DI Patricia Menzies (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
grip_on_reality) wrote2011-07-03 10:04 pm
grip_on_reality) wrote2011-07-03 10:04 pm
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kmegumi2
Email and/or AIM: kmegumi2@yahoo.com
Timezone: CST
Other Characters: Oliver Day (oliverplus)
Character: D.I. Patricia Menzies
Series: Doctor Who
Deviance: 1
Age: 32
Gender: Female
Species: Human
Canon Used: Menzies appears in the Big Finish audios The Condemned, The Raincloud Man, and The Crimes of Thomas Brewster. This puts her in the middle of several major audio plotlines, so canon information from other audios is also incorporated.
Appearance: Menzies has longish brown hair and brown eyes. She is 5'6" and dresses like a typical business woman--but always trousers, thank you. She likes to be prepared for field work at any time. To that end, she is also very fit and slightly on the thin side. She usually wears her hair pulled back and a smirk that's as quick as her wit.
(Note; I know she is voiced by Anna Hope, but due to lack of images, I've chosen Amanda Crew as her PB because of her fitting expressions. I am basing Menzies' appearance on her.)
Psychology: Menzies is a successful Detective Inspector with a sharp mind and a quick wit. Sarcasm is an art for her--and one that she practices regularly. And since she is clever, while she’s curious and eager, she’s not overly reckless. Even so, in her line of work, circumstances are always liable to throw her for a loop.
For Menzies, being a D.I. is much more than just a job. Helping and protecting the innocent is a hugely important value for her, and she devotes her life to that--which means she has a tendency not to go off duty much. She’s also quite willing to (frequently) allow her job to interrupt her “personal life.” She really, deeply loves the work that she does. And while she finds it easy to show a hardened exterior, particularly when she’s out in the field, she's really a caring person who enjoys her interactions with others. Her sarcasm can easily slide into banter with the right person. Cross her, however, and you'll see a much crasser side of her.
Menzies is very resilient as well; she has to be, as she faces the reality of not being able to help everyone every day. She also recovers well from injury, or rather, is too stubborn to succumb to her physical limitations--when she can help it. Stubborn is another key trait for her. She's used to policing the streets of Manchester, and you don’t get far doing that without stubbornness and drive. If she's set on something, she doesn't let it go easily, and she can be very pushy about the things that she wants.
Not only is she resilient, but she’s extremely unflappable. She rolls with the punches in her life very well. Surprise twists to her cases? Nothing to get excited about. Sudden realization of the existence of alien life? That’s not so hard to accept. Time travel? She's seen the film. This isn't to say that Menzies is easily fooled; she's a good judge of credibility. But she is very willing to accept the unbelievable as long as the evidence points that way.
Because of the importance of evidence to her, however, she can be overly suspicious of motives at times. She's seen quite a gambit of human possibilities and sometimes has a tendency to assume guilty until proven innocent instead of the other way around--just to be on the safe side. She isn't quick to judge so much as willing to let her actions be motivated by the evidence at hand, even when her gut is tempted to disagree with it. This trait leads her to pursue the wrong conclusions at times, but also to be accepting of the unlikely (and sometimes seemingly impossible) when she needs to be.
When it comes to hobbies, Menzies is a great fan of science fiction. Her life is so grounded in harsh realities that she enjoys escaping from them now and then, and how better to do that than to immerse herself in a world that’s far from her reality? She also likes music, particularly to calm down from a stressful situation. It’s another method of escape, both from her crazy life and from all the thinking it requires. She also prefers spicy foods. For Menzies, after a long day at work, there’s nothing better to come home to than a microwave curry and a science fiction film. She has no patience for sappy romance stories, though, as she’s seen too many of the negative consequences of true love that really wasn’t.
Despite her penchant for science fiction, she typically keeps things simple for herself when it comes to technology. She didn’t grow up with much access to it, and she’s too busy with her job to take the time to learn now. Her mobile doesn't even have e-mail, and she's quite happy with it that way. But she is familiar with a lot of alien technology that the average Joe wouldn't know what to do with, so her skills are mixed in that respect.
Menzies' greatest weakness is that she lacks many close personal connections. She lives for her job, and while her unending dedication helps her to be successful--particularly now when she's working both her normal caseload and alien cases on the side--it also means that she lacks a support circle. She has to be resilient because, when it comes down to it, she has no one else to rely on. Outwardly, she has a strong purpose in life and a career that she is devoted to. On the inside, she wonders if there's something more that she's missing. She still secretly hopes to travel with the Doctor one day, although she's not sure if that's the answer she's searching for or not. Still, she'd eventually like to find out.
Other Skills/Abilities: Being a regular human, Menzies has no special abilities. She does, however, have police combat training. She is not well-built, but she knows how to handle herself in a fight. She is also fit and a fast runner. Basically, she is a physically adept human.
Other Weaknesses: All usual human weaknesses apply to Menzies. She is also a bit on the slight side, so she can be somewhat easily overpowered by larger opponents despite her training. She has a tendency to run herself ragged and is often sleep-deprived as well, which has all the expected human consequences on her physical state.
History: Patricia Menzies has lived in Manchester all her life. She grew up the only daughter of a single mother who was poor and lived in a bad neighborhood. Ever since childhood, Menzies has witnessed countless examples of bad things happening to good people. She learned a few important lessons from those experiences as a child. First, you have to be tough if you don't want the bad things to happen to you. Second, not everybody can be tough, and the rest need someone else to protect them. She knew even as a kid that she was going to be a police officer.
So as soon as she graduated, she became one--and a good one, at that. She relished the job. It made her feel like she was really doing something for her people and her city. She also found that she had a talent for field work that some of her colleagues didn't share. It didn't take long for her to work her way up to Detective Inspector.
Then came the day she went to investigate a reported murder in Ackley House. She found a funny little man in an atrocious coat there, kneeling over the body when surveillance video clearly showed that no one had entered or exited since the time of the murder. It looked like an open-and-shut case at first--until her suspect had her investigate the body a bit more closely for a chip hidden under the skin. At that point, she found out the murder victim was an alien. Then the prime suspect showed her that he had a machine--oddly enough in the form a blue police box--that could teleport him from one place to another, explaining how he could have shown up with the body after the murder.
Suddenly, Menzies' world was rather more complicated than it had been a day ago. Even worse, the suspect--the Doctor--got out of custody by using the murder victim's human DNA patch. He pretended to be a victim who had been drugged rather than dead--in front of her D.C.I., whom she had just shown the alien body in the morgue. Needless to say, D.C.I. Turnbull was not happy his officers were playing a bizarre trick on him with monster bodies and probably on the verge of creating a lawsuit by pronouncing a living man dead and stuffing him in the morgue. Menzies was forced to take a couple days off. Frustrated, she left the station--only to have the Doctor contact her and offer that she could still help solve the murder. After everything she'd seen, that was an offer that she couldn't refuse.
And once the case had been solved, the Doctor and his companion Charley disappeared--thankfully before D.C.I. Turnbull could pin everything on the Doctor. Several people were dead, and Menzies had an alien murderess in human guise in custody--not to mention an essentially human spirit left infused in a building with the ability to control it. But one very creative police report later, life went back to normal.
Except that it didn't stay that way for long. Word got around amongst the alien population in the area that there was a police officer who knew about them and was willing to lend a hand--discreetly. Menzies found herself taking on a lot of cases off the record--meaning she had to work overtime to make progress on her official cases. Still, she was policing, even if a lot of it wasn't official, and she was enjoying the excitement of it all as much as ever. She wished things were a bit less complicated than they had gotten, but on the bright side, she was getting to know a lot of people with unique abilities who were typically quite happy to do future favors for her, should she need them.
But as Menzies was starting to get used to those changes in her life, who would show up at her station around Christmastime later the same year? The Doctor and Charley. At the time, Menzies was in the middle of a murder investigation involving a "big bloke with a skin condition"--likely not a terrestrial murderer. The Doctor, however, showed her a tabloid about a coin that supposedly had come from the future. Menzies was skeptical of his sources--until he told her that he'd been to 2012 and the coin pictured was genuine. She still wasn't convinced it represented a police emergency, especially considering the case she was in the midst of, but trusting the Doctor's expertise in this sort of matter, she let him see the CCTV footage that he wanted and took Charley to call in a favor with one of her alien acquaintances--Kelsa MacArthur. He could sense disturbances in time.
They met with an unexpected complication in their visit when, immediately upon opening the door, Kelsa was struck with pain due to Charley's very presence. He revealed that he could sense an unresolved paradox in her timeline; she was close to someone who she knew in that person's future. Charley didn't seem surprised, but she begged Menzies not to tell the Doctor, saying it was for his own good that he didn’t know. Menzies wanted to know what she was up to, but Charley protested that the situation was complicated. Menzies was called away then by a call from an alien about a body that had been found. She left to get the Doctor and take a look, missing the rest of Charley’s conversation with Kelsa.
Menzies believed Charley when she said it was important that the Doctor didn’t know the girl was traveling with him out of order, so she stayed quiet about it. She did find out from the Doctor that the dead body was from the Tabbalac race. When she returned to Kelsa's flat shortly afterwards, however, she found Kelsa's dead body at the bottom of a staircase and Charley leaning over him. Talk about deja vu! Charley claimed he had heard a noise, come out to investigate, and fallen down the stairs. Menzies, having seen no sign of anyone else at the flat and remembering what Kelsa had said, was suspicious enough of Charley that she decided to arrest her for Kelsa's murder.
Bringing Charley into the station would have been a simple matter, except the murder suspect she'd been searching for all along--Lish--had stowed away in the boot of her car. Lish was one of a race of aliens with the ability to influence their immediate environment. He had a disease that made his effect--bad luck--nearly impossible for him to control. With Lish in the car, Menzies found their trip stalled by traffic just blocks from the station. She tried to take another route, and a car came out of nowhere, collided violently with theirs, and drove off. In the crash, Menzies hit her head and was knocked unconscious.
Lish, meanwhile, got out of the boot and let Charley out of the backseat, trying to convince her to come with him. He told her he knew she hadn't killed Kelsa and wanted to help her. Seeing that Menzies was at least coming to, Charley reluctantly agreed to flee the scene with Lish.
The Doctor then came upon the scene of the accident. He called for an ambulance, and Menzies was taken to the hospital. She didn't stay there for long, despite the Doctor's attempts to convince her otherwise due to the concussion she had suffered. She confronted him about Charley's whereabouts, sure that he must have an idea of where she had disappeared to. He denied any knowledge and told her that he was going to find Carmen--the woman who he had discovered was the owner of the coin from the future. She was a big gambler, and he suspected she was using knowledge of the future to defraud casinos.
When he did meet Carmen at a local casino, Charley showed up looking for him. He warned her that Menzies and the police would be looking for her, and she left--luckily for her. Menzies had tried to have the Doctor tailed, which failed, but she still did catch him up in the casino by coincidence after a tip came in that her murder suspect was there. Even better, she showed up right when Carmen punched the Doctor for distracting her during a very expensive round of Poker. She had Carmen arrested, and she and the Doctor brought her to an interview room to have an off-the-record conversation about her crimes. Carmen denied being from the future and pointed out that you can't use knowledge from the future to win at Poker anyway. The Doctor tried to argue back, but Menzies let Carmen go, knowing they didn't have enough evidence to get anywhere at the moment.
The officers caught up with Charley soon after, finding her out cold. She explained to Menzies over the phone that they had been attacked by whoever was after Lish. He'd been taken to Salford Quays. Charley agreed to go down there with the police, reasoning that Lish was afraid enough of the people after him that he'd rather be taken in by them. Menzies then contacted the Doctor, who was in the process of following Carmen back to her casino boat, the High Straights--in Salford Quays.
Once there, Charley tricked Carmen into bringing her onboard the boat. She had found out from Lish that the boat was owned by a rogue Tabbalac in human guise--Brooks--who had created a device that could dampen Lish's ability to the point where it was controllable. Lish, in turn, had influenced the luck of anyone who was doing too much winning at the casino, until something had gone down that had convinced him to run from the boat. Carmen meanwhile had been a patron of the casino, and she had lost all her memories from before a year ago--as well as her time machine--in a bet on this casino's very unique high-stakes table. Charley used the fact that Carmen was missing memories to convince her that she actually knew Charley so she would bring her aboard.
Lish, meanwhile, ran from his captors long enough to run into Menzies, who immediately handcuffed him to her. Unfortunately, the bouncers from the High Straights who had been after Lish caught up with them and knocked them both out. Unable to get the handcuffs off (their genetic engineering favored brawn over brains), they captured Menzies and Lish together and brought them onboard the boat. Soon after, the boat activated its warp engine and went from Manchester to Rio de Janeiro--with Charley, Carmen, Menzies, and Lish all onboard but not the Doctor.
On the bright side, the Tabbalac caught up with the Doctor and demanded he fly them in the TARDIS to the ship. They were able to pinpoint its location, but it had defenses to keep their ships from appearing there. The Doctor was reluctantly forced to agree to help them when they threatened to completely destroy Manchester if he refused.
On the ship, Lish revealed to Menzies about his condition and that it could only be effectively kept in check by the dampener onboard the ship that Brooks had invented. She also found out that he was responsible for all the strange murders, including Kelsa's, but not on purpose. Lish also revealed why he had run from Brooks. Brooks had decided that the best way to stop his own people, the Tabbalac, from waging war everywhere was to make a deal with the Tabbalac's mortal enemies, the Cyrox, to hand over Lish so that he could be dropped on the Tabbalac home planet for his ability to run wild. Menzies, not liking the human bomb aspect of that plan any more than Lish did, agreed to help him. She, like Charley, believed that the Doctor would be able to come up with a solution for him. Conveniently, Lish's bad luck meant their captors had left the door unlocked, and they escaped to find the dampener that could control Lish's ability.
They ran into Charley, who proposed that they use the high-stakes table to solve all of their problems. All this mess had caused Brooks' people to find him, which, thanks to the Doctor's transportation, had now brought the war between the Tabbalac and the Cyrox onboard the ship. Charley suggested that they use Lish's ability to tilt the luck so Carmen could win her time machine and memories back, and then they could use the time machine to go back and stop the whole mess before it started. Brooks agreed. Charley secretly convinced Lish that they should set the stakes so she would receive the winnings, not Carmen, claiming that they might not be able to rely on her once she had regained her memories.
Menzies had a feeling that Charley's "change our own past" plan had to have some sort of time travel repercussions. When she found the Doctor again, she told him about it, and he confirmed that it was a stupid and potentially disastrous idea that they needed to stop. They rushed to get a hold of Brooks' dampener for Lish, turning it off in the nick of time so that Lish's bad luck would influence both Carmen and her opponent, causing the stake to go back to the House--the only party with defenses against such outside influences.
Then the Doctor decided it was time to end the war. They turned the device back on and used Lish as the dealer in a high-stakes game against the Tabbalac leader. The Doctor bet his TARDIS and knowledge of its operation against the Tabbalac's war. With a prize that big on the table, the leader couldn’t possibly refuse to play. The leader suspected the ruse, however, and before the last round, murdered Lish. Then the Doctor lost the bet.
It seemed like all was lost at that point. After all, they had to come up with a stake that was worth more than everything the Doctor had lost. Brooks had the high-stakes table check for such a thing, and to everyone's surprise, they did have something--Charley's memories of her time with the Doctor. Charley made the bet, putting that against the TARDIS and the Doctor's knowledge, as well as the Tabblac's war. She won, and all the other Tabbalac were automatically captured due to the table's incredible power to turn the results of its games into reality. The Tabbalac leader, however, still managed to kill Brooks before he was killed in turn by the Cyrox.
The Cyrox then left, leaving only the Doctor, Charley, Carmen, and Menzies alive on a ship that was now sinking from the damage it had sustained due to the Tabblac's and Cyrox's battles. To be on the safe side, they decided it wasn't enough to let the incredibly powerful high-stakes table sink. They blew it up instead, simultaneously using the TARDIS to escape themselves, and then headed back to Manchester.
At that point, Menzies asked the Doctor if she could travel with him. She wanted to get out of the complicated mess that her life had become. He reluctantly refused her, telling her that he needed to sort out what was going on with Charley before he could travel with anyone new. But he did agree that perhaps they would have a chance to travel together in the future. Menzies said she would like that, but she admitted that it was probably best to face her situation rather than run away from it anyway. And so they said their farewells again, and Menzies went back to her insane life policing the streets of Manchester.
It was about two years later when a new and very strange gangster calling himself "The Doctor" showed up in London, and ordinary, everyday people--primary school teachers, housewives, students, a community support officer, etc.--were suddenly up and leaving their homes and livelihoods to join his gang. Since Menzies was now something of an expert on bizarre events involving strange men known only as the Doctor, she was sent to help the police in London. There, she found the Doctor and a different companion--Evelyn Smythe--after they stole a high-speed patrol boat while being chased by a giant robot mosquito and then blew both itself and the boat up, stranding the Doctor and Evelyn in the Thames.
The police rescued them and took them into custody. Menzies questioned the Doctor, only to realize he had no idea who she was. Noticing he also looked younger than the last time she had seen him, and remembering what she had found out from Charley about the possibility of meeting the Doctor out of order, Menzies realized that this must be a younger Doctor. Not only that, but when she had met him in 2008, he must have only pretended he didn't already know her. She decided to return the favor, pretending not to know him. She did explain the situation to Evelyn--but also that it was important she not tell the Doctor.
To the Doctor, Menzies explained that she was working on an investigation into a mobster known as the Doctor. He explained that this man wasn't him. Despite believing him, Menzies kept both the Doctor and Evelyn in custody for the moment because it looked like they were mixed up in something with someone who wanted them dead, and that seemed like the safest place for them. She went home. In the early hours of the morning, however, the station received a call, and Sergeant Bradshaw had the Doctor and Evelyn transferred to Thames House, as requested. When Menzies got in and learned of the transfer--a transfer for which there was not yet any paperwork and for which the Doctor and Evelyn were picked up by a squad car just after one had been stolen--she immediately saw through the ruse. As it turned out, Ray Gallagher, the major gang boss in the area, had heard about this "Doctor" (the new gangster) and wanted to find out more about him, so he had conspired to have the Doctor and his companion kidnapped.
Luckily for Menzies, the Doctor wasn't hard to track down, considering he was again attacked by giant robot mosquitos. She helped him to escape, and Sergeant Patterson drove them to the TARDIS. There, the Doctor used his equipment to discover that, although there was no other TARDIS in the area, there was a time machine—and that someone had punched a wormhole into the fabric of time and space at the Great Portland Street tube station. They left the TARDIS, meaning to head there, at which point they were confronted again by Ray Gallagher--except this time, he had his new allies the giant robot mosquitos with him. The creature blew up Menzies' car with Sergeant Patterson still in it, but she and the Doctor escaped into the TARDIS, the Doctor dragging the creature behind them by its wing. He yelled instructions to Menzies, and they were able to create a forcefield to trap it.
From the creature, they found out that its race was called the Terravore, and that the Doctor had defeated them in the past--or rather, the Doctor's future. Menzies pretended to be completely shocked by all the talk of time machines and travel, though not very successfully. But on the bright side, she had had a concussion and been in a rush during her only previous TARDIS visit, so she was able to give somewhat of a genuine reaction to that.
They also learned that the Terravore was after the Doctor because he was seen as a threat to their current objective—the exploitation of the natural resources of the planet Symbios. As it turned out, "The Doctor" was running an East End mob in an attempt to rescue an alien planet! That still left the question, however, of who that Doctor was.
At that point, the Terravore became inactive because it had been connected to a control transmission that was blocked while the TARDIS was in the vortex. The Doctor tracked that signal, flying the TARDIS to a flat in South London, just outside Penge. There, they found that the owner, Neville Perkins, had built a Terravore using instructions that he had received from aliens over his e-mail. To Neville’s surprise, once the creature had been activated, he had discovered that he could not control it, and it began producing more Terravore on its own. He had been killed by the creatures. However, the Doctor and Menzies were able to locate the control signal and shut it down, temporarily disabling the Terravore. Then they traveled to a maintenance tunnel for the Great Portland Street tube to search for the wormhole there--or, at least, the cause of it.
The Doctor explained to Menzies that, if a past self of his were involved in this, it was important they didn't let on that he was the Doctor. When they met the young man in Edwardian garb who was calling himself the Doctor, though, the actual Doctor introduced himself as Norman Da Plume. Menzies assumed he was just hiding his identity--until they were locked in a storeroom and the real Doctor explained that this “Doctor” was actually a young man who used to travel with him named Thomas Brewster. However, Brewster had traveled with a previous incarnation of the Doctor and therefore didn't recognize this one, so to keep the upper hand, he suggested to Menzies that they continue the charade.
After escaping from the storeroom, Brewster revealed that he'd only locked them in there to find out if Norman was really the Doctor since the real Doctor would get out. Knowing they were rumbled, the Doctor was about to confess his identity when Menzies decided to keep the charade going by claiming to be the Doctor herself. With the help of some clever acting, Brewster believed her. He explained that he was trying to save Symbios and asked for her--the Doctor's--help, taking them by tube through the wormhole to Symbios.
Once they got there, they made contact with the Locus, Symbios’ native species, who were possessing Evelyn and others who had made it to Symbios by tube. They were the reason so many people had suddenly joined Brewster’s (The “Doctor’s”) gang. The group worked together to infiltrate the Terravore hive-ship and found the control signal, which turned out to be the Terravore queen herself. Unfortunately, Menzies was shot in the process, suffering wounds that should have been fatal. The Doctor was forced to reveal his true identity to Brewster.
Meanwhile, the Locus made a deal with the Terravore that they would open the temporal breach to allow the Terravore to go to Earth if they agreed to leave Symbios in peace. The Locus released everyone except Evelyn, who they kept for "communication purposes," and offered them all the choice between returning to Earth to die as the Terravore destroyed it or living out their lives on Symbios. As a gesture of goodwill, the Locus, who infused every cell on the planet, used the planet to heal Menzies' wounds, bringing her back from the point of death.
Everyone returned to Earth, where they rushed to Brewster's time machine to close the wormhole to stop the Terravore coming through. The Doctor set up to do so--but instead hesitated and locked the controls. Everyone was understandably shocked as he declared that Symbios, a peaceful world, deserved to live more than Earth did. Evelyn--the Locus--came up behind them then. The Locus had been intending to stop them from closing the wormhole. Instead, she took the Doctor back to live out his life on Symbios. The others all stayed. Menzies admitted that, although it was cheesy, she preferred to die on Earth.
It was only minutes later the Menzies got a mobile call from the Doctor, who had snagged a mobile out of the pocket of one of the others before he returned to Symbios. He had her pass the phone to Brewster, and he gave him instructions for what lever to push on the time machine as soon as all the Terravore--except the queen--had gone to Earth. Brewster followed the instructions, and the Terravore queen was isolated from the swarm when the wormhole closed, disrupting her control signal. The queen, alone, was unable to sustain herself and shut down, as did all the Terravore on Earth. Both planets were saved!
The Locus released Evelyn once they knew their world was safe. She and the Doctor returned to Earth, and the Doctor explained that he had pretended to betray the Earth to get the Locus' confidence. The group said their farewells after that. Brewster stealthily disappeared, the other people went home, and the Doctor thanked Menzies. He had guessed that she must have met him before, but he was grateful that she had tried to hide that. He promised to do the same when he met her again--earlier.
After that, Menzies' life went back to its usual insanity, right up until a few months later when she spotted a strange shop in town and went in...
Canon Point: March 2011, just a couple months after she encountered the Doctor yet again.
Reality Description: Menzies has spent her whole life in Manchester, England, where she is a D.I. with the Greater Manchester Division. Currently, in March 2011, she works at the Longsight Police Station under D.C.I. Turnbull. She lacks close personal connections in her life, but she does get on well with most of her co-workers, although she and her D.C.I don't always see quite eye-to-eye. Thankfully, she generally keeps out of trouble because she's good at what she does--and has a knack for knowing just where the line is that means she needs to back down.
Menzies also has what one might call "working relationships" with a lot of her clients. In particular, she has many non-terrestrial contacts who live in Manchester. Since she started helping aliens with their difficulties off the record, she has made quite a few useful friends who she can call on when she needs a hand--which she has no qualms about doing.
In general, Menzies lives in a Manchester that mirrors the one in our world, except for the tiny addition that aliens are a regular part of her life. She also tends to get mixed up in the messes of a certain Time Lord who travels through time and space in an old blue police box. It's all just part of the, as she puts it, "insanity that is my life."
Later history information from over the course of RS can be found in this entry.
Player LJ:
kmegumi2Email and/or AIM: kmegumi2@yahoo.com
Timezone: CST
Other Characters: Oliver Day (
oliverplus)Character: D.I. Patricia Menzies
Series: Doctor Who
Deviance: 1
Age: 32
Gender: Female
Species: Human
Canon Used: Menzies appears in the Big Finish audios The Condemned, The Raincloud Man, and The Crimes of Thomas Brewster. This puts her in the middle of several major audio plotlines, so canon information from other audios is also incorporated.
Appearance: Menzies has longish brown hair and brown eyes. She is 5'6" and dresses like a typical business woman--but always trousers, thank you. She likes to be prepared for field work at any time. To that end, she is also very fit and slightly on the thin side. She usually wears her hair pulled back and a smirk that's as quick as her wit.
(Note; I know she is voiced by Anna Hope, but due to lack of images, I've chosen Amanda Crew as her PB because of her fitting expressions. I am basing Menzies' appearance on her.)
Psychology: Menzies is a successful Detective Inspector with a sharp mind and a quick wit. Sarcasm is an art for her--and one that she practices regularly. And since she is clever, while she’s curious and eager, she’s not overly reckless. Even so, in her line of work, circumstances are always liable to throw her for a loop.
For Menzies, being a D.I. is much more than just a job. Helping and protecting the innocent is a hugely important value for her, and she devotes her life to that--which means she has a tendency not to go off duty much. She’s also quite willing to (frequently) allow her job to interrupt her “personal life.” She really, deeply loves the work that she does. And while she finds it easy to show a hardened exterior, particularly when she’s out in the field, she's really a caring person who enjoys her interactions with others. Her sarcasm can easily slide into banter with the right person. Cross her, however, and you'll see a much crasser side of her.
Menzies is very resilient as well; she has to be, as she faces the reality of not being able to help everyone every day. She also recovers well from injury, or rather, is too stubborn to succumb to her physical limitations--when she can help it. Stubborn is another key trait for her. She's used to policing the streets of Manchester, and you don’t get far doing that without stubbornness and drive. If she's set on something, she doesn't let it go easily, and she can be very pushy about the things that she wants.
Not only is she resilient, but she’s extremely unflappable. She rolls with the punches in her life very well. Surprise twists to her cases? Nothing to get excited about. Sudden realization of the existence of alien life? That’s not so hard to accept. Time travel? She's seen the film. This isn't to say that Menzies is easily fooled; she's a good judge of credibility. But she is very willing to accept the unbelievable as long as the evidence points that way.
Because of the importance of evidence to her, however, she can be overly suspicious of motives at times. She's seen quite a gambit of human possibilities and sometimes has a tendency to assume guilty until proven innocent instead of the other way around--just to be on the safe side. She isn't quick to judge so much as willing to let her actions be motivated by the evidence at hand, even when her gut is tempted to disagree with it. This trait leads her to pursue the wrong conclusions at times, but also to be accepting of the unlikely (and sometimes seemingly impossible) when she needs to be.
When it comes to hobbies, Menzies is a great fan of science fiction. Her life is so grounded in harsh realities that she enjoys escaping from them now and then, and how better to do that than to immerse herself in a world that’s far from her reality? She also likes music, particularly to calm down from a stressful situation. It’s another method of escape, both from her crazy life and from all the thinking it requires. She also prefers spicy foods. For Menzies, after a long day at work, there’s nothing better to come home to than a microwave curry and a science fiction film. She has no patience for sappy romance stories, though, as she’s seen too many of the negative consequences of true love that really wasn’t.
Despite her penchant for science fiction, she typically keeps things simple for herself when it comes to technology. She didn’t grow up with much access to it, and she’s too busy with her job to take the time to learn now. Her mobile doesn't even have e-mail, and she's quite happy with it that way. But she is familiar with a lot of alien technology that the average Joe wouldn't know what to do with, so her skills are mixed in that respect.
Menzies' greatest weakness is that she lacks many close personal connections. She lives for her job, and while her unending dedication helps her to be successful--particularly now when she's working both her normal caseload and alien cases on the side--it also means that she lacks a support circle. She has to be resilient because, when it comes down to it, she has no one else to rely on. Outwardly, she has a strong purpose in life and a career that she is devoted to. On the inside, she wonders if there's something more that she's missing. She still secretly hopes to travel with the Doctor one day, although she's not sure if that's the answer she's searching for or not. Still, she'd eventually like to find out.
Other Skills/Abilities: Being a regular human, Menzies has no special abilities. She does, however, have police combat training. She is not well-built, but she knows how to handle herself in a fight. She is also fit and a fast runner. Basically, she is a physically adept human.
Other Weaknesses: All usual human weaknesses apply to Menzies. She is also a bit on the slight side, so she can be somewhat easily overpowered by larger opponents despite her training. She has a tendency to run herself ragged and is often sleep-deprived as well, which has all the expected human consequences on her physical state.
History: Patricia Menzies has lived in Manchester all her life. She grew up the only daughter of a single mother who was poor and lived in a bad neighborhood. Ever since childhood, Menzies has witnessed countless examples of bad things happening to good people. She learned a few important lessons from those experiences as a child. First, you have to be tough if you don't want the bad things to happen to you. Second, not everybody can be tough, and the rest need someone else to protect them. She knew even as a kid that she was going to be a police officer.
So as soon as she graduated, she became one--and a good one, at that. She relished the job. It made her feel like she was really doing something for her people and her city. She also found that she had a talent for field work that some of her colleagues didn't share. It didn't take long for her to work her way up to Detective Inspector.
Then came the day she went to investigate a reported murder in Ackley House. She found a funny little man in an atrocious coat there, kneeling over the body when surveillance video clearly showed that no one had entered or exited since the time of the murder. It looked like an open-and-shut case at first--until her suspect had her investigate the body a bit more closely for a chip hidden under the skin. At that point, she found out the murder victim was an alien. Then the prime suspect showed her that he had a machine--oddly enough in the form a blue police box--that could teleport him from one place to another, explaining how he could have shown up with the body after the murder.
Suddenly, Menzies' world was rather more complicated than it had been a day ago. Even worse, the suspect--the Doctor--got out of custody by using the murder victim's human DNA patch. He pretended to be a victim who had been drugged rather than dead--in front of her D.C.I., whom she had just shown the alien body in the morgue. Needless to say, D.C.I. Turnbull was not happy his officers were playing a bizarre trick on him with monster bodies and probably on the verge of creating a lawsuit by pronouncing a living man dead and stuffing him in the morgue. Menzies was forced to take a couple days off. Frustrated, she left the station--only to have the Doctor contact her and offer that she could still help solve the murder. After everything she'd seen, that was an offer that she couldn't refuse.
And once the case had been solved, the Doctor and his companion Charley disappeared--thankfully before D.C.I. Turnbull could pin everything on the Doctor. Several people were dead, and Menzies had an alien murderess in human guise in custody--not to mention an essentially human spirit left infused in a building with the ability to control it. But one very creative police report later, life went back to normal.
Except that it didn't stay that way for long. Word got around amongst the alien population in the area that there was a police officer who knew about them and was willing to lend a hand--discreetly. Menzies found herself taking on a lot of cases off the record--meaning she had to work overtime to make progress on her official cases. Still, she was policing, even if a lot of it wasn't official, and she was enjoying the excitement of it all as much as ever. She wished things were a bit less complicated than they had gotten, but on the bright side, she was getting to know a lot of people with unique abilities who were typically quite happy to do future favors for her, should she need them.
But as Menzies was starting to get used to those changes in her life, who would show up at her station around Christmastime later the same year? The Doctor and Charley. At the time, Menzies was in the middle of a murder investigation involving a "big bloke with a skin condition"--likely not a terrestrial murderer. The Doctor, however, showed her a tabloid about a coin that supposedly had come from the future. Menzies was skeptical of his sources--until he told her that he'd been to 2012 and the coin pictured was genuine. She still wasn't convinced it represented a police emergency, especially considering the case she was in the midst of, but trusting the Doctor's expertise in this sort of matter, she let him see the CCTV footage that he wanted and took Charley to call in a favor with one of her alien acquaintances--Kelsa MacArthur. He could sense disturbances in time.
They met with an unexpected complication in their visit when, immediately upon opening the door, Kelsa was struck with pain due to Charley's very presence. He revealed that he could sense an unresolved paradox in her timeline; she was close to someone who she knew in that person's future. Charley didn't seem surprised, but she begged Menzies not to tell the Doctor, saying it was for his own good that he didn’t know. Menzies wanted to know what she was up to, but Charley protested that the situation was complicated. Menzies was called away then by a call from an alien about a body that had been found. She left to get the Doctor and take a look, missing the rest of Charley’s conversation with Kelsa.
Menzies believed Charley when she said it was important that the Doctor didn’t know the girl was traveling with him out of order, so she stayed quiet about it. She did find out from the Doctor that the dead body was from the Tabbalac race. When she returned to Kelsa's flat shortly afterwards, however, she found Kelsa's dead body at the bottom of a staircase and Charley leaning over him. Talk about deja vu! Charley claimed he had heard a noise, come out to investigate, and fallen down the stairs. Menzies, having seen no sign of anyone else at the flat and remembering what Kelsa had said, was suspicious enough of Charley that she decided to arrest her for Kelsa's murder.
Bringing Charley into the station would have been a simple matter, except the murder suspect she'd been searching for all along--Lish--had stowed away in the boot of her car. Lish was one of a race of aliens with the ability to influence their immediate environment. He had a disease that made his effect--bad luck--nearly impossible for him to control. With Lish in the car, Menzies found their trip stalled by traffic just blocks from the station. She tried to take another route, and a car came out of nowhere, collided violently with theirs, and drove off. In the crash, Menzies hit her head and was knocked unconscious.
Lish, meanwhile, got out of the boot and let Charley out of the backseat, trying to convince her to come with him. He told her he knew she hadn't killed Kelsa and wanted to help her. Seeing that Menzies was at least coming to, Charley reluctantly agreed to flee the scene with Lish.
The Doctor then came upon the scene of the accident. He called for an ambulance, and Menzies was taken to the hospital. She didn't stay there for long, despite the Doctor's attempts to convince her otherwise due to the concussion she had suffered. She confronted him about Charley's whereabouts, sure that he must have an idea of where she had disappeared to. He denied any knowledge and told her that he was going to find Carmen--the woman who he had discovered was the owner of the coin from the future. She was a big gambler, and he suspected she was using knowledge of the future to defraud casinos.
When he did meet Carmen at a local casino, Charley showed up looking for him. He warned her that Menzies and the police would be looking for her, and she left--luckily for her. Menzies had tried to have the Doctor tailed, which failed, but she still did catch him up in the casino by coincidence after a tip came in that her murder suspect was there. Even better, she showed up right when Carmen punched the Doctor for distracting her during a very expensive round of Poker. She had Carmen arrested, and she and the Doctor brought her to an interview room to have an off-the-record conversation about her crimes. Carmen denied being from the future and pointed out that you can't use knowledge from the future to win at Poker anyway. The Doctor tried to argue back, but Menzies let Carmen go, knowing they didn't have enough evidence to get anywhere at the moment.
The officers caught up with Charley soon after, finding her out cold. She explained to Menzies over the phone that they had been attacked by whoever was after Lish. He'd been taken to Salford Quays. Charley agreed to go down there with the police, reasoning that Lish was afraid enough of the people after him that he'd rather be taken in by them. Menzies then contacted the Doctor, who was in the process of following Carmen back to her casino boat, the High Straights--in Salford Quays.
Once there, Charley tricked Carmen into bringing her onboard the boat. She had found out from Lish that the boat was owned by a rogue Tabbalac in human guise--Brooks--who had created a device that could dampen Lish's ability to the point where it was controllable. Lish, in turn, had influenced the luck of anyone who was doing too much winning at the casino, until something had gone down that had convinced him to run from the boat. Carmen meanwhile had been a patron of the casino, and she had lost all her memories from before a year ago--as well as her time machine--in a bet on this casino's very unique high-stakes table. Charley used the fact that Carmen was missing memories to convince her that she actually knew Charley so she would bring her aboard.
Lish, meanwhile, ran from his captors long enough to run into Menzies, who immediately handcuffed him to her. Unfortunately, the bouncers from the High Straights who had been after Lish caught up with them and knocked them both out. Unable to get the handcuffs off (their genetic engineering favored brawn over brains), they captured Menzies and Lish together and brought them onboard the boat. Soon after, the boat activated its warp engine and went from Manchester to Rio de Janeiro--with Charley, Carmen, Menzies, and Lish all onboard but not the Doctor.
On the bright side, the Tabbalac caught up with the Doctor and demanded he fly them in the TARDIS to the ship. They were able to pinpoint its location, but it had defenses to keep their ships from appearing there. The Doctor was reluctantly forced to agree to help them when they threatened to completely destroy Manchester if he refused.
On the ship, Lish revealed to Menzies about his condition and that it could only be effectively kept in check by the dampener onboard the ship that Brooks had invented. She also found out that he was responsible for all the strange murders, including Kelsa's, but not on purpose. Lish also revealed why he had run from Brooks. Brooks had decided that the best way to stop his own people, the Tabbalac, from waging war everywhere was to make a deal with the Tabbalac's mortal enemies, the Cyrox, to hand over Lish so that he could be dropped on the Tabbalac home planet for his ability to run wild. Menzies, not liking the human bomb aspect of that plan any more than Lish did, agreed to help him. She, like Charley, believed that the Doctor would be able to come up with a solution for him. Conveniently, Lish's bad luck meant their captors had left the door unlocked, and they escaped to find the dampener that could control Lish's ability.
They ran into Charley, who proposed that they use the high-stakes table to solve all of their problems. All this mess had caused Brooks' people to find him, which, thanks to the Doctor's transportation, had now brought the war between the Tabbalac and the Cyrox onboard the ship. Charley suggested that they use Lish's ability to tilt the luck so Carmen could win her time machine and memories back, and then they could use the time machine to go back and stop the whole mess before it started. Brooks agreed. Charley secretly convinced Lish that they should set the stakes so she would receive the winnings, not Carmen, claiming that they might not be able to rely on her once she had regained her memories.
Menzies had a feeling that Charley's "change our own past" plan had to have some sort of time travel repercussions. When she found the Doctor again, she told him about it, and he confirmed that it was a stupid and potentially disastrous idea that they needed to stop. They rushed to get a hold of Brooks' dampener for Lish, turning it off in the nick of time so that Lish's bad luck would influence both Carmen and her opponent, causing the stake to go back to the House--the only party with defenses against such outside influences.
Then the Doctor decided it was time to end the war. They turned the device back on and used Lish as the dealer in a high-stakes game against the Tabbalac leader. The Doctor bet his TARDIS and knowledge of its operation against the Tabbalac's war. With a prize that big on the table, the leader couldn’t possibly refuse to play. The leader suspected the ruse, however, and before the last round, murdered Lish. Then the Doctor lost the bet.
It seemed like all was lost at that point. After all, they had to come up with a stake that was worth more than everything the Doctor had lost. Brooks had the high-stakes table check for such a thing, and to everyone's surprise, they did have something--Charley's memories of her time with the Doctor. Charley made the bet, putting that against the TARDIS and the Doctor's knowledge, as well as the Tabblac's war. She won, and all the other Tabbalac were automatically captured due to the table's incredible power to turn the results of its games into reality. The Tabbalac leader, however, still managed to kill Brooks before he was killed in turn by the Cyrox.
The Cyrox then left, leaving only the Doctor, Charley, Carmen, and Menzies alive on a ship that was now sinking from the damage it had sustained due to the Tabblac's and Cyrox's battles. To be on the safe side, they decided it wasn't enough to let the incredibly powerful high-stakes table sink. They blew it up instead, simultaneously using the TARDIS to escape themselves, and then headed back to Manchester.
At that point, Menzies asked the Doctor if she could travel with him. She wanted to get out of the complicated mess that her life had become. He reluctantly refused her, telling her that he needed to sort out what was going on with Charley before he could travel with anyone new. But he did agree that perhaps they would have a chance to travel together in the future. Menzies said she would like that, but she admitted that it was probably best to face her situation rather than run away from it anyway. And so they said their farewells again, and Menzies went back to her insane life policing the streets of Manchester.
It was about two years later when a new and very strange gangster calling himself "The Doctor" showed up in London, and ordinary, everyday people--primary school teachers, housewives, students, a community support officer, etc.--were suddenly up and leaving their homes and livelihoods to join his gang. Since Menzies was now something of an expert on bizarre events involving strange men known only as the Doctor, she was sent to help the police in London. There, she found the Doctor and a different companion--Evelyn Smythe--after they stole a high-speed patrol boat while being chased by a giant robot mosquito and then blew both itself and the boat up, stranding the Doctor and Evelyn in the Thames.
The police rescued them and took them into custody. Menzies questioned the Doctor, only to realize he had no idea who she was. Noticing he also looked younger than the last time she had seen him, and remembering what she had found out from Charley about the possibility of meeting the Doctor out of order, Menzies realized that this must be a younger Doctor. Not only that, but when she had met him in 2008, he must have only pretended he didn't already know her. She decided to return the favor, pretending not to know him. She did explain the situation to Evelyn--but also that it was important she not tell the Doctor.
To the Doctor, Menzies explained that she was working on an investigation into a mobster known as the Doctor. He explained that this man wasn't him. Despite believing him, Menzies kept both the Doctor and Evelyn in custody for the moment because it looked like they were mixed up in something with someone who wanted them dead, and that seemed like the safest place for them. She went home. In the early hours of the morning, however, the station received a call, and Sergeant Bradshaw had the Doctor and Evelyn transferred to Thames House, as requested. When Menzies got in and learned of the transfer--a transfer for which there was not yet any paperwork and for which the Doctor and Evelyn were picked up by a squad car just after one had been stolen--she immediately saw through the ruse. As it turned out, Ray Gallagher, the major gang boss in the area, had heard about this "Doctor" (the new gangster) and wanted to find out more about him, so he had conspired to have the Doctor and his companion kidnapped.
Luckily for Menzies, the Doctor wasn't hard to track down, considering he was again attacked by giant robot mosquitos. She helped him to escape, and Sergeant Patterson drove them to the TARDIS. There, the Doctor used his equipment to discover that, although there was no other TARDIS in the area, there was a time machine—and that someone had punched a wormhole into the fabric of time and space at the Great Portland Street tube station. They left the TARDIS, meaning to head there, at which point they were confronted again by Ray Gallagher--except this time, he had his new allies the giant robot mosquitos with him. The creature blew up Menzies' car with Sergeant Patterson still in it, but she and the Doctor escaped into the TARDIS, the Doctor dragging the creature behind them by its wing. He yelled instructions to Menzies, and they were able to create a forcefield to trap it.
From the creature, they found out that its race was called the Terravore, and that the Doctor had defeated them in the past--or rather, the Doctor's future. Menzies pretended to be completely shocked by all the talk of time machines and travel, though not very successfully. But on the bright side, she had had a concussion and been in a rush during her only previous TARDIS visit, so she was able to give somewhat of a genuine reaction to that.
They also learned that the Terravore was after the Doctor because he was seen as a threat to their current objective—the exploitation of the natural resources of the planet Symbios. As it turned out, "The Doctor" was running an East End mob in an attempt to rescue an alien planet! That still left the question, however, of who that Doctor was.
At that point, the Terravore became inactive because it had been connected to a control transmission that was blocked while the TARDIS was in the vortex. The Doctor tracked that signal, flying the TARDIS to a flat in South London, just outside Penge. There, they found that the owner, Neville Perkins, had built a Terravore using instructions that he had received from aliens over his e-mail. To Neville’s surprise, once the creature had been activated, he had discovered that he could not control it, and it began producing more Terravore on its own. He had been killed by the creatures. However, the Doctor and Menzies were able to locate the control signal and shut it down, temporarily disabling the Terravore. Then they traveled to a maintenance tunnel for the Great Portland Street tube to search for the wormhole there--or, at least, the cause of it.
The Doctor explained to Menzies that, if a past self of his were involved in this, it was important they didn't let on that he was the Doctor. When they met the young man in Edwardian garb who was calling himself the Doctor, though, the actual Doctor introduced himself as Norman Da Plume. Menzies assumed he was just hiding his identity--until they were locked in a storeroom and the real Doctor explained that this “Doctor” was actually a young man who used to travel with him named Thomas Brewster. However, Brewster had traveled with a previous incarnation of the Doctor and therefore didn't recognize this one, so to keep the upper hand, he suggested to Menzies that they continue the charade.
After escaping from the storeroom, Brewster revealed that he'd only locked them in there to find out if Norman was really the Doctor since the real Doctor would get out. Knowing they were rumbled, the Doctor was about to confess his identity when Menzies decided to keep the charade going by claiming to be the Doctor herself. With the help of some clever acting, Brewster believed her. He explained that he was trying to save Symbios and asked for her--the Doctor's--help, taking them by tube through the wormhole to Symbios.
Once they got there, they made contact with the Locus, Symbios’ native species, who were possessing Evelyn and others who had made it to Symbios by tube. They were the reason so many people had suddenly joined Brewster’s (The “Doctor’s”) gang. The group worked together to infiltrate the Terravore hive-ship and found the control signal, which turned out to be the Terravore queen herself. Unfortunately, Menzies was shot in the process, suffering wounds that should have been fatal. The Doctor was forced to reveal his true identity to Brewster.
Meanwhile, the Locus made a deal with the Terravore that they would open the temporal breach to allow the Terravore to go to Earth if they agreed to leave Symbios in peace. The Locus released everyone except Evelyn, who they kept for "communication purposes," and offered them all the choice between returning to Earth to die as the Terravore destroyed it or living out their lives on Symbios. As a gesture of goodwill, the Locus, who infused every cell on the planet, used the planet to heal Menzies' wounds, bringing her back from the point of death.
Everyone returned to Earth, where they rushed to Brewster's time machine to close the wormhole to stop the Terravore coming through. The Doctor set up to do so--but instead hesitated and locked the controls. Everyone was understandably shocked as he declared that Symbios, a peaceful world, deserved to live more than Earth did. Evelyn--the Locus--came up behind them then. The Locus had been intending to stop them from closing the wormhole. Instead, she took the Doctor back to live out his life on Symbios. The others all stayed. Menzies admitted that, although it was cheesy, she preferred to die on Earth.
It was only minutes later the Menzies got a mobile call from the Doctor, who had snagged a mobile out of the pocket of one of the others before he returned to Symbios. He had her pass the phone to Brewster, and he gave him instructions for what lever to push on the time machine as soon as all the Terravore--except the queen--had gone to Earth. Brewster followed the instructions, and the Terravore queen was isolated from the swarm when the wormhole closed, disrupting her control signal. The queen, alone, was unable to sustain herself and shut down, as did all the Terravore on Earth. Both planets were saved!
The Locus released Evelyn once they knew their world was safe. She and the Doctor returned to Earth, and the Doctor explained that he had pretended to betray the Earth to get the Locus' confidence. The group said their farewells after that. Brewster stealthily disappeared, the other people went home, and the Doctor thanked Menzies. He had guessed that she must have met him before, but he was grateful that she had tried to hide that. He promised to do the same when he met her again--earlier.
After that, Menzies' life went back to its usual insanity, right up until a few months later when she spotted a strange shop in town and went in...
Canon Point: March 2011, just a couple months after she encountered the Doctor yet again.
Reality Description: Menzies has spent her whole life in Manchester, England, where she is a D.I. with the Greater Manchester Division. Currently, in March 2011, she works at the Longsight Police Station under D.C.I. Turnbull. She lacks close personal connections in her life, but she does get on well with most of her co-workers, although she and her D.C.I don't always see quite eye-to-eye. Thankfully, she generally keeps out of trouble because she's good at what she does--and has a knack for knowing just where the line is that means she needs to back down.
Menzies also has what one might call "working relationships" with a lot of her clients. In particular, she has many non-terrestrial contacts who live in Manchester. Since she started helping aliens with their difficulties off the record, she has made quite a few useful friends who she can call on when she needs a hand--which she has no qualms about doing.
In general, Menzies lives in a Manchester that mirrors the one in our world, except for the tiny addition that aliens are a regular part of her life. She also tends to get mixed up in the messes of a certain Time Lord who travels through time and space in an old blue police box. It's all just part of the, as she puts it, "insanity that is my life."
Later history information from over the course of RS can be found in this entry.