Character Profile
Name: Captain H.M. Murdock
Aliases: Howlin' Mad, Crazyman, Sucka
Age: mid-to-late 30s
Profession: Pilot. Also, mental patient.
Likes: ice cream, baseball, flying, cheesburgers with extra mustard, dogs, kids, flying, westerns, the Range Rider tv show, literature, cartoons, video games, James Bond movies, Converse sneakers and flying.
Dislikes: ink blot tests, shots, ammonia, boring people, elevators, dictatorships, those little hulls from popcorn that get stuck in your teeth, bullies, not flying, government surveillance, apricots.
Appearance: A tall, lanky, laid-back man with thinning, longish brown hair and brown eyes. Usually wears a blue ball cap, khakis, clever t-shirt, and Converse All-Stars, often with a plaid flannel shirt or a leather bomber jacket (with a tiger and "Da Nang 1970" painted on the back).
Abilities: Can fly anything with wings (and, under the right conditions, some things without them). Competent marksman, skilled escape artist, quick thinker. Speaks Spanish, Vietnamese, (poor) Russian, Mandarin, and possibly others. An excellent mimic, although he's not so much a master of disguise as a master of "adopting a persona so baffling people will let him by." Highly trained commando, not to mention an excellent harmonica player.
Personality: Murdock is . . . eccentric. Okay, really eccentric; at any given time he may be chasing his invisible dog, conversing with the reincarnated spirit of Herman Melville, or narrating the world in faux-hardboiled first-person. He’s a strange man, and his gift for performance and mimicry means he often seems more like a whole troupe of strange men sharing the same body.
A lot of Murdock’s behavior stems from simple joie de vivre, and at least some of it is a ruse to protect his cover with the A-Team. However, Murdock also uses his fairly benign eccentricity as a method of deflecting from more serious underlying issues -- he has been certified insane and is technically a mental patient (for all that he spent more time out of the VA mental hospital than he ever did in it). In addition to "paranoid delusions and intermittent memory loss," he's also exhibited dissociative symptoms (“tuning out”), apparent visual/auditory hallucinations, and possible mania. Some of these issues likely stem from PTSD, as Murdock was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam who crashed on at least one occasion. But it’s impossible for even his closest friends to tell how much of Murdock’s eccentricity is due to serious issues and how much of it is an act; indeed, it’s likely that he doesn’t really know the answer to that himself.
Murdock's often-bizarre behavior is not his only personality trait, even if it’s the most notable thing about him. He's an affable, laid-back individual who gets along well with others, using humor to defuse tense situations and put others at ease. He’s scrupulously polite to older people, good with kids, and friendly to most everyone -- unless they give him a reason to react otherwise. He also loves animals, especially dogs. And there’s an intense amount of empathy packed into Murdock; he reacts strongly to the plight of people in need or those who are hurting, often with levels of gravity, graciousness, and tact which are surprising coming from someone with such a loud surface personality. To those who mean others no harm, Murdock is both a gentleman and a gentle man -- albeit a loud and often clownish one.
All of this may make Murdock sound a bit goofy and mostly harmless, and in fact that’s how he tends to come across to strangers -- but Murdock is also sharply, almost scarily intelligent. He is well-read and deeply curious about both people and things, has a near-photographic memory, and commands a truly vast knowledge of everything from pop culture trivia to aeronautical engineering (this is a man who once designed a working ultralight aircraft in a CAVE with a BOX OF SCRAPS in the backwoods of North Carolina using only plane crash debris and spare parts). All of these traits combine to make him an excellent problem solver.
What’s more, Murdock doesn’t let his eccentricity get in the way of his effectiveness; when the situation calls for it, the goofiness and affability drop away, replaced by an intense single-mindedness and clarity of purpose. Coupled with his training as a commando and pilot, this makes him a formidable enemy -- especially since his foes have usually underestimated him. He hates bullies and those who prey on the weak, and will gladly enter the fray against them if the need arises. Murdock is also a fiercely loyal friend; there is no length he won’t go to in order to protect those he cares about or those who cannot protect themselves.
History (pre-Willaknapp): Born and raised in Texas. His mother died when he was five; his relationships with his other family and his early years are largely unknown. He exhibited a knack for flying at a relatively young age, "flew with the Thunderbirds before the war," and joined the Army as a pilot just in time to be sent to 'Nam. While there he was assigned to a commando unit (aka an "A-Team") led by Colonel John "Hannibal" Smith.
When his team was framed for a bank robbery and sent to prison, Murdock was declared insane and committed to a VA mental hospital in Westwood, CA. After the A-Team escaped to the Los Angeles underground, they tracked Murdock down. He resumed his position as their pilot, frequently accompanying them on their various freelance escapades as a valuable and trusted member of the unit (his madcap shenanigans notwithstanding).
The government was still looking for the A-Team, and as such they had a fairly constant parade of really really incompetent agents trying to keep tabs on Murdock; despite this, and despite the fact that he was still technically an inpatient, he spent as much time out of the VA as he did in it. Though he did make an effort to make it back for therapy sessions and movie nights.