Wednesday 17 July 2024

N is for... Nimrod


A member of the Neanderthal race which became extinct around 40,000 years ago when superseded by Homo Sapiens. Nimrod had been captured by an alien entity known as Light, who visited the Earth in prehistoric times as part of an expedition to catalogue all of its lifeforms.
Held in suspended animation as the last example of his kind, he was later woken up by Josiah Samuel Smith in the early 1880's and employed by him as butler. Smith was a member of Light's crew, who had rapidly evolved into a Victorian gentleman. He had taken over the expedition, intent on reaching the ultimate evolutionary goal of becoming head of the British Empire.
Light was left to oversleep within their spacecraft. Nimrod continued to worship the entity. The Doctor befriended him by offering him the gift of a fang from a cave bear, which was a totem for his tribe.
After Smith's scheme had been thwarted, and the awakened Light destroyed, Nimrod elected to travel across the universe in the space ship, accompanied by Victorian explorer Redvers Fenn-Cooper and Control, another of the original crew. 

Played by: Carl Forgione. Appearances: Ghost Light (1989).
  • Forgione (1944 - 1998) had previously appeared in the series as Land, one of Lupton's circle in Planet of the Spiders.
  • Neanderthals were named after the discovery of remains in the Neander Valley, in what is now Germany, in 1856.
  • Smith has named his butler after the biblical figure Nimrod, a great grandson of Noah who was famed as a mighty hunter and King of Shinar.

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