David Pilcher, also known as Dr. Jenkins, was the mysterious and charismatic psychiatrist who treated Ethan Burke at Wayward Pines Hospital.
History[]
David Pilcher inherited a fortune and started working at his company, Pilcher Technologies, and in 1996,[1] he discovered that the human DNA was mutating. He tried to warn the scientific community, but they didn't listen, they thought he wasn't serious. After his conference, he was talking with his sister about the concept of time and saving humanity, when he came up with a method to help a few selected.
He derived profits from his company to a special project developing cryonics technology, something dangerous and illegal at the time, so he bought the right people to keep it a secret.
However, there were people who believed in David. During a book signing, he met a woman named Megan, a hypnotheraphy student, who told him that there was nothing else he could do for the people who chose not to believe him.
He asked Arnold Pope to join him, a security guard from his company, to be his personal recruiter for the project.
Later, in the year 2014, a man called Adam Hassler contacted David. He would send a man to be a part of his project, an agent called Ethan Burke. Ethan was put in cryostasis, like his fellow agents before him, Bill Evans, and Kate Hewson. With Ethan already frozen, David met with Adam, who asked him to call off the thing, but David refused to this, telling him that it had been handled.[2] A few days later, Adam called Pilcher once again, to warn him about Ethan's wife and son, who where on their way to find the agent.[3]
After the incident, by December of the same year,[1] David, his sister Pamela, and many others went to sleep, and didn't wake up for 2000 years. David confirmed his theory, and awoke in a world dominated by abbies. In just two years, the humans had a town for their own, and a fence to keep the abbies outside.
Those first humans that were woken up were the Group A, all of them knew the truth about the time in which they lived on, but it was too much for the majority of them to handle, and they eventually took their own lives. Some of them didn't believe him, and chose to leave.[4] However, the 26 people[1] that managed to escape were attacked by abbies.
With most of the Group A gone, David started a second group of people, leaving the truth to only a few of the people there. For the rest of them, there were Seven Rules, and if a person broke them, they would be reckoned.[4]
He became a psychiatrist at the Wayward Pines Hospital, hiding his real name and going by an alias, Dr. Jenkins. After Kate Hewson was brought out of suspension and placed in Wayward Pines, she tried to escape several times, and eventually, she was thrown into a padded room. Pilcher followed her progress closely, visiting her regularly. During their meetings, Kate asked him in what of experiment was she, and when Pilcher told her that Wayward Pines was just a town, she mentioned the electrified fence. Finally, Kate seemed to get better, and Pilcher let her out to live a life on her own. However, David kept meeting her over the years, even after her marriage with Harold Ballinger. In their sessions, Kate talked about her previous life, and how she was happier now, since she felt she had been forced to live each day at its fullest. She clarified that her questions regarding life were the same, but that she didn't need to know the answers as fast as before. Pilcher asked her if she had considered having kids, and Kate told him that, with Harold, they actually had. Before leaving, David gave her prescriptions for antidepressives, and Kate eventually became a model citizen. Thinking about how he could mold Kate Hewson into that person, David saw no limits with other people.[5]
Years later, when Ethan Burke woke up in the hospital for the second time, this time handcuffed to the bed, David introduced himself as Dr. Jenkins. He asked Ethan if he had a history of mental illness, and informed him about the bleeding in his head that was probably responsible for his dissociative breakdown. The doctor declared that Ethan needed surgery to drain the blood, but the agent refused treatment there, he wanted to talk to doctors in Boise. However, Jenkins told him that doctors advised to be treated in Wayward Pines. When Ethan started screaming, the doctor asked the nurse to intervene.[2]
The next day, Dr. Jenkins ran into Ethan in the hospital, who was there looking for his wife and son. Pilcher told the agent that there were no other patients in the hospital at the moment. He suggested to lie down, and tried to convince him to have the draining surgery. As he was about to get Ethan's consent, Nurse Pam showed up in the room, and when Ethan saw her, he decided to leave the hospital.
The next day, Jenkins witnessed with the rest of the town the reckoning of Beverly Brown, who was caught trying to escape.[6]
Once Ethan found his family in Wayward Pines, Pilcher met Ethan in the street. He told him that he knew he was trying to leave, but he also reminded him that now he had his family with him, something that most of the residents there couldn't say. He asked him to stay, and when Ethan told him that he didn't live there, the psychiatrist was left alone in the street.[3]
One night, while Pilcher was looking at a new species of pine-tree, he found Ethan and his wife Theresa walking to their house. Ethan asked for his advice on an execution he was supposed to lead. The doctor told him that maybe, the best things in life required a sacrifice. He made them notice all the beauty around them, but Ethan and Theresa left him by himself again.[7]
When David found out that Ethan had managed to climb the side of the mountain and gone on the wilds, he got a helicopter and found him near the ruins of Boise. He introduced himself as David Pilcher, the creator of Wayward Pines, and urged him to get in the helicopter to get away from the aberrations that harmed Ethan on his first night in the woods. The agent got into the helicopter and they flew away from Boise, back to Wayward Pines.[8]
After saving Ethan's life and taking him to a facility inside a mountain, he told him the whole truth. He revealed his story to him, how he "recruited" volunteers, and how the First Generation knew what the adults didn't. He explained that it was because the young were fearless that they could accept the truth, and when Ethan asked why not tell the adults, Pilcher told him about Group A. He proceeded to tell Ethan that the reason why he woke him was because he felt the instability in the air, and that he could help to solve the problem. Finally, David told him about the faction of people who had been removing their chips and were planning to take down the fence. The Secret Service agent told him that he would help stop all threats: the abbies, the faction, and David himself.[4]
He took Ethan back to Wayward Pines and asked him not to tell a thing to anyone. The next day, he was walking down the street waving at people during their commute. At the hospital, his sister found him, hopeless because of the faction that wanted to destroy the town. Pam asked him if he had eaten something and assured him that Ethan would find the insurgents. When he asked her how could be so sure, she said that because since he trusted him, she did too.[9]
Appearances[]
Wayward Pines[]
Season 1[]
- 101. "Where Paradise Is Home"
- 102. "Do Not Discuss Your Life Before"
- 103. "Our Town, Our Law"
- 104. "One of Our Senior Realtors Has Chosen to Retire"
- 105. "The Truth"
- 106. "Choices"
- 107. "Betrayal"
- 108. "The Friendliest Place on Earth"
- 109. "A Reckoning"
- 110. "Cycle"
Season 2[]
- 202. "Blood Harvest" (video recording)
- 205. "Sound The Alarm" (flashback)
- 206. "City Upon A Hill" (flashback)
- 207. "Time Will Tell" (flashback)
- 209. "Walcott Prep" (flashback)