Doctor Charles Henry Moffet

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section needs sources or references that appear in reliable, third-party publications. Primary sources and sources affiliated with the subject of the article are generally not sufficient for a Wikipedia article. Please include more appropriate citations from reliable sources, or discuss the issue on the talk page. This article has been tagged since December 2007.

Dr. Charles Henry Moffet (alternate spelling: Moffett) is a fictional character in the tv series Airwolf. He was played by actor David Hemmings.

Moffet is clearly a genius, and just as clearly a sociopath. There are indications in the pilot episode that he has perhaps had run-ins with the American government in the past, but his abilities make him too enticing for the government to pass up. Working for a division of the CIA known as the F.I.R.M., Moffet then designs and builds the prototype supersonic attack helicopter known as Airwolf, which carries a price tag of a billion dollars. During Airwolf's development, the project's chief test pilot is Vietnam veteran Stringfellow Hawke, the dark and Byronic star of the series. (Hawke and Moffet never meet on screen until their final showdown; although they must have known each other; any relationship they may have had during Airwolf's development is hidden within the back-story.)

Upon Airwolf's completion, the F.I.R.M puts the aircraft--piloted by Moffet himself--through a live-fire exercise to demonstrate its abilities to William Dietz (Eugene Roche), an important but skeptical U.S. senator who believes the project to be too costly. Upon seeing what Airwolf can do, however, the impressed senator radios his congratulations to Moffet. But Moffet apparently holds a grudge against Dietz for an earlier run-in, and he proceeds to unleash Airwolf's weapons against the control center, killing Dietz, and wounding several F.I.R.M agents, including its senior official, Michael Coldsmith-Briggs III (code name: "Archangel"). Expressly said to have been blinded in one eye by the attack, Archangel also walks with a cane and a limp for the rest of the series, but the precise nature of this injury is not specified (although in one subsequent episode when he loses part of an ear, his right-hand woman, Marella (Deborah Pratt), quips that they might need to clone him for spare parts, implying that he has used a prosthetic leg since this incident).

Moffet and his crew then fly Airwolf to Libya. The Libyan government caters to Moffet's sadistic desires in exchange for Moffet's use of Airwolf to strike at Libya's enemies. ("There's nothing wrong with a little perversion, Mark," Moffet tells one of his crew at one point, "so long as you don't hurt yourself."). On one occasion Moffet even uses Airwolf to sink an American destroyer with all hands. Discovering that an exotic dancing girl, Gabrielle Ademaur, is actually a F.I.R.M agent assigned to locate him, Moffet abandons her in the desert to die. At the same time, Hawke and his friend Dominic Santini have stolen Airwolf from its compound. When Hawke, who is romantically involved with Gabrielle, finds her only to have her die in his arms, he hunts down Moffet across the desert with Airwolf, killing the inventor with his own creation.

Moffet, however manages to return from beyond the grave. Before fleeing to Libya, he destroyed the plans to Airwolf, making the prototype--now in Hawke's hands--one of a kind, and thus forcing the F.I.R.M. to work with Hawke on the latter's terms in order to have use of the helicopter. Moffet also implanted a software logic bomb in Airwolf's computers; when a certain length of time went by without him entering a special code, the computer took over control of the helicopter and sent it on a spree of destruction before Hawke and Santini could erase the software (season 2's "Moffett's Ghost"--the name was incorrectly spelled by MCA Universal's titles department).

Although Moffet appears in only the pilot and (as a video recording in Airwolf's on-board computer) "Moffett's Ghost", his shadow hovers over the plot for the life of the series.