As a young boy growing up with a father in the Royal Airforce, Theodore travelled widely throughout Europe and Asia, and this is where his aptitude for flying machines was born. His mother was able to put her physician skills to good use at the main centre hospitals, and with her speciality as a heart surgeon, she was often as busy as her husband. This left Theo time to learn - he chatted with everyone he could find on the family's current airforce base home, and was often found lurking at the back of fighter pilot briefing rooms.

It was a natural progression that saw Theodore join the British Airforce as a navigator and pilot, and then when his family moved to the USA, he took his chance and applied for Starfleet as a trainee officer with a growing interest in astrogation - the navigating of ships through space.

It was during his second year at the Academy that his father accepted a position piloting mining ships into the asteroid belt beyond Mars - his exceptional flying skills made transferring to space craft a natural thing to do. Within three months Dean Grant was dead, his ship was caught in a planted demolition charge.

Theodore thought seriously about leaving the Academy, not wanting to put any future family through the emotional wrench that he and his mother had suffered. But it was her that talked him into returning, she said that he would be honouring his father's memory if he continued on with his chosen career.

He graduated the Academy at the age of 29, and his first assignments were as Helmsman on small impulse-only ships, moving on to assistant helsman on the NX-05 Yorktown. It was on this ship, that he took part in an event which has remained secret until now.

Returning to Earth, Theodore spent a year working for Starfleet on a sensitive project, and became Commanding Officer on the warp 2 capable research vessel Proteus'.

In October 2154, he received a summons to Jupiter Station from Fleet Captain Garroway for news on his reassignment.