Michael "Mike" Smith was a sergeant in the Royal Air Force under Group Captain Gilmore.
He was prejudiced towards black people and became a member of a fascist organisation known as the Association.
Biography[[edit] | [edit source]]
Mike's father died in 1943 during one of the Royal Navy's Arctic convoys supplying the Soviet Union via Murmansk. Mike was only a young boy when World War II came to an end. His mother would struggle to keep their home, turned into a boarding house, clean and not looking worn down.
In the aftermath of the war, when a young Mike played on bombsites near Shoreditch, Mike met George Ratcliffe, the founder of the Association. Ratcliffe gifted Mike a chocolate bar that "friends" he had in Germany had sent him. Over the years, he had many further meetings with Ratcliffe, who imparted upon him his ideology. Ratcliffe warned of bankers and communists working in league with each other and of a ploy by the British government to reduce wages by replacing white workers with black immigrants. This aided in the rise of Smith's prejudices.
Smith would join the Royal Air Force and rose to the rank of sergeant. He served for eighteen months in Malaya by 1963, where he was often bored but also witnessed at least one sudden death. He also witnessed a bar fight in Singapore almost turn murderous.
Mike Smith was still a "local man" of Shoreditch, which was the reason he was drafted into the Intrusion Counter-Measures Group, founded in 1963 to monitor the increasingly strange events happening in the area. (PROSE: The Shoreditch Incident) During the investigations, where Smith was in civilian clothing for secrecy's sake, Ratcliffe made contact hours before the assassination of John F. Kennedy and revealed "there'll be a new American President by this evening". (This was something Ratcliffe had learned about from the Renegade Daleks' battle computer) Fully convinced Ratcliffe had hidden knowledge and was worth listening to after this successful prediction, Smith agreed to work with him. (PROSE: Remembrance of the Daleks)
During the Shoreditch Incident in November 1963, Smith was working as an informant for Ratcliffe. He had a romantic interest in Ace, an interest Ace returned, but when she discovered he was a spy and was an informant for the Renegade Daleks, she was disgusted with him. Smith tried to explain his actions, but Ace refused to listen. Mike was then arrested for treason.
Mike later escaped from the school and headed to the Renegades’ H.Q. (Ratcliffe's workplace), where he convinced the Renegades he was an informant. There, Smith and Ratcliffe were betrayed by the Renegades. They were saved from extermination by an attack on the Renegades by the Imperial Daleks. Stealing the Time Controller from the Renegade Daleks, the two fled, pursued by the Girl, who quickly killed Ratcliffe. Escaping to his mother's boarding house, Smith ran into Ace where, after failing to convince her to join his crusade, he held her at gunpoint. Answering a knock at the door, Smith was attacked and killed by the Girl. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks)
Smith was denied a military funeral and buried privately by his family five days after his death. (PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy)
Legacy[[edit] | [edit source]]
Group Captain Gilmore later told Ace that British Army soldiers were basically good and that Smith was an aberration. (AUDIO: 1963: The Assassination Games)
While Mike's death would haunt Ace throughout her remaining travels with the Doctor, (TV: The Curse of Fenric) he later discovered her beating up a teddy bear with "Mike Smith" written on it in her room aboard the TARDIS, yelling that it betrayed her. (PROSE: Legacy)
Mike, albeit not by name, was later referenced in a a book covering the history of N-Space when it discussed the Shoreditch Incident. The book recounted him to be a double agent uncovered by the Doctor. According to the book, Smith had been "unwittingly" working for the Renegade Daleks. (PROSE: The Whoniverse)