Cooper discovered that Manger owned a store named A Stitch in Time and met him there. He demonstrated to Gwen his power to time travel and showed her a vision of Rhys lying dead. Later, he proceeded to stab Rhys to death himself.
The visions of loved ones who appeared to the members of the team (except for Jack), inducing them to open the rift almost certainly have something to do with Manger.
Bilis disappeared claiming that his "work was done" after Abaddon rose over Cardiff. (TV: End of Days)
Return
Manger later returned and orchestrated the rapid renovation of the abandoned streets of Tretarri, the site of Abaddon and Pwccm's battle. Abducting all of Jack Harkness's teammates, he passed the sentient particles called the Light into them in order to show them the future he foresaw when Torchwood killed Abaddon. Without the check on its power, Pwccm would send the Dark through the Rift to possess Owen Harper and Toshiko Sato. With Jack's power of resurrection, they would hold open the Rift and use it to power a world-spanning Torchwood Empire.
The Light passed into the people attending the opening of Tretarri and grew in strength but the Dark took over Owen and Tosh until Bilis transferred the particles to Idris Hopper. Once Torchwood Three agreed to aid Bilis, they were able to open the Rift, draw out the Dark and imprison them in a box, and send the Light through the Rift to hold Pwccm back for all eternity.
Bilis left on a plane with a wooden box that contained Abaddon's ashes. (PROSE: The Twilight Streets)
Messenger of the Rift
In the 1860s, he was the manager of the Amser Hotel in Roath, Cardiff. When the Rift opened in 1869, he was trapped by the Rift and forced to do the bidding of a creature who lived there. The creature fed on life energy, and had Bilis lure people to the hotel to feed it. It had Bilis lure Jack Harkness to the hotel, believing that it would give it enough energy to anchor it to Earth. Instead Bilis fed Jack enough clues to work out how to defeat the creature. After Bilis was freed, he acknowledged to Yolande Scott how grateful he was to Jack and his team, intending to one day personally thank them. (COMIC: Broken)
Feud with the Committee
During a torrential downpour, Hywel Roberts arrived at the Traveller's Halt hotel on his way to Cardiff and was greeted by Bilis. Bilis later told Hywel that he didn't work here and that he only came to mend a clock that ticked but never chimed, but he worked out that it was not the clock that was broken, it was time. Bilis and the guests, like Grace, were now forced to stay inside for all eternity or the rain outside would age them to death. He believed Hywel's attempts to escape were pointless, since, as Hywel found out, even suicide was impossible here. Eventually, Bilis heard the clock chime and revealed that the hotel was a trap set by the Committe for him, not the guests, but thanks to Hywel, he now had enough souls to stay in the hotel so he could leave. Bilis then happily escaped from the hotel while Hywel was shouting for him to come back and make it stop. (AUDIO: Deadbeat Escape)
Bilis became aware of the Committee's plan to replace Zoe Blake, Piers Meadows and Rowena Protheroe with doubles and planned to thwart them. He met each in turn and snatched them away to a train in a time loop, but let Zoe go as she was the only one that had manners. Bilis told her that he was going to see some old friends. (AUDIO: Dead Man's Switch)
Ritz Tower
Taking a disliking to the Sorvix occupying Cardiff in 2017 Bilis began using Ritz Tower, acting as its caretaker, to harness human aggression, which he planned to use to open the Rift to send a message to the entity the Sorvix fled from. He manipulated the residents to murder each other, helping them dispose of the bodies afterwards. Torchwood became aware of him after Jack realised where Ritz Tower had been built and St John Colchester was able to identify him through a photograph from the dance hall. After Mr Colchester killed Sandra, who was about to kill his husband Colin Colchester-Price, Bilis was able to send his message and declared his mission complete. (AUDIO: A Kill to a View)
Running from the Vondrax
Throughout history, Bilis often got involved with the affairs of the Vondrax, which led to the Vondrax wanting to kill him. Travelling across time and space, including other planets, Bilis had allowed himself to die hundreds of times to leave behind numerous corpses, in the hope that a Vondrax would find a body, assume him dead, and cease their search. One such scheme led him to Soho in 1978 where he convinced a handful of people to murder him, sometimes coaxing them into it, in order to produce more bodies. Eventually, he gathered his recent murderers at a fine Soho restaurant to dine together, knowing that the owner of the restaurant would recognise him and poison him. Reentering the building, much to everyone's surprise, Bilis decided to explain his ongoing feud with the Vondrax, before revealing to the other diners how each of them had murdered him, much to his own delight. (AUDIO: Dead Plates)
Sabotaging Torchwood
Disturbed by how much Torchwood had deviated time from its original course, due to recent interventions such as a herald and woman from the “wrong universe” joining the team and a man coming back from the dead, Bilis visited the ruins of the Torchwood Hub to steal technology he knew would be crucial to future Torchwood. As he retrieved the items, including a corpse flask, the singularity scalpel and a transmitter, he encountered three intruders who were exploring the abandoned facility. He tricked one of them into dying on the invisible lift and then cornered the other two as they tried to flee Weevils, retrieving one survivor, Vijay Meghani. Bilis taunted Vijay with a vision of another timeline where his friends were alive and they were recruited to form a new Torchwood by the Torchwood emergency hologram, and then extracted one of his eyes to enable him to see the hologram too. Flooding the Hub with Rift scar energy, Bilis offered the hologram a choice of saving Vijay or the pilfered technology with a survival shroud however in truth the shroud was a fake. Bilis visited the scene afterwards and taunted the flickering hologram, deeming he’d accomplished a pyrrhic victory. (AUDIO: Cuckoo)
Personality
Manger had a quiet, guarded, sardonic demeanour. He did not display overt emotions, though did become angry when frustrated. He claimed to be neither good nor evil. (AUDIO: Curios) Bilis was generally uncaring towards humans, though he did choose to spare Zoe Blake from being trapped in a time loop due to her being polite towards him, (AUDIO: Dead Man's Switch) and formed something of a friendship with Jill Anderson. (AUDIO: Curios) Bilis could be vindictive to those who had crossed him, having "beef" with the Committee and plotting revenge against the Torchwood archivist. (AUDIO: Dead Man's Switch, Curios)
Manger seemed to worship Abaddon as a god and worked to free him. (TV: End of Days) He had a fascination with clocks: at some point, he claimed that clocks are all the furniture one needs. (AUDIO: A Kill to a View) He also showed an appreciation for art. (AUDIO: Curios)
Abilities
Manger claimed to be cursed with his powers, likely due to his deal with Abaddon. He could see all of time; the past, the present and all the potential futures, though he could not see his own future or that of Jack Harkness (Possibly because of Jack being a "Fixed point in time"). He could also travel into the past and into the future, but not far in the future. (PROSE: The Twilight Streets) Bilis claimed he was "untethered" from time and travelled through cracks in existence. (AUDIO: Curios)
Though he confessed to have no power over the physical world, (COMIC: Broken) he could read minds, create illusions (TV: End of Days) move objects and make them disappear. (PROSE: The Twilight Streets) He was capable of transporting people, at one point snatching three people away to a train he'd placed in a time loop. (AUDIO: Dead Man's Switch)
Manger could also create illusions with a perception filter, allowing his store to look like whatever was expected. (PROSE: The Twilight Streets)
Behind the scenes
Torchwood website
The series 1 version of the Torchwood website had an unsent email from Owen Harper that was recovered from the computer archive, hastily being written down due to Owen being afflicted by retcon. He said that he met "a quiet old man of the old school" that was a bit like "a bent teacher, but nice to talk to", and started talking to him about Diane and his work at Torchwood. He also mentioned the man ran "one of those pointless antique parlours in one of the arcades". Owen eventually realised that the man knew all about Torchwood and was pumping him for information "just to check what he already knew". The man mentioned that Owen must have realised by then he had been drugged, the concoction mixed together with retcon. He said, "This has all been most useful" and left; Owen not noticing him leave. Owen continues typing, saying he knows the man is "coming to get us". [1]
Other matters
- The letters of Bilis' first name, re-arranged spells, "Iblis", an Islamic name for the devil.
- In an interview on Torchwood Declassified, John Barrowman referred to him as "An evil gay!"
Footnotes
- ↑ Harper, O. Email from Owen (unsent). Torchwood website. Archived from the original on 24 August 2007. Retrieved on 25 July 2013.
