Canton Everett Delaware III
Portrayed by: Mark Sheppard (young Canton) & William Morgan Sheppard (older Canton)Travelled with: Eleventh Doctor
Appearances: The Impossible Astronaut (Series 6 : Episode 1) & Day of the Moon (Series 6 : Episode 2)
Associated with: Amy Pond, Rory Williams, River Song
Enemies encountered: Silence
Canton Everett Delaware III was seen assisting the Eleventh Doctor in The Impossible Astronaut (Series 6 : Episode 1) and Day of the Moon (Series 6 : Episode 2). When Canton is first seen, it is as an old man whom the Doctor summoned to Utah to assist with the latter’s funeral arrangements. As a young man, Canton was an FBI agent, forced out of the bureau due to his homosexuality and intentions to marry a black man. Six weeks after Canton’s forced resignation, the president of the United States, Richard Nixon, summons Canton to assist with a mysterious phone call that the President keeps receiving. While Canton is first listening to a recording of the phone call, the Doctor arrives and Canton agrees to allow the Doctor to assist with the investigation.
Canton travelled with the Doctor during the year of 1969 to investigate the mysterious phone calls to the President and the alien invasion of the Silence. Rory Williams explained to Canton how the TARDIS worked after his first trip in it. Soon after discovering the Silence, the Silence organise the capture and imprisonment of the Doctor and the deaths of his companions, Amy, Rory and River. Canton pretended to lead this hunt, ordering the Doctor be imprisoned in a dwarf star alloy prison in Area 51, so that the Silence would not realise their presence was known. After the prison was complete and the bodies of Amy and Rory were placed with the Doctor, Canton sealed the prison from inside, before Amy and Rory were revived. Canton and Amy went looking for the little girl phoning the President, and in the process shot and wounded a member of the Silence. Canton used Amy’s video phone to record the Silence authorising the execution of its species, and together with the Doctor, broadcast the message live on TV during the moon landing footage.
With the investigation complete, the Doctor left Canton in 1969 to continue his work with the FBI and for President Nixon and suggested that the latter allow Canton to marry. Unfortunately for Canton, when President Nixon realised Canton wished to marry a black man, President Nixon reconsidered the idea. In 2011, an older Canton provided the gasoline used to burn the Doctor’s body after he was shot and killed by an astronaut, having been one of 5 people an older Doctor summoned to his witness his death, with Canton providing certainty that it was the Doctor who had been killed.