Name: Penelope Kate
Callsign: WMD - Weapon of Mass Destruction? Woman of Mass Destruction? Who knows!
Age: 38
Rank/Title: Doctor
Appearance: Long black hair, often tied up in a bun, gaunt face with prominent cheekbones, frustratingly pale, dark brown eyes, rather pointy chin, 5'8", skinny.
Role: Scientist
Summary in a sentence: Weapons engineer proficient in high-energy physics obsessed with ascension, convinced it's an obvious solution to the "lukewarm war" (her own words) with the Lucian Alliance.
Nationality: Canadian
Biography: After a bright-eyed college career, Penelope graduated with a doctorate from MIT in experimental nuclear and particle physics. Area 51 expressed interest in her after they read her paper on advancing the yield of atomic bombs through a theoretical substance that bore striking similarities to Naquadah. She was recruited and helped to develop the Mark IX in a peripheral role after introduction to the life of a experimental weapons development engineer. There she met Samantha Carter, who noted that Penelope had a frightening blind curiosity in the project.
Penelope became one of Earth's secret weapons. Her personality lead her to become nigh-obsessed with whatever project she was placed on, and she played an instrumental role in the development of the Horizon Mark IX deployment system and the PWAR - although that project was cancelled when the Asurans displayed an unexpected resistance to Anti-Replicator Waveform technology. With the elimination of the Asurans in the Pegasus galaxy and the Ori in the Milky Way, Penelope found herself in the odd situation of not having a specific job any more.
While there was some development of the Mark X naquadria bomb (which she played part in), funding for such super weapons was diminishing rapidly. The current administration didn't have quite the same zeal for mass destruction as the previous ones. In her frustration and boredom during off-hours, Penelope did research. Lots of research. She learned about the Dakara weapons platform (regretfully destroyed), the Icarus project (billed as a failure on many levels), replicators, symbiote poison, Anubis' planet-buster, Asuran gate beam weapons, and many other theoretical super weapons. Through her research, she learned about Merlin's anti-ascended-being weapon, and through it, ascension. At first ascension was nothing more than a side interest to Merlin's weapon, but it gradually began to grow on her.
As the next administration continued the previous administrations anti-WMD policy, it became less quietly frustrating to her and more of an imminent threat when the Lucian Alliance destroyed two Earth outposts and nearly detonated a 70 MT device in Washington, DC. Clearly, the Lucian Alliance did not believe that Earth had the capacity or fortitude to retaliate. She urged her superiors to strike back hard and fast with neutron bombs, - no lasting radiation, no extensive damage, only dead bad guys - or at least demonstrate that Earth had the capability to do so. They refused. She let it go.
When she heard about the Lucian takeover of Destiny, she again urged her superiors to consider a neutron bomb. Frustrated by her lack of progress, she went over her bosses' heads, using her connection with Carter to get a meeting with Gen. O'Neill of Homeworld Command - something she later realized was a mistake. Especially after how he flat-out denied her ideas. This pissed off her bosses mightily.
While she suffered through menial tasks and pointless dead-end projects, she turned her mind back to the Lucian Alliance arms race. Her superiors were clearly blind; the Lucian Alliance wouldn't stop at three naquadah-enhanced bombs. Earth needed a trump card, and if the bureaucracy couldn't see it now, then at least she'd be prepared when they did. It was here that thoughts of ascension once again haunted her - ascended beings had demonstrated their power and capabilities multiple times. With the majority of super weapons destroyed and her access to useful projects cut off, this seemed like the only logical avenue left to her. So she slowly studied ascension, and even managed to sneak a few looks at the DNA resequencer at Area 51 left over from Anubis' clone Khalek. It (and the one at Atlantis) was strictly off-limits, as physical death and other horrific side effects were likely results.
Her ultimate plan became to either ascend herself, and then demonstrate her new powers to the Lucian Alliance until they felt threatened by Earth a la M.A.D. (whilst researching methods to distract the Ancients or conceal herself so that they wouldn't interfere if it came to wiping out the Lucian Alliance (although she would be willing to sacrifice herself in that event)), or to create a weapon that operates on higher planes of existence, denying the Lucian Alliance's ability to retaliate while also failing to interfere with the Ancients.
After suffering her bosses' new ire (they did everything but fire her), she jumped at the chance to get on board the
Langford, believing that at least her former bosses wouldn't be able to influence her in space. The path from disgrace to the
Langford was a rocky one, however. After she heard about the ship, she had to convince the head of the project that the weapons systems needed to be inspected to meet Mark IX safety guidelines with some convincing paperwork. She got the project head, in turn, to fill out paperwork requesting herself to the project to oversee Mark IX standards - a request which she assured the project head was standard procedure.
From there, it was a relatively simple task to find something trivially wrong with the system, insist that it be upgraded, wash, rinse, repeat, until she became the only person who really understood all the working parts of the weapons systems in their entirety. That meant that she was part of the briefing committee for the ship's crew, and from there, it was a simple matter to convince the brass that she would be invaluable as a member of the crew. She was therefore accepted as part of the shakedown cruise, and the actual ship deployment. From that point, it wasn't much harder (especially once she'd gotten "close" to some key people) to convince the brass that she should be the lead scientist for the
Langford. She was, after all, qualified, and the CO and crew had already gotten used to seeing and interacting with her.
Personality: Ruthless, cold, calculating. She views life through the lens of curiosity, and will sometimes let people make bad decisions, just to see how they and everyone around them will react. Not exactly evil, but certainly not good. She'll act in the better interests of humanity, the ship, the crew, and humanity's allies in that order. Smart, capable, and terrifyingly good at her job. She's always afraid that people will be scared by someone who invents WMD's for a living, so she often tries to distance herself from others. She does, in fact, have a heart, so she attempts to carry herself in a reasonably friendly (if distant) manner. Those friends that she does have are fairly close, though she still tries to hide her "scary WMD-making" self from even their eyes. Rather than simply insult someone's intelligence, she'll take the time to try and teach them. The more people capable of working on a task frees her up for pursuing other interests.
Trivia: Performs trivial maintenance tasks, ostensibly to conform with the CO's "rank doesn't have its privileges" attitude, but more often than not finds herself on the bridge, fiddling with some panel or another, quietly observing, giving unbidden advice to the CO. She's got a drive to know information, especially concerning the ship's status, location, and current mission. Enjoys poker and watching New Girl.
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