Toshiko Sato
Toshiko Sato is a female television character who features in Torchwood.
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Biography
Toshiko Sato (Japanese: 佐藤 とし子, Hepburn: Satō Toshiko, /təˈʃiːkoʊ ˈsɑːtoʊ/)
When she moved into her own flat, she chose not to have a flat-warming party as there was nobody that she wanted to invite. (Episode: Adam) She was later 'snapped up' by a government think tank when she was 20 years old. (Episode: Greeks Bearing Gifts) This saw her being hired at the Ministry of Defence's Lodmoor Research Facility. Whilst working at Lodmoor, Milton took Tosh's mother hostage and blackmailed her into stealing the Ministry of Defence's plans for a sonic modulator and building one. The plans were flawed, however, and she corrected the design without thinking about it. After handing the sonic modulator over to Milton, UNIT arrested Tosh and withdrew her rights as a citizen, holding her in a prison indefinitely to make an example of her. Toshi was held without right of appeal, communication with anybody outside of the prison or news of her mother's fate until she was visited by Jack Harkness. (Episode: Fragments)
She was offered her freedom but had to have limited contact with her mother but gained a clean slate in return for five years of work at Torchwood Three. Ultimately, Toshi decided to accept the offer and joined the Torchwood Institute. During that time, she came to work alongside Harkness and Suzie Costello. (Episode: Fragments) Her role on the team was to serve as a computer expert where part of her job was to cover up the deaths of those murdered by extraterrestrial beings. (Episode: Everything Changes) The nature of her job meant that she never had time to have a relationship with anyone. (Episode: Day One) However, she did develop feelings for Tommy Brockless who the team had to freeze and unfreeze one day every year. (Episode: To the Last Man)
Toshiko Sato worked at a rain-slicked crime scene in Cardiff alongside her Torchwood Three teammates, where they investigated a murder victim. She utilized a handheld data scanner to analyze the surrounding area before Captain Jack Harkness used an alien resurrection gauntlet to briefly revive the deceased man. Later, Toshiko Sato operated the primary computer terminals within the team's underground headquarters, known as the Hub, monitoring spatial anomalies and regional data. When a rogue police officer named Gwen Cooper infiltrated the base, Toshiko Sato sat at her workstation alongside Owen Harper and Suzie Costello, observing the intruder until Captain Jack Harkness intervened. Following a sequence of events that led to Suzie Costello's death, Toshiko Sato remained with the team at the Hub as Gwen Cooper was officially integrated into the secret organization as their newest operative. (Episode: Everything Changes)
Tosh was happy when Gwen went ahead with her wedding despite being impregnated by a Nostrovite and told her that she did not expect that she and Owen would ever get married. When the child's mother arrived to claim her child, Tosh hid with Banana Boat and joined Jack in tracking her down, with Jack eventually managing to kill her and Owen and Rhys destroying the child with the singularity scalpel. Owen later invited Tosh to dance with him. (Episode: Something Borrowed) Tosh remained at the Hub when Owen, Ianto and Gwen went to the Electro and noticed her systems behaving oddly following Rift activity there. She ran a film found at the Electro frame by frame with Ianto, who noticed that the Ghostmaker and Pearl disappeared, and kept an eye on sightings of the Night Travellers. (Episode: From Out of the Rain) Tosh helped Gwen collect information on people who had been taken by the Rift, theorising that the negative Rift spikes she detected indicated abductions, and agreed to keep her project a secret from the rest of the team until she was ready to tell Jack. When Jack told Gwen to shut her project down, Tosh told her that they had tried their best. (Episode: Adrift)
Tosh went with Jack, Owen and Ianto to an old building to investigate unusual energy patterns that she detected and which she assumed belonged to an alien species that they had not encountered before. The patterns actually belonged to explosive devices which injured the team, with Tosh suffering a broken arm, bruised ribs and needing to be saved by Jack, Ianto and Rhys from a pillar which almost crushed her. (Episode: Fragments) Owen gave her painkillers so that she could help the team when John Hart and Gray started attacking Cardiff. Investigating reports of ghosts, Tosh visited the central server building with Ianto and the two were later tasked with stabilising the Turnmill Nuclear Power Station and preventing meltdown. She was shot by Gray in the Hub as she directed Owen on restoring the coolant system and, with meltdown inevitable, she had Owen seal the power station. Owen was locked inside and Tosh spoke with him as he died, discussing the date that they had never gone on, reminiscing about their early days together and keeping from him the fact that she too was dying. She died in Jack's arms after he returned with Gwen, Ianto and John. (Episode: Exit Wounds)
Toshi joined the rest of the team in testing the resurrection gauntlet and was in charge of questioning John Tucker when they revived him, but he panicked when she told him that he was dead and told her that he did not see his murderer. She covered up the death of a hospital porter killed by a Weevil by changing the hospital's rota and planting a false witness and explained this to Gwen Cooper when she infiltrated the Hub, earning her disapproval. After Suzie killed herself, Toshi and Owen returned items that they had taken from the Hub and were kept in the dark about Jack's resurrection by him and Gwen. (Episode: Everything Changes) Toshi tracked the descent of a meteorite and was forgiving of Gwen when she accidentally released the Sex Gas from it, telling Owen to give her a break. She attempted to identify Carys Fletcher after she killed a man whilst possessed by the gas, located her home using CCTV, correctly deduced that she would go after her ex-boyfriend and discovered that she worked at the Conway Clinic. There, Tosh disagreed with Jack for allowing Gwen to offer herself up as the gas's new host, but he used a portable cell to stop and destroy the gas as it made the exchange. (Episode: Day One) After helping Jack, Owen and Gwen recover a quantum transducer from Bernie Harris, Tosh visited his mother in the hopes of learning where he found the device and looked up Tom Flanagan and Ed Morgan after Owen and Gwen saw the two whilst using it. Ed threw himself onto a knife held by Gwen, but Tosh assured her that he would have found a way to kill himself regardless based on his history of suicide attempts. (Episode: Ghost Machine)
After sending a polite message to an Arcan leisure crawler sighted over Cardigan Bay, Tosh detected Lisa Hallett's heat signals in the storeroom whilst trying to find out what was causing an internal power drain and subsequently discovered Ianto's attempts to erase CCTV footage. She was ordered by Jack to put the Hub into lockdown to prevent Lisa's escape and to charge up batteries, but she used her own initiative to trip the lockdown timer and risked Lisa getting free. Returning to the Hub to stop her, Tosh, Jack, Owen and Gwen shot and killed Lisa after she transplanted herself into Annie Botchwell's body. (Episode: Cyberwoman)
Overview
Personality and attributes
In appearance, Toshiko Sato was a human Asian female of Japanese descent with a slender build. She possessed short, straight black hair styled in a practical bob that framed her face, dark brown eyes, and a fair complexion. Her attire consisted of smart-casual professional civilian wear suitable for a technical and research environment, featuring a dark button-up shirt layered under a tailored dark jacket, paired with slim-fitting trousers. She wore sensible, flat dark civilian shoes that allowed for ease of movement between her computer station and field investigations. She did not wear a uniform, armor, tactical combat gear, or masks, maintaining a quiet, professional, and conventional civilian presentation. (Episode: Everything Changes)
Tosh was in love with Owen Harper but because of her insecurity, she found it hard to tell him how she felt. (Episode: Greeks Bearing Gifts)
Powers and abilities
Toshiko Sato was a member of the human race and possessed no superhuman powers, biological mutations, or supernatural enhancements. Her physical strength, speed, and overall combat durability were standard for an ordinary human female who focused primarily on intellectual and technical labor rather than rigorous physical conditioning. However, she possessed an exceptional, high-level human intellect with a specific genius-level mastery of computer science, advanced programming, systems hacking, and data analysis. These exceptional skills allowed her to interface effortlessly with complex computing arrays, operate sophisticated software networks, and utilize advanced handheld tracking and scanning equipment to detect environmental and alien anomalies. (Episode: Everything Changes)
Notes
- Toshiko Sato was portrayed by actress Naoko Mori where she featured in the shared universe of the Doctor Who universe.
In other media
Literature
Appearances
- Torchwood:
External Links
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