Darius Pike
Darius Pike was Alistair Gryffen's personal assistant and part of K9 Mark 2's alien-fighting team in the mid-21st century.
Biography
Childhood
Darius was born in the 21st century and lived in London. His father, Sergeant Harry Pike, was a police officer with the Metro Police who often took him to the precinct house. (TV: The Last Precinct [+]Loading...["The Last Precinct (TV story)"]) Darius frequently disagreed with his parents and did not like the rules they imposed on him nor how they told him what to do. (TV: The Korven [+]Loading...["The Korven (TV story)"])
Although Darius told his father that he did not want a clown at his sixth birthday party, his father ignored him and hired Mr Floppy Fun Pants as he claimed that "everyone loves a clown". Darius was terrified and had what he would later describe as the worst birthday of his life. (TV: Dream-Eaters [+]Loading...["Dream-Eaters (TV story)"]) Harry abandoned the family after the CCPCs made police officers obsolete, becoming obsessed with getting revenge against the Department. (TV: The Last Precinct [+]Loading...["The Last Precinct (TV story)"])
Working for Gryffen
Two years after the introduction of the CCPCs, Darius was employed as Alistair Gryffen's personal assistant, (TV: Regeneration [+]Loading...["Regeneration (TV story)"]) working and living in the converted precinct his father formerly worked at. (TV: The Last Precinct [+]Loading...["The Last Precinct (TV story)"]) He knew of Gryffen's mission to bring back his wife, son and daughter and was grateful for how he had treated him. He considered it his job to keep Gryffen safe.
Gryffen's agoraphobia meant that Darius had to do his shopping for him, (TV: Regeneration [+]Loading...["Regeneration (TV story)"]) although he sometimes stole food instead. (TV: The Korven [+]Loading...["The Korven (TV story)"]) He was paid to keep the manor clean, (TV: Black Hunger [+]Loading...["Black Hunger (TV story)"]) but his fear of enclosed spaces meant that he was unwilling to get the vacuum from the cupboard under the stairs, making his fear obvious to Gryffen. (TV: Fear Itself [+]Loading...["Fear Itself (TV story)"])
In his free time, Darius worked on repairing an old-fashioned taxi called Mariah, which was fit with an artificial intelligence. (TV: Liberation [+]Loading...["Liberation (TV story)"]) William Pike, his great-grandfather, had been a taxi driver in the 20th century. (TV: The Cambridge Spy [+]Loading...["The Cambridge Spy (TV story)"]) Darius found time to do other work to make a living, (TV: The Korven [+]Loading...["The Korven (TV story)"]) salvaged discarded items across London (TV: Fear Itself [+]Loading...["Fear Itself (TV story)"]) and kept a store of stolen items in the sewer. (TV: The Bounty Hunter [+]Loading...["The Bounty Hunter (TV story)"])
Formation of the K9 Unit
Darius returned from shopping after Gryffen's attempt to bring back his family with the Space-Time Manipulator failed because of Starkey and Jorjie Turner and instead brought four Jixen to Earth as well as K9, who killed three of them. Believing that Starkey could be trouble for Gryffen, Darius alerted the CCPCs to his presence, leading to Starkey's arrest, and disliked Gryffen allowing the regenerated K9 to stay at the mansion. He did not give K9 nor the escaped Starkey, who was being hunted by the surviving Jixen, when June Turner visited the mansion. However, he noted that there would be later opportunities for him to do so and told Starkey that he was a troublemaker. (TV: Regeneration [+]Loading...["Regeneration (TV story)"])
Frustrated by Starkey staying at the mansion, Darius agreed to go with him to Dauntless Prison to help K9 find the Jixen in return for Starkey leaving and putting in a good word with Jorjie. They left in Mariah and entered the prison via the sewers at Darius's suggestion, after which they were captured by a CCPC and locked up until Jorjie arrived and freed them with a device Darius pickpocketed from Thorne. Darius helped the aliens captured by the Department escape and killed the Jixen by attaching June's self-destructing arm unit to it. Upon returning to the mansion, Starkey left with K9 as he and Darius had agreed. (TV: Liberation [+]Loading...["Liberation (TV story)"])
Darius called Jorjie for help looking for Gryffen after he was kidnapped by a Korven and was surprised when Starkey and K9 also joined. They learnt from Medowin Gelf that the Korven wanted Gryffen's knowledge to cool the Earth and K9 followed a phosphane trail to the ice works where, whilst searching, Darius invited Jorjie to move into the mansion. He fought with the Korven until K9 shot and killed the kidnapper, after which Darius begrudgingly accepted Starkey and K9 moving into the mansion. (TV: The Korven [+]Loading...["The Korven (TV story)"])
After Ahab arrived through the Space-Time Manipulator and told Gryffen that K9 was wanted for the assassination of Zanthus Pia in the 50th century, Darius accepted that K9 might be responsible but did not believe that he could be punished for it given his lack of memory of the event and that the crime was technically yet to happen. He took K9, Starkey and Jorjie to his storage facility in the sewers to hide out until K9 left to hand himself in, only for the group to learn that Ahab and the Jixen were actually responsible. Darius was concerned that Ahab could return after he fell through the Space-Time Manipulator and became part of the K9 Unit established by June to protect K9 from the Department. (TV: The Bounty Hunter [+]Loading...["The Bounty Hunter (TV story)"])
Becoming a family
Darius liked Jorjie's Magdalen Academy uniform, comparing her to a manga character when she visited the mansion after her first day, and helped Gryffen repair the damage caused to K9 by the Inhibitor. Affected by a cerilium bracelet given to her by Melaina, Jorjie flirted with Darius, who responded positively to the attention and tried to defend her when Starkey and K9 arrived to remove the bracelet. Once the bracelet was damaged and rendered ineffective, Jorjie rejected Darius. (TV: Sirens of Ceres [+]Loading...["Sirens of Ceres (TV story)"])
Whilst scavenging for technology in a yard in NW8, Darius was confronted by two tramps and thrown in a wardrobe in which he almost fell down a bottomless pit which he believed contained an alien. He was almost sucked in when he took Starkey, Jorjie and K9 there to prove his claims and declined to return when K9 decided to investigate the pit, instead watching with Gryffen from the mansion as K9 faced his fear of the Jixen. Afterwards, he told K9 that confusion was part of having feelings and had a group hug with him Starkey, Jorjie and Gryffen. (TV: Fear Itself [+]Loading...["Fear Itself (TV story)"])
Darius initially kept quiet about why Gryffen went quiet after Starkey saw a ghostly boy outside of his bedroom window, but eventually told him and Jorjie about when Eleanor, Mina and Jacob went missing and went hunting for the ghostly Jacob and Mina. He and Jorjie were captured to be fed to the Space-Time Manipulator by Eleanor to provide balance and allow the ghostly children to stay. They called Gryffen for help and were saved by Starkey from being sucked into the vortex, which closed when the storm powering the STM stopped and the ghosts departed. (TV: The Fall of the House of Gryffen [+]Loading...["The Fall of the House of Gryffen (TV story)"])
Darius was willing to lie to protect K9 despite believing that he was the one who attacked Drake at a protest, but showed little empathy for Starkey's as he saw K9 only as a machine. He allowed Drake to believe that he would betray K9 to the authorities when they came to arrest him, only to become more concerned about K9 having "a screw loose" and to become angry when Mariah was badly damaged and vandalised with a message claiming that K9 was responsible. Despite this, he defied Drake and the CCPCs when they arrived and helped K9 escape to the tunnels where they learnt the truth of Operation Orthrus and the impostor K9 was destroyed. (TV: Jaws of Orthrus [+]Loading...["Jaws of Orthrus (TV story)"])
Fighting aliens
Sleeping in Mariah, Darius had a nightmare about Mr Floppy Fun Pants due to the influence of the Bodach and put on a tin foil hat to protect himself at Gryffen's urging, only to remove it so as not to look silly in front of Jorjie. He helped barricade the manor when the Bodach's army of sleepwalkers came for the Eye of Oblivion, but his lack of a tin foil hat allowed the Bodach to put him to sleep and control him, using him to acquire the Eye. He then drove June, the Bodach's avatar, to the Bodach idol before returning to his nightmares. Once the Bodach was defeated, Darius offered taxi rides to the sleepwalkers to make money. (TV: Dream-Eaters [+]Loading...["Dream-Eaters (TV story)"])
Darius offended Nehetka and Geb by mocking a drawing of K9's previous body, referring to him as a "dopey mutt" and waking him up whilst he was attempting to recover his memories by blowing a dog whistle. Gryffen, controlled by the Anubians, had him banished from the manor and he left in Mariah, returning to discuss matters only to find that Starkey and Jorjie had also come under the Anubians' control, although he initially believed that they were robots or pod people. He took Geb's teleporter and took control of the Anubian spaceship, distracting Nehetka long enough for K9 to reactivate and defeat him. (TV: Curse of Anubis [+]Loading...["Curse of Anubis (TV story)"])
Although they were the wrong type, Darius insisted on being paid by Starkey for supplying him with interface resistors and forgot Starkey doing so due to the Oroborus feeding on time. He understood the alien antibodies in Starkey's blood to mean that he was an alien mutant and believed that he was being influenced by them when Gryffen suggested that he was tampering with the Space-Time Manipulator, but they realised that this was not the case and learnt of the Oroborus. Darius helped get rid of the Oroborus through the Space-Time Manipulator and told Starkey that he would be keeping the money he gave him regardless of the double payment. (TV: Oroborus [+]Loading...["Oroborus (TV story)"])
Aliens in distress
Darius stole some of Gryffen's books to sell and was visited by projections of two captive Medes, which scared him because of his fear of ghosts, on his way to the shop. He and Jorjie joined Starkey and K9 in investigating the chenium polluting the River Thames and the two of them followed K9's route above ground as he traced the chenium to its source along a pipe. Reaching an old factory, they were captured and, after Darius failed to chew his way through Jorjie's bonds, they were freed by K9 and saved from the foreman and the CCPCs by June. Darius, Jorjie, Starkey and K9 watched as the liberated Medes drained the chenium from the river before disappearing. (TV: Alien Avatar [+]Loading...["Alien Avatar (TV story)"])
Whilst acknowledging Gryffen's superior intelligence, Darius did not initially believe his claim that the Aeolian's storm was caused by music, although he became excited by the prospect of what he could do if he were to hook up his electric guitar to a large speaker. He headed with Starkey to the Holy Cross Cathedral through the sewers to find the cause of the storm, but he left upon receiving an alert from Jorjie and saved her from being killed by debris which fell on her during the storm. When Jorjie confessed her love for Starkey, Darius initially thought that she was talking about himself and pretended that he was attracted to another girl called "Georgette" rather than tell her that she was the object of his affections. (TV: Aeolian [+]Loading...["Aeolian (TV story)"])
Darius was, unlike Starkey and Jorjie, uninterested in finding the Major Oak after it was stolen from the London Museum unless the museum were offering a reward. He begrudgingly went into the sewers with Starkey, Jorjie and K9 to find the Centuripede and recover the Major Oak and was willing to abandon the mission when he learnt that Drake was tracking them. Like Jorjie, he was upset during the brief time that they believed that Starkey and K9 had been killed by Drake's tetragliceride and, upon learning they had survived, he attempted to charge Gryffen for the Bournedecker Awards for Scientific Excellence invitation he found in Patrick's bag. (TV: The Last Oak Tree [+]Loading...["The Last Oak Tree (TV story)"])
Tech malfunctions
Whilst in the sewers, Darius saw two workers using the Imploder and stole it, using it to clean up the chess room at the mansion to avoid doing it himself and realising that he could exploit the technology for profit. He refused to return it when Jorjie found it and remained with Gryffen whilst she, Starkey and K9 took it back to the sewers. He was horrified upon learning of the Black Hunger and its potential devastation of Earth and was amused to learn that K9 had resolved the threat by sucking it all up. The debacle ultimately led Lomax to replace Drake, who was responsible for the Imploder, with Thorne. (TV: Black Hunger [+]Loading...["Black Hunger (TV story)"])
Darius, Starkey and K9 were with Jorjie during a storm which caused a malfunction with the Space-Time Manipulator, resulting in her being transported back in time. Darius realised where she had been sent back to upon seeing her in a photograph on the cover of a newspaper from 1963 and wanted to travel there with Starkey and K9 to rescue her, but Gryffen insisted that he stay to help him operate the Space-Time Manipulator. Jorjie's presence caused a chain of events which resulted in William Pike being convicted of treason and erasing Darius from history until K9 was able to exonerate him and restore the timeline. (TV: The Cambridge Spy [+]Loading...["The Cambridge Spy (TV story)"])
Thorne's experiments
Learning of the Department's inaugural open day, Darius and Starkey used the unique opportunity to infiltrate the Department's headquarters and search Thorne's office with the help of K9, only for Starkey to be sucked into an Ukkan library card containing a hologram of Urlic just as Thorne hoped. Darius stole the card and, learning from Yssaringintinka that the card's plinth was required to release Starkey, he and Jorjie trapped Thorne inside, after which June acquired the plinth from Thorne's office and Yssaringintinka released Starkey and Thorne. (TV: Lost Library of Ukko [+]Loading...["Lost Library of Ukko (TV story)"])
Darius helped rescue the humanised CCPC Birdie by getting him to the mansion in Mariah at Jorjie's request and volunteered to look after him overnight, although he had difficulty getting him to sleep and understand that he could not brush his teeth. He felt threatened by Jorjie's relationship with Marcus, who betrayed Birdie to Thorne, and claimed to be a protestor in an effort to compete with him for Jorjie's affections, only for his fondness for Birdie and helping him escape from Thorne to the woods to convince her that he did not have to be a protestor to make a difference. (TV: Mutant Copper [+]Loading...["Mutant Copper (TV story)"])
Like the majority of young people, Darius played Little Green Men and began to be transformed into an Etydion thanks to the last Etydion's plan to revive his species through the VR game's headsets, originally intended to pacify the younger generation. Gryffen found Darius unresponsive inside Mariah and carried him to the chess room where he examined him and Jorjie. Although Gryffen and June removed their headsets during a weakening in the Etydion's telepathic signal, they remained unresponsive and mutating until June convinced the Etydion to reverse the process. (TV: The Custodians [+]Loading...["The Custodians (TV story)"])
Continued exploits
Info from Robot Gladiators and Angel of the North needs to be added
Darius surprised Gryffen with a birthday cake a day early and was instantly attracted to Taphony, whom Gryffen saved from a virtual reality detention facility using the Space-Time Manipulator. He gave her a tour around the mansion and, like Starkey and Jorjie, trusted that she would restore Gryffen after she used her powers to age him as revenge for his role in making her who she was. Upon learning that she was draining Jorjie's life energy, however, Darius told her that she was not being a good friend and suggested that he, Starkey, Gryffen and June all volunteer themselves in return for Jorjie's life. This worked and Taphony departed, rewinding time. (TV: Taphony and the Time Loop [+]Loading...["Taphony and the Time Loop (TV story)"])
Darius met his estranged father when his father and his father's group, the Last Precinct, attacked Gryffen Manor, using it as a staging ground for their plans to disgrace the CCPCs. Although Darius helped derail those plans, leading to the arrest of the members of the Last Precinct, he and his father parted on civil terms. (TV: The Last Precinct)
The Korven invasion
Soon after, Darius was approached by Thorne, who claimed that his father was suffering in prison. Thorne offered to make his sentence more bearable in return for K9's regeneration unit. Darius convinced K9 to go along with it, only to be double-crossed by the group. (TV: Hound of the Korven)
When a strange phenomenon in the STM threatened Earth, Gryffen sent Darius to collect June. Shortly after, CCPCs in the area were given new orders that human personnel had no authority. When the two were confronted by two CCPCs, June saved Darius by grabbing a large gun and destroying them. They made their way to the STM control panel. Darius pulled June back just as the STM exploded, saving her life. This act of heroism earned June's respect, and she offered him a position in a new Department. Darius later heard that K9 was about to die. A tearful Darius told him he was the coolest thing to ever happen in his life. As per its programming, K9's regeneration unit homed back to him, allowing him to renew himself. Darius was delighted to see him alive again. (TV: The Eclipse of the Korven)
Personality
Darius was a hard worker, and loyal to the professor, whom he saw as a father figure. Being an employee of the Department, he did not dislike and distrust them as much as Starkey and Jorjie. He would willingly go to them for help on occasion. (TV: Jaws of Orthrus) He showed great care for Gryffen, comforting him at bad times (TV: Regeneration) and going off to rescue him when he was kidnapped. (TV: The Korven) He initially disliked Starkey, believing his troublemaking ways would only bring the Professor strife, but they became good friends. Darius and K9 sometimes argued. (TV: Jaws of Orthrus) He had a crush on Jorjie, (TV: Sirens of Ceres) and was heartbroken when she confessed to him she had a crush on Starkey. (TV: Aeolian) He was very attached to Mariah, spending most of his free time polishing and working on her and was angry when it appeared K9 had damaged her. (TV: Jaws of Orthrus) Furthermore he loved to play the electric guitar. (TV: Aeolian)
Darius was something of a pragmatist, abandoning his friends' plans when they seemed too outlandish or likely to fail and seeking help elsewhere. He also had a habit of concocting get-rich-quick schemes, usually involving alien technology. (TV: Black Hunger)
Darius suffered from claustrophobia (TV: Fear Itself) and coulrophobia. (TV: Dream-Eaters)
Darius liked Italian food. (TV: Liberation [+]Loading...["Liberation (TV story)"])
Appearance
Please help by adding some more information.
Darius greatly resembled his great-grandfather, William Pike. (TV: The Cambridge Spy [+]Loading...["The Cambridge Spy (TV story)"])
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