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Norton Folgate was a member of Torchwood One in the 1950s. He spied on his teammates on behalf of the Committee, and later worked with his lover Jeremiah Bash Henderson to restore them to life after their defeat by the Enemy.
Biography
Early life
Norton's father was a vicar, which meant that he grew up in a church in London. His mother would sew hassocks for the church, spending most of her time during World War II doing so, but the church was bombed and her hard work was destroyed. She had been snobbish and not fond of the Cockneys and the couple moved to a parish in the Cotswolds. Norton often felt the spare child as his parents preferred his elder brother, Gerald. (AUDIO: Ghost Mission)
He did national service at the Joint Services School for Linguists. (AUDIO: Eye of the Storm) He did not visit his parents, as they disapproved of his being gay. (AUDIO: Ghost Mission)
He had an aunt named Faye. (AUDIO: The Torchwood Archive)
Career at Torchwood One
Early career
Whilst doing National Service, (AUDIO: Parasite) Norton joined Torchwood One, (AUDIO: Outbreak) a choice that his parents disagreed with. (AUDIO: Ghost Mission) He worked in Alien Acquisitions under Reginald Rigsby. (AUDIO: Parasite)
In the wake of World War II, Norton and his team had to deal with a large amount of black market trading in alien artefacts as a result of the number of spacecraft shot down. However, they were mostly called out to the sites of unexploded bombs. At some point, he began working for the Committee. (AUDIO: Ghost Mission)
Norton met Lizbeth Hayhoe in 1951 as she prepared the Skylon for the Festival of Britain when Rigsby sent him to supply her with a list of additional requirements with which he disagreed. She described him as one of Rigsby's "bright boys" and was able to tell from his posture that he was the son of a pastor. (AUDIO: Parasite)
In June 1953, Folgate was at Queen Elizabeth II's coronation at Westminster Abbey with the Vicar and Rigsby. (AUDIO: Parasite)
On the rise
Norton gave an alien pathogen to the US government for the development of the Good Thinking virus and was later brought in to try to control it, but found that there was no cure but to contain and burn the infected. He watched Jack Harkness burn with a number of people that he tried to save and visited him in hospital, after which he helped to try to destroy all trace of the virus. He and Jack entered into a sexual relationship and devised a protocol should the virus return. (AUDIO: Outbreak)
In 1953, Norton used a soft-light projection device to visit 2016 on the Committee's orders to find Object 1. He claimed to be a Torchwood assessor and manipulated Andy Davidson in assisting him in his search, locating the object in a spaceship in a clone factory and taking it to the Committee in Bide-a-Wee Care Home. Told by Roy to take it back to 1953, he left a note for Jane telling her to say hello to Andy. (AUDIO: Ghost Mission)
Mitford told Norton to pass Object 1 on to Mandrake so that Torchwood would investigate his gang and recover it. (AUDIO: The Torchwood Archive) He was reprimanded by Torchwood for his visit to the future. (AUDIO: Outbreak) By the mid-1950s, he had killed somebody that he loved.
Ianto Jones brought Norton from 1955 to 2009 via soft-light projection to provide answers on Good Thinking. Norton told him what he knew and placed documents related to it in a time-sealed container in the Hub's vaults, exploiting the protocol that he and Jack had devised, and programmed the cell doors to unleash the infected Jack on Ianto before telling Ianto how to initiate the emergency sterilisation system. Just before going into Stage 4, Jack broke the projector and sent Norton back to 1955. (AUDIO: Outbreak)
Norton acquired an alien painting inside of which was the key to a Martian tripod. He stored at his boyfriend Alejandro's studio and, after summoning Andy to the 1950s to help clear his name when the Vicar began suspecting that he was a double agent and dealing alien weaponry with gangsters, he implanted the key into Andy's mind. After Fat Kim used Andy to activate a tripod under Leicester Square, Norton killed her by transferring the key into her and the collapsing tripod killed the Vicar, removing the only two people aware of Norton's criminal dealings. Rather than admit his actions, Norton sent Andy back to the 21st century. (AUDIO: Goodbye Piccadilly)
Work at Room 13
Norton expected to succeed the Vicar as the head of Torchwood. However, Rigsby instead got the job and relegated Norton to work with Lizbeth in Room 13, a place where he quickly grew bored due to the monotonous nature of the work. To better fund their activities, Norton began tracking down and killing Nazis. (AUDIO: Parasite) He lived for a time at Cartso Cottage Boarding House. (AUDIO: Madam, I'm)
Torchwood sent Norton and Lizbeth to Ashenden to find out about Professor Sidney Ornadel and Isla Satterthwaite's communications with the space eels. Norton became a mouthpiece for the Department of New Towns when Lizbeth had them take over the project and, before returning to London, told Miss Satterthwaite to find a way for the eels to communicate. (AUDIO: Ashenden)
Norton was tricked into allowing Adam Smith into Torchwood after he promised to use his memory manipulation abilities to make Norton leader of Torchwood. With his memory falling under Adam's influence, Norton managed to contact the Kernaz for aid as they were hunting for Adam. Norton and Lizbeth Hayhoe struggled to realise something was wrong as Adam took over Torchwood and rallied them to fight against the approaching Kernaz, however eventually deduced what was going on, despite numerous setbacks in their investigation when Adam kept altering their memories. On the day of war with the Kernaz, Norton and Lizbeth managed to disable Torchwood's weaponry, enabling the Kernaz to send Adam into the Void. (AUDIO: Madam, I'm)
Norton arranged for Lynne Sharman and Freddie Talbot to launch on a rocket, the Viola, to investigate the "Black Knight" object that Lynne speculated was causing the destruction of British rockets, accompanying them via hard light projection. They found her theories were correct, discovering a dead alien aboard an automated craft, with Freddie being killed trying to steal technology from the vessel. Reluctantly following his orders from Torchwood, Norton subsequently sabotaged the Viola so Lynne would die of radiation poisoning, ensuring the object remained a secret. (AUDIO: The Black Knight)
Having expected to succeed the Vicar, Norton struggled financially at Room 13 and was forced to downsize to an abandoned house on Russell Square.
Norton planned to take over Torchwood by exposing Reginald Rigsby to the Project Hermod fungus and saving the day using the Skylon, to which end he put an alert on the Torchwood computer which led Andy to save Gideon Lyme, unaware that Norton wanted Lyme alive in order to get the power of the Parnaeum to power the craft. Lizbeth opened the package instead and exposed Torchwood to the infection, but he was able to go through with his plan and was left to rebuild Torchwood, which he invited Lyme to do with him, having begun something of a relationship with him. The two moved into 14 Endicott Terrace together. (AUDIO: Parasite)
Saving Lyme
Norton took Lyme to see Ashenden to show him "the town that Torchwood built", meeting with the possessed Miss Satterthwaite and the drunk Professor Ornadel and learning of the space eels' plans. He immediately decided to run away with Lyme, who was disgusted by Norton's role in Ashenden and refused to go with him. After escaping being possessed himself, Norton went on the run from the eels and planned to save Lyme from the town.
Norton summoned Andy and Lizbeth in order to create a time cone converter to snap shut the eels' rift and return them to their planet. He took them to Ashenden to attend the picnic where the rift would be opened but Lizbeth did not do so, leading Norton and Andy to go on the run to London for a time before being taken back by the possessed Lyme. Norton conformed to fit in, taking a number of undesirables to be killed on the "factory tours", before his plan worked and the eels were banished.
Aware that Lyme could be left hollow rather than restored, Norton waited with him to come to and told him that there was only room for one hollow man in the relationship. (AUDIO: Ashenden)
Flight 405 and Torchwood Three
Norton boarded Flight 405 in order to obtain the Lens for the Committee. However, he found himself caught in a time loop for which he blamed Jack Harkness, believing that he had put the plane in a time loop to stop the lens from falling into the wrong hands. After sixty years aboard the plane, he managed to hijack Yvonne Hartman's attempted summoning of Ianto as a hard-light hologram by using the Lens. (AUDIO: Eye of the Storm) As a hologram, he assisted Yvonne and Andy in rescuing himself, during which he was visited by God who advised him to remember who his "true friends" were. He and Yvonne later met with Roy informing him they had the Lens. (AUDIO: Flight 405)
Norton met Tyler Steele in the Hub after he was allowed to live there. (AUDIO: Hostile Environment) Due to God using Evolved technology, Norton switched bodies with Tyler. Feeling liberated he had sex with Jay and numerous other men. He proposed to Jay, however he fled so Tyler commiserated with Norton in a bar, during which their bodies were restored. (AUDIO: Another Man's Shoes)
Norton and Yvonne worked to further the Committee's plans to use the Sorvix power plant to stabilise the Rift. At the plant he immoblised both Jack and St John Colchester to carry out his orders. With God's aid, he realised that the Committee had double-crossed him and his actions would actually cause the destruction of Earth. He attempted to ruin their plans by diverting energy using the Lens, sending it to Flight 405 causing the time loop in the first place and transporting himself there again. (AUDIO: Eye of the Storm)
Fate
When Ianto Jones looked up Norton in 2009, there was no record of his death. Ianto believed that an elderly Norton might be out there. (AUDIO: Outbreak) However, Norton found his own skeleton on Flight 405. (AUDIO: Parasite)
Undated events
In the far future, Norton and his lover Jeremiah Bash Henderson planned to revive the Committee after their defeat by the Enemy, in part because they wanted their money. Jeremiah visited the Torchwood Archive and learnt about Object 1 and how they could use it to revive them. The two subsequently left, after blowing up the archive using a fake object. (AUDIO: The Torchwood Archive)
Alternate timeline
As a member of the Torchwood Institute, Norton Folgate answered directly to John Hart in an alternate timeline in which he took control of Torchwood and became King of the British Empire. (AUDIO: The Death of Captain Jack)
Personality
Norton was camp, flamboyant and sarcastic. Andy remarked that he very rarely said anything helpful, preferring to make flippant comments. (AUDIO: Ghost Mission) He was very afraid of heights (AUDIO: Parasite) and was sensitive about his age. (AUDIO: Outbreak, Parasite)
Norton liked ham sandwiches, scrambled eggs, wine, pork pies, pale ale and tea, which, after the end of rationing, he realised that he did not enjoy with too many sugars. (AUDIO: Parasite)
Behind the scenes
Norton Folgate was named after a street in London. (BFX: Parasite)