Application for Cape and Cowl
[PLAYER INFO]
NAME: Kathryn
AGE: 23
JOURNAL: spoofmaster
IM: thspoofmaster (AIM)
E-MAIL: lordofthefries@wwdb.org
RETURNING: No
[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Sam Tyler
FANDOM: Life on Mars (BBC television series)
CHRONOLOGY: Soon after series 1 episode 4, in which Sam met the seventies version of his mother and he and Gene brought down Stephen Warren, a semi-legitimate businessman who'd had the entire police department in his pocket for years.
CLASS: Hero--though Sam will function best within the police department rather than as a vigilante.
SUPERHERO NAME: Hyde
ALTER EGO: Sam Tyler, Detective Chief Inspector Detective Inspector
BACKGROUND:
Sam Tyler was born to Vic and Ruth Tyler of Manchester in 1969. From a very young age, Sam was fascinated by the police and wanted to one day join the force. Ruth and Vic often struggled to make ends meet, and Sam's father was frequently absent (due, Sam and his mother thought, to his work as a salesman). Sam loved his father all the same and was overjoyed every time he did make it home--which is why it was all the more devastating to him when Vic abandoned Ruth and Sam while they were at a family wedding in 1973. Ruth, if she knew Vic's true reason for leaving them, never told Sam. Instead she simply told him that his father had not wanted to go and that they would see him again someday. Sam never did, and was never aware of his own repressed memories of following his father out into the woods on that occasion and witnessing him assaulting a woman in a red dress before fleeing.
Sam was raised primarily by women, as his mother never remarried and he was quite close with his Aunt Heather. It wouldn't be until after he joined the police force and was put to work under Deputy Chief Constable Glen Fletcher that Sam would gain a male role model and mentor. Under Fletcher, Sam received his training in criminal investigations and eventually rose to the rank of Detective Chief Inspector. During this time as well, Sam met a fellow detective named Maya Roy, and the two entered into a committed relationship.
By 2006, however, their relationship had become strained. When Sam made the call to release a murder suspect from police custody--and to take Maya off the case--she disobeyed orders and tailed the suspect in order to take him down on her own. She was taken captive by the real killer. Sam was overcome with grief and, after nearly crashing his car, stopped by the side of a motorway and got out. Just as he was recovering and about to get back in and drive on, he was struck by a car traveling at high speed. He remained conscious only briefly afterward.
When Sam next awoke, he found himself in the same place, but in the year 1973. Everything seemed to suggest that he was meant to be there, from the clothes he was wearing to the fact that upon arriving back at the station, Sam learned that he was assumed to be a Detective Inspector newly transferred from Hyde. Unsure if he was mad, in a coma, or back in time, and not knowing what else to do, Sam fell into the role of DI under DCI Gene Hunt. Hunt's brutal, wild west-style methods flew in the face of what Sam had learned in a more modern version of the police force, and Sam's insistence on going by the book in every matter grated on Hunt and on the other members of the team. During this time, he also met WPC Annie Cartwright, who was the only person in 1973 to whom he told the entire truth about his origins. The fact that she still stood by him despite knowing the truth and thinking he was insane (though Sam's behavior would, at times, drive even her away) made Annie his only true friend in the seventies.
In the seventies, Sam often heard sounds and voices as if from a hospital room. Sometimes these would come to him directly, and sometimes the doctors or his friends and family would talk to him through televisions and radios. Sam's initial desperation to return to 2006 was somewhat allayed when the voices told him that Maya had been rescued and was now safe, though he continued to fight to make them aware that he was still alive and could hear them. For lack of anywhere else to go or knowing where else he could turn, Sam continued to work with Hunt and his team, solving a number of crimes in 1973 Manchester. Sam will arrive in the City shortly after the events of series 1 episode 4, in which he came up against Stephen Warren, a local crime boss who had the rest of the police department, including Gene Hunt, in his pocket. Sam openly defied Warren only to fall for his honey trap, a girl who claimed to be afraid of retribution for Warren only to drug Sam once he took her home, chain him to his bed, and take incriminating photographs of the two of them together. After a later conversation with Sam, however, she decided to destroy the negatives rather than deliver them to Warren, and to get herself and her mother out of town. Unfortunately, Warren was so incensed by her disobedience that he killed her and had her body dumped in the canal. Sam and Gene partnered together, Gene finally taking up Sam's stance against corruption, and Sam finally taking up some of Gene's less than orthodox methods in order to force information out of one of Warren's subordinates. Together, they were able to build a case and arrest Warren for murder.
PERSONALITY:
Sam is very devoted to doing the right thing, and to his work--later in the series, when he, Annie, and Hunt believe themselves about to die and share the best moments of their lives with one another, Sam's first instinct is to talk about his promotion to DCI. Rules are important to Sam, and while he does not follow them blindly (i.e. he can name the reasons each one is important), he sometimes loses sight of what needs to be done in favor of strictly following procedure.
He's surprisingly un-self-conscious about the fact that he gives off the appearance of being completely off his rocker. He fiddles with radios, converses with movies in front of strangers, and frequently makes comments that hint obliquely at his origins in the future. Apart from WPC Annie Cartwright, though, no one knows the depth of his apparent insanity, as Sam has enough instinct for self-preservation to conceal the truth from the rest of the world (the general assumption at the station is that he had a concussion when he first arrived at the station, and if anyone suspects deeper problems with Sam's mind, he's good enough at his job that no one brings it up). Sam gives his trust only to a few people, but once one has it he's often very open.
Stress makes Sam irritable and short-tempered, and on several occasions has caused him to take a swing at Gene--even after Gene has shown several times that he can best Sam in a fight. Sam is stubborn when he knows he's right (which is nearly all the time, even when he really isn't), and does not always immediately learn from his mistakes. He's fiercely loyal to both his ideals and to his friends and family, and (unlike his father) always keeps his promises. Though he's not particularly religious, Sam always wears a medal depicting Saint Christopher, the patron saint of travelers.
POWERS:
Hello, Mr. Cronkite (non-canon, at least as an actual power)
When Sam talks to a person on the radio or the telly, they tend to talk back. This is a form of animation he brings about in the specific radio or television he is talking to; it does not affect the broadcast as a whole and the actors and news anchors on the other end are completely unaware that it is occurring. When Sam uses his power, the people or characters he is talking to respond as they would to an acquaintance in real life (or in their own worlds, if they are fictional). This means that Sam cannot use his power to make a person on the television answer a question he or she would not normally answer--so while he might be able to gain additional information from a news anchor about a story he missed seeing, he won't be able to get him or her to share personal secrets if the real news anchor would not want to. This power is mostly voluntary, though Sam will face some difficulty in not having the characters talk to him if he just wants to watch a movie (any comment from him, even if it isn't directed at them, is likely to draw their attention)--and some people and characters will deliberately ignore him or refuse to speak with him. It works on recorded media as well as broadcasts, but will not work on anything posted on the network or on recordings Sam has created himself (so he can't go around filming all the other pups and then make them talk to him on his television later).
Sam will most likely believe this power to be a series of hallucinations.
Drunken Teetotaler (non-canon)
Sam has the ability to bring about drunkenness and sobriety in other people (as well as to cause or mitigate the effects of other mind-altering substances, such as cocaine or LSD). He can make another character drunk just by touching him or her, or cause another character to sober up almost instantaneously. The catch? It's an equal transfer. In order to get someone drunk this way, Sam has to first get himself drunk so he can transfer it over. And when Sam absorbs someone else's drunkenness, well....
[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
COMMUNITY POST (FIRST PERSON) SAMPLE:
[video]
[Sam's face comes into view, a look of concentration on it as he looks just offscreen, obviously fiddling with the buttons on the device. He was never much of a tech geek, and it's been a while since he saw anything more advanced than a tape deck, okay? He glances at the screen and his expression changes as he realizes it's on.]
There you are. Right, I don't know what this is about; I don't know if you changed my meds or transferred me somewhere or what, and I don't care--I just need you to tell me what the hell it is I'm supposed to do so I can get back home.
...Hello?
[He seems to be waiting for some kind of instantaneous response. When nothing comes, he sighs, eyebrows contracting into the look of misery that has become his default expression of late.] I'm still in here. Please. I need you to get me home.
LOGS POST (THIRD PERSON) SAMPLE:
This was mad. Sam had been standing on a street corner near the building where he'd first arrived, staring at the people going by, with one thought running through his mind over and over.
This was completely and utterly mad. For a moment when he'd first seen the buildings and the people, he'd thought, almost desperately, that he must have woken up. It looked more or less like 2006, or at least 2006 in some other city--but it couldn't be. He hadn't woken up, because he didn't remember waking up. There had been sleep after a hard day's work (a good day's work) and a night at the pub, then that--that hallucination (strange not because he'd had it, but because it was so different from the things he normally saw in his nightmares), and now he was here, having walked just far enough out of the building he'd found himself in to see the city before him. Something was wrong about it, too, that he couldn't quite put his finger on. Some of the cars looked unfamiliar as they drove by, even accounting for the fact that they all had left side drives and were driving on the wrong side of the road. All evidence seemed to point to him no longer being in Manchester, which was really bloody weird considering his last jump in time had left him in exactly the same place.
Except of course he'd never moved in time at all, had he? This was just another illusion, and he was still laying in a hospital bed in a coma. That's all it had ever been, and this sudden change in location could only prove that he'd been right to think it was all just one big coma dream.
He couldn't just stand there all day, though. Sam had hoped he'd hear one of those voices, that someone would tell him what was going on back in the hospital that might explain all this, but so far there had been nothing. He shifted his weight, eyes still on the street, and suddenly remembered the communicator he'd been given as its weight shifted in his pocket. Suddenly spurred into action, Sam fumbled for a second as he reached to get it back out. They'd spoken to him through televisions and radios before. Maybe it would work again.
FINAL NOTES ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER:
Is there anything else about your character that you feel we should know, that isn't covered in any of the earlier sections?
Sam has never been absolutely sure whether or not his 1973 world is real. Though he remains convinced that he is in a coma, he has been unable in the past to completely reassure himself that what he's experiencing isn't real. Being transported to the City will likely make Sam more sure rather than less that nothing he's experienced since the accident can be classified as reality, particularly as he will continue to experience some hallucinations from time to time.