Malcolm Murray

Malcolm Murray is a fictional explorer, safari hunter, and monster-chaser as well as one of the main characters featured in the Showtime television series Penny Dreadful. Played by actor Timothy Dalton, he was introduced in the pilot episode of the series, "Night Work".

Biography
Malcolm Murray was a British citizen of the British Empire during the latter half of the 19th century. In his younger days, he plied his trade as a safari hunter, tracking lions across the planes of Africa. He is also known for discovering a mountain, which was later named after him. Malcolm had a daughter named Mina.

In 1891, Malcolm discovered that his beloved Mina had been abducted by supernatural forces. Every moment of his time and resources were since devoted to finding her. By his own admission, he would "murder the world" if it meant rescuing his daughter. To this end, he allied himself with a group of individuals whom he believed could help facilitate his cause, including the medium Vanessa Ives, the American gunslinger Ethan Chandler and the research scientist, Victor Frankenstein.

On the night of September 22nd, Murray got a lead on Mina's whereabouts, which led him to an opium den run by vampires. With Vanessa and Ethan providing support, Malcolm was forced to fight his way through the vampire horde, using everything from his fists, to a sword-cane to an ice pick to dispatch his foes. He impaled a massive vampire with his sword - one unlike any he had ever seen before. He took the body to Victor Frankenstein for inspection and learned that the creature's skin was actually a dermal endoskeleton and that the vampire's true flesh was completely scored with Egyptian hieroglyphs. He consulted with an effeminate Egyptologist named Ferdinand Lyle, who told him that the hieroglyphs etched into the creature's flesh originated with the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

Notes & Trivia



 * Malcolm Murray is the third of the main characters introduced in the series. He is the second male main character introduced in the series.


 * The characterization and career of Malcolm Murray is similar to that of Allan Quatermain, who was the central character from the novel King Solomon's Mines and its various sequels by author H. Rider Haggard. The notion of an older, retired Murray who becomes a hunter of the supernatural may have been inspired by Alan Moore's critically acclaimed series of comic books, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Weapons & Equipment

 * Sword-cane: Sir Malcolm brandished a sword-cane which he used to fight off vampires at an opium den. He impaled the lead vampire through the back with it, and stabbed several female vampire familiars through the chest.