View source for David Murdoc/SMS

{{Character
|department = Intelligence
|firstname= David Logan
|lastname= Murdoc
|image=[[Image:DMurdoc.png|250px]]
|Homeworld=[[memoryalpha:Earth|Earth]]
|Species=[[memoryalpha:Human|Human]]
|Gender=Male
|Birth=2349
|Death=
|Height=5' 11"
|Weight=157 lbs
|Hair=Brown
|Eyes=Brown
|Affiliation=[[United Federation of Planets]] [[Starfleet]]
|Posting=
|Position=[[Chief Intelligence Officer]]
|Rank={{LtCommander|silver}}
|Played By=[[User:Sanchez|Matthew Williams]]
}}[[Image:DMurdoc2.jpg|thumb|right]]

==Appearance==
David is often told that he is a skinny man, though he does not look malnourished. His well-built face is bordered by dark brown hair, often styled, and a light beard. While off-duty, he tends to wear suits quite casually, though he prefers trainers to actual shoes. While on-duty, he wears his uniform no differently than any other crew member, but somehow manages to make the whole thing seem more casual with no effort at all.

His body language at all times - on and off duty - tends to match that of his personality; easy going and carefree, as he often leans on various surfaces, stands with hands in his pockets or bounces round with excitement. He normally always has a broad grin on his face.

==Personality & Traits==
===General Overview===
David generally displays a light-hearted, talkative, easy-going, witty and somewhat cheeky manner, but combines this with a somewhat egocentric sense of unstoppability when facing a challenge. He is occasionally critical of weapons, preferring to use them as a last resort only, and will never carry one unless it is absolutely necessary. His strong personal sense of justice makes him quick to anger when he feels it is violated.

David has a tendency to babble, mixing apparent nonsense with vital information, sometimes acting erratically. He can also be rude on occasion, and is not always aware of it, being prone to making comments that to outsiders seem obtuse or rude, sometimes to his own embarrassment. He has a tendency to use technobabble to describe complex concepts before substituting it with a simpler explanation. He is also able to rapidly switch between moods, from mania to anger to nonchalance. Around his 'enemies' - though he endeavours not to have any - he often displays a confident, self-assured side when around them, but does not hesitate to taunt them.

David usually speaks with an Estuary English accent, sometimes switching between it and his natural Scottish brogue. He is very good with accents, and has learned to be able to switch between a great many through the years. Through his training at the Academy, he had also picked up a large vocabulary of alien languages, though he most commonly relies on the universal translator.

===Strengths & Weaknesses===
Strengths: 
David has the uncanny ability to blend into any crowd unnoticed, easily being able to pass himself off as someone with a legitimate reason to be where he is whenever he is actually questioned.

He can sift through and extract all of the lies and exaggerations in gossip and rumours, and can link together many seemingly disconnected facts and events in his mind to come to a conclusion on a peculiar situation.


Weaknesses: 
David has the tendency to babble and can sometimes unknowingly be rude to people.

===Ambitions===
David doesn't have any ambitions; he simply wants to do something fulfilling with his life; something that will keep him occupied and happy doing what he does.

===Hobbies & Interests===
Reading Shakespeare<br />
Theatre acting<Br />
Has a keen interest in Engineering<br />

==Family==
{| border="1px" style="border-collapse:collapse" cellpadding="10"
|Father:
|Logan Murdoc
|-
|Mother:
|Kyla Murdoc
|}

==History==
Logan Murdoc met his future wife Kyla in one of his regular business visits to the city of Glasgow. Logan was a banker, a large stakeholder in the Scottish banking business and so attended various meetings throughout the year. He usually stayed in a hotel with a room to himself, but often experienced Glasgow's night-life as a way to wind down. It was one of these night-time parties at which Kyla and he first met. They enjoyed a night together, and started seeing each other more often. A few months down the line, they moved in together in the town of Paisley, and were married two years later.

David was born to a family who took pride in their heritage and the Scottish way of life. Even through the centuries and many technological advances, the country still retains a large amount of countryside, and David lived in a traditional Scottish brick house. It's original builders, however would have been shocked speechless at the study, which was the one room with the most technological advances - having a large LCARs terminal among its features. The remainder of the house was populated technologically with only a largely-unused replicator in the kitchen and small, portable LCARs computers owned separately by each of the three family members.

He attended Paisley Grammar School, a historical academy still running since 1896, and considered a very prestigious place to attain an eduction. He was a popular enough boy in school - never bullied or looked down upon, and had a knack for staying unnoticed when he was in the company of other people. Nobody really paid him any mind as he walked the corridors, and he was quite happy with this state of affairs. It allowed him to think, and marvel at the world around him. His favourite subject was history, and he used to look around the ancient school, at its mergance of new technologies with old architecture and books, and simply marvel at it.

That is not to say that he was without friends. David had a large group of friends, with which he shared a great many jokes and good times, but his one closest companion turned out to be the Englishwoman Moira Aclestone, a young teacher-in-training (only just out of school herself) with which David became romantically involved with during the last year of his school life. The two continued their relationship for three years after David's graduation, the first two of which he spent in college. Their third year, Moira was offered a teaching job on a new Federation Starbase, and the two moved in together on the station.

While Moira was at work, teaching the children onboard, David spent his time exploring the station, and mingling with the people on it. He became good friends with most of the bar keepers, store owners and other entrepreneurs working there, and a great number of the Starfleet personnel. He was often found by all to be a very friendly man, rarely unhappy and always up for a good time - to "live a little" as he called it, though his enthusiastic attitude to most things landed him with the cheerful description of "totally mad!" During his time onboard the station, David learned the art of gossip and rumour reading. He listened a lot to what was being said in the various establishments on the Promenade, and learned to see through the exaggerations and see the truth - or at least some of the truth - which had started the Chinese whispers. It was not a skill picked up intentionally, or for any purpose in which David could see it being fulfilled in the near future, but he did enjoy hearing all the gossip going about the station.

Two months before their fourth anniversary, it was a school field trip which tore Moira away from David. Moira had organised for the children in her class to come down to the planet's surface with her, and visit one of the local industries. David accompanied them to the manufacturing station, where they learned how the locals turned raw materials into fantastic produce. Unfortunately, halfway through the tour, while they were walking along the metal walkway looking down on the main pieces of machinery and their operators, a large machine malfunctioned - David never learned what its name or purpose was, but something inside it overloaded and exploded. Though only throwing sparks and shrapnel, with a small amount of fire, one piece of metal managed to hit one of the walkway's supports, breaking it, allowing a section of the walkway to drop under the weight being exerted on it - hitting another piece of machinery, this one more delicate and sending that into and overload. A chain reaction started within moments, and the facility was soon in flames. Moira and David worked to pull the children up from the fallen piece of walkway, now just barely clinging onto the more secure and stable steel still being held by all it's supports. Moira was with a young girl - Lisa - holding onto her with one hand, and the railing with the other, as she tried to lift the girl up to David - the last of the children who had fallen into danger. As David grasped the girl's hand, the stricken walkway gave way, falling into the fire below, and taking Moira with it into the flames.

It took David a long time to get over the grief. He moved back home to Scotland, and got a job in an office - something insignificant and repetitive. He went unnoticed once again, but there was no thinking this time. If he allowed himself to think, he knew he would think of her.

After two years, a switch seemed to flick in David's head. The pain of the loss was still there, but he didn't feel as if life was pointless anymore. He began to treasure his memories of Moira once more, rather than refraining to think of them, and quit his job for something more fulfilling - somewhere that he could live a little.

He remembered his friends from the starbase, and joined Starfleet.

He progressed through the basic training quickly enough, being a quick learner, and was soon picked out by the man whose care David's 'year group' came under - William. William noticed what others didn't - the way David easily interacted with people - strangers and friends alike - without any mental alarms going off in anyone, and the way he could walk through the Academy almost completely unnoticed. He suggested David take the courses for an Intelligence officer for his second year, a suggestion to which David took to heart.

David learned just as quickly in his new field of study, and finally found a place where he could put his naturally picked-up skills to use. He learned the power of information - how the man who has the knowledge can control a nation, a military or a war with just words. He studied the historical wars of man kind once again - World War I, World War II, World War III, the Cold War, all of the ones he studied in school, but applied a new perspective on them. He looked at them from the view points of the various Secret Intelligence agencies throughout the war, and studied how the knowledge those operatives gained influenced the war, without the agents needing to fire a single shot to add to those already flying in the war. He read about Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who said "A brilliant man would find a way not to fight a war." David felt that the ultimate way to prevent a war would be to have more knowledge than your potential enemy. His third year at the academy, David concentrated on the foreign organisations from the Federation - their alliances, technologies, politics - everything there was to know about them.

David graduated the Academy with excellent grades, and was assigned to an office in Starfleet Command HQ, along with the majority of his fellow graduates - Starfleet didn't make a habit of sending inexperienced officers out into the field. And so David spend a year or two working behind the scenes, gathering information, supplying it to the right people, and getting a general feel for the way the Intelligence organisation worked. Finally, he was reassigned to a field position.

He was assigned to the USS Athens as an Intelligence Officer. The Athens was a largely diplomatic ship, and David had a chance to do what he did best - mingle. He was able to gather so much current information from his ventures, that his superior soon came to sending him on more specific assignments and relying on him a lot.

David served onboard the Athens for a number of years, staying on while many of his fellow Intelligence Officers onboard moved on elsewhere. Luckily for David, the amount of time he spent with the ship helped him - he blended into the background. He wasn't noticed, just in the same way that one wouldn't notice an ornament or a statue any longer after walking past it for so long. You wouldn't notice it was there, but as soon as it was taken away, you would realise that something wasn't quite the same.

The same happened to David, when he was eventually transferred off the ship to Deep Space 16, and assigned as the stations Assistant Chief Intelligence Officer. He had been offered the Chief position, but felt at the time that such a position would draw too much attention to him, and hinder him, rather than help him. And so he was given the assistant role, while the second choice for the chieftainship was granted the honour.

DS16 proved another long assignment for David, and after a while, the chief began delegating more and more tasks to him, and allowing him a greater role in the running of the department. David's superior knew that he had been second choice, and had held a grudge against him at first, but David felt that the grudge had ebbed over time, as the man saw how good he was at what he does, and the wealth of information David brought to him.

Many offers came through from Starfleet, asking him to take the role of Chief Intelligence Officer on various ships and stations, and all of them were declined, until finally another switch flicked in that marvellous brain contained within the man's skull, and he decided that he needed something new, something fresh to spice up his life. He accepted the transfer to the USS Isoroku, smiling at the ship's namesake, and remembering the old quote from his Academy days from the famous Admiral; "A brilliant man would find a way not to fight a war."

Unfortunately, his stay on the Isoroku was not to be a long one, and after only a few months, he was given orders to transfer once again, this time to a completely different quadrant. Due to the distance from home, he was given the choice to decline the order, but David saw it as a fantastic opportunity - a chance to explore somewhere new - and so he took his leave of the Akira-class ship, and set off for his rendezvous point with the USS Scimitar.

David's career aboard the Scimitar was a very beneficial one for him. Assigned again as a chief intelligence officer, he received a promotion to lieutenant, and as part of his first mission participated in a rescue operation of a Romulan Warbird which was operating in the region on a scientific survey mission, with permission from Starfleet. The singularity that powered the vessel had destabilised, shifting the entire crew into subspace. David was an integral part of the mission to discover what happened and how to save the Romulan crew; an act which granted him a commendation enough for him to receive early promotion to Lieutenant Commander a month later when he was selected to replace the vessel's departing first officer, serving in the role jointly with his ongoing role of chief intelligence officer.

After a few more mere months of standard patrols, Starfleet Command informed the Scimitar's commanding officer, Field Colonel Shafto, that his first officer had to be a solitary position, and Colonel Shafto and David came to the decision together that David would relinquish his post as ship's intelligence officer to focus on the position of first officer directly. Colonel Shafto promoted him to full Commander - David always suspected in order to spite Command for forcing him to make the decision.

The Scimitar's next mission proved to be her last - assigned to conduct negotiations with a race a Nova-class starship had recently made first contact with, the ship was destroyed by rebel factions while visiting the alien super-station, who desired to keep their culture in isolation. As a result of the failure of the mission, and the actions of the ship's marines taken without either officer's orders in retaliation, both David and Colonel Shafto were demoted - David to Lieutenant Commander whilst Shafto was reduced to Lieutenant Colonel.

David spent the next six months back on Earth as Starfleet Headquarters, undergoing courses by orders of Starfleet Intelligence. For two months after, he was assigned to a deep space station that was under the direct control of Starfleet Intel. After eight months of mediocre assignments, he was finally granted permission to seek reassignment to an active post. Selecting a starship assigned to the Galactic South, he submitted an application for the vacant chief intelligence officer spot on the USS Caboto.

==Service Record==
--Application Received: Starfleet Academy, San Francisco<Br />
--Assigned to Year Group under: Grohl, William<Br />
--Year 1 Graduated<Br />
--Enrolled Year 2: Intelligence (Mandatory Recommendation Received: Grohl, William)<Br />
--Year 2 Graduated<Br />
--Enrolled Year 3: Intelligence -- Focus; Foreign Entities<Br />
--Year 3 Graduated<Br />
--Enrolled Year 4<Br />
--Year 4 Graduated<Br />
--Assigned, Starfleet Command Headquarters -- Intelligence Assistant -- Ensign<Br />
--Assigned, USS Athens -- Intelligence Officer<Br />
--Assigned, Deep Space 16 -- Assistant Chief Intelligence Officer<Br />
--Assigned, USS Isoroku -- Chief Intelligence Officer -- Lieutenant JG<Br />
--Assigned, USS Scimitar -- Chief Intelligence Officer -- Lieutenant<Br />
--Assigned, USS Scimitar -- Chief Intelligence Officer, Executive Officer -- Lieutenant Commander<Br />
--Assigned, USS Scimitar -- Executive Officer -- Commander<Br />
--Court Martial -- Demoted -- Lieutenant Commander<Br />
--Assigned, Starfleet Headquarters -- Retraining Courses<Br />
--Assigned, Starfleet Intelligence Base Gamma-9 -- Intelligence Officer<Br />
--Assigned, USS Caboto - Chief Intelligence Officer