John Frobisher was Permanent Secretary to the Home Office and Torchwood Three's liaison to the British government.
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Biography
Early life
John Frobisher was born in Glasgow in 1958. He was educated at Gordonstoun and read PPE at Oxford University. (TV: Children of Earth: Day Three) He started working for the Civil Service in 1980 where he met Bridget Spears. Although Swales did not believe that he would amount to much, Bridget decided to keep an eye on him.
Whilst many moved on to bigger and better things, Frobisher remained in the Home Office and worked hard, asking for Bridget as his personal assistant circa 1990. (TV: Children of Earth: Day Five) His positions included being Director General for Schools and under-secretary at the Crime Reduction and Community Secretary Group. In 2003, he was promoted to the office of Permanent Secretary to the Home Office, chairing the Home Office Board and sitting on the Service Steering Board and Senior Leadership Committee. (TV: Children of Earth: Day Three) He was also Torchwood Three's liaison with the government.
Frobisher married Anna Frobisher and had two daughters; Lilly and Holly. (TV: Children of Earth: Day One) Bridget implied that he had at least one extramarital affair with a member of his staff. (TV: Children of Earth: Day Three)
The 456 incident
In September 2009, Frobisher was informed of the Earth's children stopping by Colonel Augustus Oduya of UNIT and of the return of the 456 by Dekker. After Brian Green refused to issue a Blank Page to cover up the UK's past interaction with the aliens, Frobisher issued it instead, ordering the assassination of Jack Harkness, Ellen Hunt, Michael Sanders and Andrew Staines which resulted in the bombing of the Hub. (TV: Children of Earth: Day One) He ordered Johnson to kill Gwen Cooper and Ianto Jones as they were witness to the bombing and had Jack's remains taken to Ashton Down.
Green put Frobisher in charge of dealing with the 456 situation, clarifying that he was a scapegoat should anything go wrong. (TV: Children of Earth: Day Two) He witnessed the arrival of the 456 ambassador in Thames House and began negotiations, refusing Jack's demand for access to the building and threatening Alice and Steven Carter should he go public. (TV: Children of Earth: Day Three)
During an emergency meeting of COBRA to determine the handover of 10% of British children, Green tasked Frobisher with the selection and transport of the children, although the method by which children were selected was decided by the Cabinet of the United Kingdom. Frobisher invented the cover story that children's disappearances were due to inoculations against 456's control going wrong. (TV: Children of Earth: Day Four)
Death
The next day, Green told Frobisher that his daughters would be publicly handed over for "inoculation" as an attempt by the government to portray themselves as victims. Frobisher threatened to reveal to the press the true nature of the inoculations, but Green said that that would not save his daughters but would only tell them of the horror that awaited them. Unwilling to allow his daughters to suffer an eternal living death at the hands of the 456, he had a horrified Bridget (who realised what he planned to do) take a handgun out of storage for him before going home. He sent his family upstairs to wait in a bedroom so he had them all together. Entering the bedroom, he shot his wife and daughters dead before then killing himself. (TV: Children of Earth: Day Five)
Behind the scenes
- John Frobisher was portrayed by Peter Capaldi, who previously portrayed Lobus Caecilius in The Fires of Pompeii and later became the Twelfth Doctor.
- In the Torchwood Declassified episode Cracking Children of Earth, Russell T Davies suggested that, since they are played by the same actor, Frobisher may be a descendant of Caecilius, and goes on to note that, in a sense, Frobisher's killing of his family brings closure to the saving of Caecilius' family in the earlier episode. This was confirmed by Steven Moffat who stated that Frobisher's suicide was time's way of "reasserting itself."[1]
- Russell T Davies named the character after Frobisher from the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip, a shape-shifting penguin and companion of the Sixth Doctor. (DWMSE 39)