Mark Seven
Mark Seven - sometimes referred to as Mark, Seven, or Agent Seven - was an android soldier who fought against Daleks.
First serving as second-in-command in the Anti-Dalek Force, by the 40th century he was a high ranking agent in the Space Security Service alongside the likes of Sara Kingdom. He later became a close associate of Sara's niece, Anya Kingdom, alongside whom he became a companion of the Tenth Doctor.
Biography
Origins
Mark originated at ALARC. When fellow android Mariah Six tried to get him to help her plan to escape, he threatened to report her so she forced him out of the facility, causing the security system to wipe his memory,
A blank slate, Mark wandered onto the open cargo bay of an automated freighter visiting ALARC. He was eventually found onboard by Hera, who subsequently raised him and he came to regard as his mother. After she was killed by the Daleks, Mark joined the Space Security Service to fight back. (AUDIO: Cycle of Destruction) During this time, one of his fellow cadets, Fliss Keeley, developed feelings for him, but while Mark respected her as a friend and colleague he was emotionally incapable of responding to those feelings even if some part of him apparently wanted to do so. Fliss also noted that it was sometimes overwhelming to be in Mark's training class considering how he outstripped every other cadet, but stated that she at least viewed Mark's presence as giving them something to aspire to (AUDIO: The Trojan Dalek).
Anti-Dalek Force
Sometime after the end of the Dalek Killer programme, and before the 40th century, (PROSE: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe) Mark Seven, Reb Shavron and Joel Shaw were recruited to lead the newly founded Anti-Dalek Force. Shaw was the commander, and Seven and Shavron were his seconds-in-command. The Force initially had no idea that Seven was a nonhuman, but they discovered his android nature when he appeared to die at the end of their first mission. (PROSE: Terror Task Force)
On the way back to base, Seven, along with Shavron and Shaw, landed on Omegon after getting word of a Dalek invasion of the planet. They quickly learned that they'd walked into a trap. Escaping the Daleks, they soon learned of a prison camp in a city on Omegon. The Daleks, unable to find the ADF trio, planted a bomb which would inevitably destroy the agents, should it explode. Seven, sprinted to the Dalek ship as it was about to take-off and planted the bomb on its exterior, leading to the destruction of the ship when the bomb exploded. (PROSE: Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate!)
Seven later helped to rescue Shavron when she crash-landed on Terroth (COMIC: Planet of Serpents) and worked with Shaw and Shavron to defeat a group of Daleks melting the ice of Antarctica. (COMIC: Flood!!!)
A year after the ADF was founded, was caught up in a Dalek invasion of Emmeron, where the Daleks used the Doomsday Machine to miniaturise the entire human population of an ADF base on the planet. Shaw and Shavron later arrived and had him reactivated. Seven then flew the pair to Skaro where they destroyed the Doomsday Machine. (PROSE: The Doomsday Machine)
Later, Seven travelled to the dark side of the Moon to investigate the disappearance of ADF agent Himlein Shtock. After Seven and his crew defeated an army of Daleks, he entered the caverns where the Daleks had been based and found an array of worryingly powerful weapons and a large fortress thought to be the proto-type of an orbital fortress. (PROSE: Special Report)
Seven and Shaw arrived on the planet Scottus in response to a distress call. The colony planet was under attack by the Daleks. Seven managed to manoeuvre the ship to land in the defence base where they found Lou Corby. Corby, disappointed that only two ADF agents that shown up, activated the defence robot Igo, which assessed the situation before deciding the best course of action was to destroy the planet. Unable to stop Igo, Shaw and Seven hastily escaped the planet before this action was carried out. (PROSE: The Solution)
Seven and Shaw visited an island on Earth by submarine, to investigate the discovery of a mutated human nearby. Soon after arriving on the island, the pair are captured by Daleks, who reveal that they have been mutating Earth's finest scientists into "savage psychopaths". The captain of the submarine then begins bombarding the island, allowing the ADF agents to escape, before it is then destroyed for good. (COMIC: Island of Horror)
Space Security Service
Mark Seven was recruited by Colonel Marc Forest and Compuvac to become an agent of the Space Security Service. He was appointed as the head of internal and field security. (PROSE: The Outlaw Planet) As the Service required that agents achieve their objectives without regard for sentiment or compassion, (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan) Seven was responsible for the continued loyalty of all agents. (PROSE: Top Secret)
In the late 40th century, Mark Seven travelled with fellow SSS members Jason Corey and Sara Kingdom on the Space Exploration Team mission to the surface of the giant meteorite M5. Within two days, the Exploration Team, which included Sara's brother David Kingdom, had established a pre-fabricated base called Explorer Base One, protected by a force field. They believed the meteorite devoid of intelligent life, but the base was attacked by Daleks whilst the SSS agents were searching the wider area. The only survivor from the crew was David, who was taken captive for interrogation. Discovering the Daleks' secret underground hideout, the SSS agents tried to rescue David and destroy the Daleks, but arrived too late to stop the Dalek ship escaping with their prisoner. (AUDIO: The Destroyers) Mark Seven wrote a file about the incident, which Mavic Chen consulted when he and Bret Vyon met Sara Kingdom "so many years" later in 3999. (AUDIO: The Guardian of the Solar System)
Partnership with Anya Kingdom
In the 41st century, Mark first encountered fellow SSS agent Anya Kingdom on Exxilon. (AUDIO: The Dalek Protocol) The pair later encountered River Song on Jellidus. (AUDIO: Queen of the Mechonoids)
Companion of the Doctor
Mark was charged with investigating George Sheldrake, however met numerous dead ends as Sheldrake used time travel to arrange the silencing of witnesses before Mark could talk to them. A SSS ship transporting Mark crashed on Mira, which Mark suspected was caused by sabotage by Sheldrake. The crew fell victim to Visians, which only Mark was able to detect. A retrieval team including Anya was sent to Mira to find Mark and encountered the Tenth Doctor. Mark saved them from the Visians and helped the survivor reach their ship. En route back to Earth, he explained his investigation to Anya and the Doctor and agreed to work together. On Earth they were unable to gain access to Sheldrake's building so returned to SSS headquarters to seek a warrant. Whilst he and Anya left the Doctor alone, they heard a shot and rushed back to him as he appeared to regenerate before their eyes. (AUDIO: Buying Time)
In actuality, the Doctor had been replaced by the Nun who exploited Mark and Anya's investigation to gain access to Sheldrake's building. Mark remained in headquarters whilst Anya and “the Doctor” infiltrated Sheldrake's building and helped defend the building from numerous threats during the temporal cataclysm caused when Sheldrake activated his time tunnels whilst missing a component the Nun had stolen. After the true Doctor and Anya ended the crisis, Mark accompanied them to the SSS' time machine to see the Doctor off, however the Doctor was stranded when a Dalek intercepted the machine's time bubble and attacked, destroying the machine. (AUDIO: The Wrong Woman)
Mark and Anya accompanied the Doctor as he set out to find the inventor of the SSS' time machine, who was missing. Whilst at a spaceport, they were caught in a pirate attack and fled in an escape pod, with Mark sending a distress signal whilst the Doctor and Anya passed out from lack of oxygen. Merrick Kingdom arranged their retrieval and had them brought to Neptune, though Anya was angered that he treated Mark as little more than a machine. The Doctor and Mark discovered Merrick was growing Varga plants beneath his villa, exposing his conspiracy with Abigail Crane to make Varga venom guns which the pirate attack had been demonstrating. Abigail decided to dispose of Mark and the Doctor by putting them in the path of Mechonoids clearing the landscape for colonisation, however the Doctor was able to reprogram the Mechonoids with his sonic screwdriver. After saving Anya from a flier crash, the trio set off again in a spaceship. During the flight, Mark fell under the control of an outside influence and cut off the oxygen supply to render the Doctor and Anya unconscious. (AUDIO: The House of Kingdom)
Mark piloted the ship back to ALARC, the Advanced Learning Android Research Centre, from whence he was first deployed. The act of restoring his cognition following the recall signal forced Mark to relive the death of his adopted family at the hands of the Daleks, an event he later recounted to the Doctor.
Mark discovered on interrogation that his 'sister' Mariah Six had forcibly made him undertake a memory wipe before he was launched off-world in hopes of him bringing back specialists who could disable the barrier's preventing her from leaving. When the Doctor and Anya admitted they couldn't do so, Mariah tried to threaten Mark with another memory wipe to ensure their compliance, but Mark's strength of will and confidence of identity overcame her control and he forced Mariah through instead. Following this, Mark took the Doctor's option to allow the other androids liberty to leave if they so chose before they left in search of Arborecc. (AUDIO: Cycle of Destruction)
Death
On the search for Arborecc, Mark, the Doctor and Anya arrived on Beltross Station where they encountered an old friend of Mark's, Felicity 'Fliss' Keeley, who was being treated for injuries by a Sontaran fragmentation mine. Mark grew angry at Anya's prying into his and Keeley's history and insisted she dropped it. When the Doctor was captured by McLinn and his Dalek hybrids, Mark and Anya discovered the experiment seperately and discovered that Keeley had also been grafted with a Dalek mutant and placed inside a makeshift casing. After the Doctor convinced the hybrids to destroy the station, the travellers encounted Keeley on their escape; despite the Doctor's protests, Mark attempted to reach Keeley beyond the Dalek conditioning but was unsuccessful and she shot him down. The Doctor tried to restore him but Anya had to pull him away and they both grieved his demise after they got clear of the exploding station. (AUDIO: The Trojan Dalek)
While lost in the Graud Confusion, the Doctor encounted the Lost, who had taken up Mark's form as a means of breaking the Doctor's resolve in order to get him to aid his escape. (AUDIO: The Lost)
Features
According to one account, Agent Seven was impossible to distinguish from a regular human. His hair was actually resilient fibre that protected head mechanisms from impact; his ears were actually audio detectors that were ultra high powered microphone, sensitive enough to hear a pin drop from over four miles away; and his eyes' vision lenses were miniaturised television cameras that relayed all visual images to his calculator cells, which resembled a human brain with high intelligence levels.
Seven's nose contained an early warning locator, a scent analyser and a magni radar unit which could detect the approach of anything in total darkness. He also had a radicom unit in his right shoulder with enough power to maintain constant contact with SSS HQ. His speech projector used his lips and tongue to simulate human speech, but since his mech-vocaliser consisted of variable mechanical voice chords, he could perfectly impersonate any nonhuman voice or sound.
As substitutes for human muscles, Seven's muscular units contained powerful electric motors. He could lift eight tons with one hand, and he could maintain sprint speed for over 100 miles. While his electro cells were self-charging, when they were discharged, his motive power would run out and he would appear to be tired. (PROSE: Top Secret)
According to other accounts, Seven was easily distinguishable from other humans due to his pedantic speech patterns. He was equipped with a loyalty circuit, an emotion circuit subservient to his relentless logic, and an infraspectrum-sensitive vision circuit. (AUDIO: The Destroyers)
Behind the scenes
- Mark Seven would have featured prominently in Terry Nation's proposed Dalek television series. The pilot for this series, The Destroyers, was adapted into an audio story of the same name by Big Finish Productions.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
