Tom Morgan

'Dr. Tom Morgan was a geneticist and a colleague of Dr. William Barton. Along with Dr. Borg and Dr. Johnson, he was invited to come along on Barton's expedition into the Florida Everglades to search for the Gill Man. Initially, the surgeon and the geneticist hit it off pretty well when Morgan impressed Barton by how well he could arrange the equipment in the Vagabondia IIIs onboard operating room.

However, like nearly everyone else, Morgan began to get on Barton's bad side. First, he didn't side with his colleague when Marcia Barton insisted on accompanying him and Jed Grant on their first underwater hunt for the Gill Man, during which he and Grant had to abandon their pursuit of the creature to rescue Marcia when she became afflicted with the "raptures of the deep."

Shortly thereafter, the Gill Man was badly burned and taken aboard the Vagabondia for medical attention, and Morgan was confronted with Barton's off-the-wall theories wherein the surgeon thought that he could surgically transform the Gill Man into a land creature, thus "evolving" him. Morgan disagreed, arguing that true evolution could only occur on a genetic level, much to Barton's obvious disgust.

When the Gill Man escaped from the operating room and jumped overboard, only to discover that he could no longer breathe underwater, it was Morgan who dove into the water and pulled him safely to the surface. During this thime, Morgan began to develop a quiet affection for Marcia Barton, but when the Gill Man finally killed the unbalanced Barton as revenge for the murder of Jed Grant, Morgan respected Marcia's decision to move as far away from all the horrible memories of her husband as possible.