Dr. Helen Magnus

Doctor Helen Magnus is an English-born physician and scientist specializing in a variety of medicine and biological sciences. Over 274-years-old and 'blessed' with apparent eternal youth thanks to a vampire blood-based serum, she is the founder and elected leader of the Sanctuary Network.

Early life
Helen was born in the middle of the 19th century to Gregory Magnus and Patricia Heathering. Her father was regarded as a controversial medical researcher of his time, and exposed his daughter to his profession when she was a child. Louis Pasteur, a close friend of Gregory, was her godfather.

She was an intelligent young woman, unwilling to accept the limitations for women of her era. When Helen reached the age of ~25-years-old, after she had been repeatedly denied entrance into a London school, stopping her from being able to gain the degree she needed to become a practicing medical doctor, Gregory introduced her to the secrets she believed he was hiding from her beneath their house, bringing her into the world of abnormals.

Years later, Helen was allowed the opportunity to study at the University of Oxford. While there, Magnus was essentially isolated as she was the only female student at the school. Despite this, Helen was able to earn the respect and friendship of four fellow male students. All of them became dear and close friends of Magnus' who held a greater respect for her than any other men (especially of that era), and it was with them that she formed The Five.

The Five
Sometime in the early / mid-1880s, Magnus formed, a group of extraordinary minds that included herself, James Watson, John Druitt, Nikola Tesla, and Nigel Griffin. Like herself, the others could be considered geniuses ahead of their time, and in this group Magnus and the others felt like they were a part of something more.

In the Spring of 1886, Magnus was able to acquire a sample of pure, untainted vampire blood before the species was exterminated by the Church. Magnus devised a serum from the blood that was discovered to possess unique properties and the group's curiosity about humanity's potential to evolve led them to each take an injection of the blood. Magnus volunteered to go first, to make sure the serum was safe despite her friends' warnings that the side effects of the blood were completely unknown. Magnus survived the injection, though the awakening of her longevity abnormality was quite painful. The other members then took an injection of the blood and also gained their own unique abilities. It is unknown if the other members of The Five were aware of abnormals beforehand.

To her great regret, her lover and fiancé, John Druitt's exposure to the source blood had the unforeseen side effect of driving him insane and led to the creation of the most notorious killer in history - Jack the Ripper. Magnus tried one last time after the rest of The Five had given up on Druitt to appeal to his better nature and to accept her help. However by this time Druitt's insanity had all but consumed the man he once was and he tried to attack Magnus, forcing her to defend herself and leading him to vanish from her life for a long time.

Though The Five would never admit it, Magnus could be considered the group's de facto leader. This is mostly because she is able to keep them in line and keep them focused on the bigger picture. Each man respected her enough to know not to make her mad. In early 2009, Watson and Druitt hinted to Will she may have been their leader when they jokingly asked him what it's like to follow the orders of a woman without having lived through the traditions of the 19th century.

Leader of Sanctuary
For over 120 years (ultimately giving 5 lifetimes to her work resulting from time travel ), Magnus has run the Sanctuary Network, where she tracks, protects and learns from the extraordinary and / or paranormal creatures that inhabit our world. She serves both as head of house of the Old City Sanctuary, and as elected head of the global Sanctuary Network.

Magnus personally knew many great figures of history, including H. G. Wells, and Jules Verne, as well as U.S. presidents Teddy Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Warren G. Harding, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and at least one of The Beatles. She was aboard the Titanic when it hit an iceberg and sank in 1912, and was in the room when the Nazis surrendered at the end of World War II, mainly because Eisenhower refused to be in the same room as Alfred Jodl. There are also pictures of her with Albert Einstein, Amelia Earhart, Mahātmā Ghandi, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr..

Return of Druitt
In early 2008 while working on a case involving the abnormal boy Alexei, Magnus was confronted with her former fiancé and father of her daughter, John Druitt. He had managed to infiltrate the Old City Sanctuary by pretending to be unconscious in order to get to Magnus.

While Druitt, like the rest of, had gained some form of longevity, he had recently relapsed with a disease that his own source blood-altered physiology couldn't handle. Only Magnus's pure longevity-causing blood could cure him, as it had in the past.

Magnus however did not want to cure him in the beginning because she believed it would only prolong his suffering with his insanity and tried to offer him help first; not liking that Druitt had teleported Ashley away from her and into the SHU with a dangerous giant lizard creature in hopes of getting her to comply. This was a perfect example of how deranged Druitt had become if he was putting his own daughter in harms way. Druitt became enraged when Magnus revealed that she never told Ashley the truth about who her father was; letting her believe he was dead.

In the end, Magnus appeared to relent and fetched a pure sample of her blood for Druitt to inject. Satisfied, Druitt took the injection but moments later Druitt's power began to turn on him. Magnus had poisoned him, although she obviously felt sorry for her action. But Druitt was not going to go quietly as he looked her in the eye and said "The Five... the others... will come" before teleporting away with the belief that his old comrades would avenge him. Magnus however thought he wouldn't survive for very much longer and would die. It wasn't until later on in Rome that she learned he wasn't dead as she had initially expected.

Pursuing Adam Worth in 1898
In early-2011, Magnus follows Adam Worth back in time through his time portal and pursues him throughout London in 1898 to stop him from curing his daughter Imogene, who is naturally meant to die in the timeline from a rare form of Leukemia. During her pursuit, Magnus tries her best to avoid encountering her past self and is ultimately successful, albeit coming extremely close to getting caught by Past-Helen a few times. Despite this however, Magnus ends up completely failing to stop herself from also encountering Past-Watson, who quickly discovers that she is from the future and promises to keep quiet for the sake of preserving the timeline. When Future-Adam tries to kill Future-Helen after she tracks him down to his small lab, he accidentally kills Imogene instead, restoring the natural order of the timeline. After killing Future-Worth from early-2011, to avoid herself inadvertently changing the timeline by her mere presence in the past with her sheer knowledge of future historical events, Magnus accepts the advice she was given from Past-Watson and ends up supposedly taking a long "vacation" in a known secluded part of the world; hiding on a mountain top in Nepal for the next 113 years before she can resurface and rejoin the timeline to help Will in the present dealing with the mass amounts of Hollow Earth abnormals invading the surface from the three caldera sites.

It is revealed later however that Magnus had instead been secretly working with several important figures of the 20th century, including Albert Einstein and Buckminster Fuller amongst others, in order to build a new Underground Sanctuary.

Personal life
It is revealed that Magnus is very wealthy and goes to a villa she owns on Capri, near Naples, every 7 years for a long weekend.

Hobbies
Magnus has a known affinity for aviation, so much so that she owns a private fleet of several helicopters and planes. She is seen in a photograph to have, at the very least, met historical flight figure Amelia Earhart. In Magnus's entire flight career for the last hundred years or so she has only ever been in three crashes; one of which she was a passenger. All three accidents however were not the direct result of pilot error, but that of abnormal interference beyond her control.

(According to Amanda Tapping, Helen plays the piano, though she is unsure of when Helen may find enough down time to play the instrument as a way to relax.)

Education
Aside from primarily being an M.D., she also holds a Doctoral degree (D) in Teratology (T), Cryptozoology (C), Xenobiology (X), and Biology (B) according to the letters printed on her Sanctuary business card.

Graduate school and medical board certification / licensing wasn't easy to come by for Magnus as she had to constantly fight against the social era she lived in and the stigma of her father working on "outlandish case studies".

The influence of Gregory's connections and reputation initially helped allow her to gain massive amounts of medical and scientific knowledge (something that was odd for a woman of that time period). That however wasn't enough for her to gain entrance into the Royal College in London. Though Helen had passed the entrance exam three separate times with the highest marks possible, the Board repeatedly denied her entrance; Helen only tolerated taking the exam 3 times as getting into the London school was something she absolutely needed to do in order to gain a degree to legally practice medicine anywhere in Europe. Severely frustrated, she went and sought council with her father about her situation, adamantly refusing to take the exam for a fourth time. Gregory noted that she knew more about the subject matter than the professors writing the tests, and saw this constant denial for his daughter to have a career as a medical professional as a way for the Board to punish him for his fringe work rather than it being a grievance against her specifically. At her insistent plea to get some standing in the medical and scientific community, Gregory officially brought Helen into his world of studying abnormals.

At the University of Oxford in the late-1800's, she was one of the first woman to ever attend the institution, however, it was initially under the pretense that she could only audit classes as no women were allowed to enroll at the time; a rule she railed against with a vengeance. It wasn't until the year 1921 (as seen in the opening title sequence) that she was able to officially graduate with her M.D. certificate.

During Magnus's time reliving the past, to build credit to the name 'Helen Bancroft', she went through graduate school again. By the year 1916, she had: During the summer semester of 1948, she taught a Fellowship course at Black Mountain College in North Carolina to share an office with Buckminster Fuller.
 * Graduated from the University of London with a Doctor in Science degree in Medical Science; becoming a visiting professor there.
 * Gained a PhD in Global Health from the University of Lahore in Pakistan; becoming the professor of Global Health at Lahore, its Executive Director of Health Science, and their Director of Medical Fellowship.
 * Became an honorary professor at the University of Queensland in Australia.

Age
The injection of the source blood serum occurred in the Spring of 1886, making Magnus's physical age that of essentially being 35-years-old for the rest of her seemingly eternal life.

To help clarify, for current and future birthdays on August 27th, she will now turn i.e.:


 * 274 in 2011 instead of 161
 * 275 in 2012 instead of 162
 * 276 in 2013 instead of 163
 * 277 in 2014 instead of 164
 * 278 in 2015 instead of 165


 * 279 in 2016 instead of 166
 * 280 in 2017 instead of 167
 * 281 in 2018 instead of 168
 * 282 in 2019 instead of 169
 * 283 in 2020 instead of 170

Character and traits
Helen Magnus is bold and straightforward, brave and no-nonsense, yet she remains proudly true to her formal Victorian English sensibilities. Stemming from her British roots, she is a person who prefers to stay busy and can only tolerate a "long weekend doing nothing" once every seven years.

Magnus's past is long and colorful, as one would expect from a life lasting 274 years. However, she proves that living forever is not the best of things and finds it hard at times, calling longevity a curse and admits that "dinner parties are hell" as she can't relate to anyone. She has had to bury countless friends, colleagues, and lovers, making her somewhat reluctant to let new people into her heart as she's learned to not get too close to people anymore over the course of the last century. On more than one occasion, Magnus has searched for a way to try to reverse the effects of the source blood as she is so often tired of outliving the one's that she loves.

As a physician and scientist, while some of her procedures and treatments may occasionally be considered controversial by some and or unheard of, Magnus does adhere to the Hippocratic Oath. While she studies and treats a wide range of abnormal beings, she does not use that knowledge for ill-purpose acts such as like the Cabal who try to create and or modify creatures (something Magnus is adamantly against). Magnus is very cautious with genetic treatments, especially with her uneasiness to 'fly blind' without having the creator and or also the creator's research and notes to follow considering the possibility that her attempts to undo what has been done may accidentally kill the subject outright.

Altered physiology
Presumably due to the affects of the source blood giving her a unique blood chemistry, besides having Longevity, Magnus seems to require a lot less of certain things than a normal human being does to still be able to properly function. This includes:

Languages
She is knowledgeable in a vast number of languages, including:

Weapons and fighting
On more than one occasion she is shown to be skilled in hand-to-hand combat.

Magnus is abundantly seen to be very comfortable in holding and being adept at using a wide variety of weaponry, including but not limited to:


 * All sorts of tech gizmos that Henry whips up in his weapons lab.
 * She was able to create a bomb / explosion out of lit stores of jet fuel.
 * Used the automated assist mechanism to kill intruders.

With a brief glance, Magnus can specify weapons, such as Starstreak missiles.

Vehicles
Magnus possesses is the ability to operate almost any type of vehicle; she is able to drive/pilot:

Technology
She is technologically savvy:
 * Able to use and repair a range of analogue and digital devices.
 * Familiar with the Sanctuary's computer system.
 * Can perform piggy-backed hacks.
 * Can get severely damaged and parted computer systems to operate again powered with car batteries.
 * Able to boost a crashed helicopter's radio distress signal using the inside walls of the borehole of an abandoned oil rig.
 * Can send a long-wave transmission out of old disused radios attached to solar panels.
 * Can quickly figure out the UI of both Praxian  and vampire technologies.

One of Magnus's most impressive talents is the ability to recreate tech devices after only seeing and handling them for a brief period of time: she was able to have Henry recreate the stunner weapon she encountered in the Guardian's alternate timeline. When Magnus and Will were trapped in Carentan, she was able to successfully recreate a jerry-rigged version of Adam Worth's time nodes to nullify the time dilation field even though she never actually physically spent time working on one of Worth's nodes (Henry and Tesla did; whom the audience can infer relayed their findings to her).

Art
In an implanted perfect dream world, Helen is an at-home freelance painter who doesn't show her work publicly at art galleries, but instead prefers to sell her work privately to buyers through her agent.

Relationships

 * John Druitt
 * Magnus was briefly engaged to Druitt, her lover and first patient. She had a daughter with him, Ashley, who was originally conceived in late 1888. She froze the embryo for almost a century before loneliness and the thought that Druitt was gone for good allowed her to carry her to term. It is implied on more than one occasion that she was once very much in love with him and those feelings continue to haunt her emotionally. However his activities as "Jack the Ripper" and his betrayal of her trust has remained a source of terrible pain.


 * Ashley Magnus
 * Helen brought Ashley to term to be a companion to help combat the overbearing weight of eternal loneliness that she was experiencing due to having lived for so long ; after having continually witnessed people that she loved and cared about die. Helen loved her daughter with all her heart, and was very protective of her. Even though Helen needed Ashley to fulfill a vital and dangerous role within the Sanctuary Network for Helen's work, Helen candidly admitted to Ashley that she can't bear to see her hurt. This had previously led Magnus to keep certain details from Ashley, such as the identity of her father. Ashley's 'death' was possibly the most terrible pain that has ever happened to Magnus, rivaled only by Druitt's betrayal, even making her try to find a way to end the eternity of her life.


 * Dr. Will Zimmerman
 * After saving his life when he was an 8-year-old boy, Magnus had kept a long-distance watch over Will into adulthood. She anonymously funded his scholarship to Harvard University, and has now become his mentor. Even though he irritates her at times, she regards him as her protégé and friend who she has been grooming as her replacement as head of the Sanctuary Network should her eternal life come to an unexpected end.


 * Henry Foss
 * Magnus took charge of Henry when she found him as an orphan boy on the moors. Realizing he was a HAP, she helped him suppress his abnormal nature until he was ready to embrace it as an adult. Though initially raising him like a son alongside her daughter Ashley, their adult relationship goes beyond being just that of mother and son. They have a profound respect for each other bundled in a complex blend of closeness and professionalism. During their time in Praxis, Magnus is seen to behave as a knowing parent towards Henry when she had tasked Kate Freelander to make sure he didn't get distracted by technological things. While infiltrating a SCIU facility, Magnus became very visibly upset when she thought she had lost him to a creature through a dimensional rift (reacting to having potentially just lost a second child); once Tesla had finally returned him to her, she was seen not wanting to physically let go of Henry. Magnus is seen to off-and-on tease Henry, preying on his gullibility to easily believe her word about historical events and places, such as the real location of Area 51, about the true nature of The Pentagon, and Henry's continued outspoken hope for the existence of extra-terrestrial aliens. When Henry starts to recount a wild dream he had involving his girlfriend Erika Myers dressed as Princess Leia and him using his lightsaber (his wording easily inferable to be a possible sexual fantasy), Magnus lets out a shocked gasp and stops him before he could say more. This familial closeness between her and Henry means that Magnus the would presumably fill the role of being a grandmother figure to Henry's unborn daughter Alice.


 * Bigfoot
 * Bigfoot has been with Magnus for the last third of her long life, and has become one of her most trusted companions and a dear friend.


 * Nikola Tesla
 * Magnus's relationship to Tesla is very complex and at times has been difficult; although she acknowledges his genius and clearly enjoys their verbal sparring, his continuous amorous and sexual advances have gotten on her nerves for decades. But Magnus really enjoys that relationship more then she is willing to admit. Like most others who knew him, she considered him "an obnoxious ass" back in their Oxford days, but she didn't, however, give up on him, helping him realize that his aspirations of ancient vampire grandeur were doomed to fail. After the disappearance(s) of Druitt their relationship develops; she comforts him when he is 'de-vamped' and even kisses him in the main lab during the abnormal insurgency invasion of the Old City Sanctuary. However, despite their differences, they both love each other deeply even though they both loath to admit.


 * Dr. James Watson
 * Another member of, Magnus and Watson were very close partners. Watson helped Magnus conduct research and run the original sanctuary in London, eventually being given the reigns to the UK Sanctuary when Magnus left England for Old City to start a new sanctuary there. Magnus and Watson cared deeply for one another; being one another's trusted confidants. In the early 1940's Druitt suspected out of jealousy that Magnus and Watson had become a romantic couple, becoming filled with rage at the thought of his best friend sleeping with his ex-lover that he still has feelings for. Potentially due to Watson's limited mobility later in life, Magnus had been known to visit him in London every so often. While a past brief sexual relationship between the two hasn't been confirmed to the audience, fans do otherwise consider Watson to be an Uncle / Godfather figure to Magnus's daughter, Ashley.

Romances
Of Magnus's countless amounts of friends and lovers over the years, there are only a handful of known people with which Magnus has had romances with, as well as interests in:

Hair style and color
Due to Amanda Tapping's prior acting role as lead character Samantha Carter in the massively popular Stargate franchise, the premise for Sanctuary was to try to make Helen Magnus look completely different, to not be a Sam Carter 2.0 just with an English accent. While it did cause some fan disturbance, Amanda had decided to grow out her hair from her iconic short blonde pixie cut / bob. During the web series, she wore a raven colored black wig. During the reshoot and TV Series pick-up, she had actually dyed her hair dark brunette throughout the entire run of the show.

In, when Magnus call's Ashley's cellphone from the satellite phone after the crash, the contact photo on the screen is a beautiful shot of Magnus smiling at the camera. In reality, the phone Emilie Ullerup is using is actually owned by Martin Wood. BTS, Amanda had called his phone from hers, having the contact name on his phone simply changed from "Amanda" to say "Mom" instead. This photo was taken by Martin when they were sitting at a restaurant for dinner right after Amanda had dyed her hair dark for the series.

Some real world parallels between both Amanda and Helen do exist, such as the decision for Magnus to be a natural blonde who dyes her hair brunette later in life. It's unknown if Magnus's daughter Ashley was always intended for the character to be cast as a blonde, confirming the heredity. Emilie Ullerup who plays Ashley (who won the role by beating out several other actresses due to her impressive ability to pick up fight choreography almost instantly) is a natural blonde herself, and thus, so is Ashley by default (Magnus being a natural blonde may possibly be partially due to this fact to keep continuity).


 * (Speculation / Fan Theory: To keep Helen Bancroft's identity separate from Helen Magnus, whatever hair color Magnus had, Future-Helen might have adopted the opposite for Bancroft in an effort to help not blow her cover. This could mean that Future-Helen was actually blonde for a very long time until fairly recently; until right before she rejoined her original timeline in early-2011 in which she would have finally begun to dye her hair brunette again. Alternatively, Future-Helen as Bancroft may have intentionally made sure to always copy the same hair color as Magnus in order to insure Magnus's natural history in case someone had accidentally recognized her and or as mentioned earlier, for Future-Helen to continue to be able to impersonate her Past-Self at any given point in time (avoiding a repeat incidence of where both Past-Watson and Past-Druitt immediately noticed her change in hair color). It's hard to say for certain as to which scenario is the most plausible, as according to Abby and Will, there are apparently no historical photos whatsoever of Helen Bancroft in existence for them to reference in order to visually confirm her identify as actually having been Future-Helen. )


 * Character Error: In, Jimmy played by Michael Shanks (Amanda's long time co-star on Stargate SG-1) makes an in-joke saying "I love the hair" to which Magnus thanks him for it. It's a reference to Amanda changing hairstyles between series (short blonde to long brunette). In-universe however, it makes zero sense as from character history, Magnus has had her same long dark hair for well over the last 50+ years prior to then, easily since before whenever Jimmy was even born.