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Tommy Cadle
Tommy138-resimage v-tlarge169 w-768
Vital statistics
Title Tommy Cadle
Gender Male
Race Human
Faction {{{faction}}}
Health {{{health}}}
Level {{{level}}}
Status Alive
Location DeSpray Bay

Thomas "Tommy" Cadle is the main protagonist of Pet Alien. He is voiced by Charlie Schlatter.

Biography[]

"13-year-old Tommy Cadle likes to live life under the radar...no hassles, no problems, no trouble. He's a straight "B" student with a nice, easy life. But that was before Dinko and the gang showed up."

History[]

The Most Special Place[]

Tommy first appears when Dinko and Scruffy land in his backyard. He shows them around the place and lets them stay in his treehouse for the night. After many failed attempts to find "The Most Special Place", Dinko and Scruffy (along with their new friends, Flip and Zuffy) come back to Tommy's house and play on his tire swing, until they accidentally break it. Dinko apologizes to Tommy and prepares to leave. Tommy insists that the aliens can stay and he is not mad at them. He allows them to live in his treehouse as his new friends.

Pet Alien[]

When Tommy hears a crashing sound, Tommy comes outside to find that an alien spaceship has landed on the rooftop of his lighthouse. Five aliens from the Conforma Dimension: Dinko, Gumpers, Swanky, Flip and Scruffy pop out of the ship and terrify Tommy. He falls off the lighthouse and Dinko rescues him before he crashes to his death. The two bond and become good friends. The aliens beg Tommy to let them move in with them, so he agrees, but only the five of them can stay, nobody else. Swanky begins redecorating the lighthouse with a large flat screen television, speakers, a hover easy chair and a hover couch.

Throughout the series, Tommy gets annoyed by the aliens' actions and the fact that they always end up getting him in trouble and mooch off of him. However, he does generally accept the aliens as part of his life and sees Dinko as his closest friend. The aliens always refer to him as "Tommy of Earth" and seem incapable of grasping that his name is just "Tommy", much to his annoyance. In some episodes though, Tommy brings his misfortune on himself, often due to culture clashes with the aliens and ignoring things that Dinko and Gumpers warned him about.

Personality[]

Tommy is an average 13-year-old teenage boy who loves playing video games and eating taffy. While he frequently gets annoyed with the aliens because they get him in trouble and mooch off of him, Tommy does sincerely enjoy their company and even views the aliens as his family ("The World Without Hamburgers"). In various episodes, he is shown to be a friendly young boy who tries to help the aliens with their respective problems. He is kind of a pushover because he often lets people push him around and hardly ever calls them out on their actions.

Tommy's character is rather inconsistent; he varies between being mature and immature for his age depending on the episode. He lives in the lighthouse with minimal adult supervision, stocks his own fridge, and attends medical appointments by himself. However, he dislikes attending school and is implied to be very lazy, such as in "Big Hand of Fate" where he apparently hasn't even managed to get B-grades. Depending on the episode, Tommy can act as either a voice of reason to the aliens or an active participant in their antics.

Relationships[]

Tommy's best friend is Dinko. They have gone on various adventures together and will always work to help each other out of trouble. Dinko is very clingy towards Tommy and wants to be with him every second of the day. These attempts to make their bond permanent and improve Tommy’s life only end up making things worse, but Tommy never holds it against Dinko and always forgives him. However, Tommy does have his limits, and has snapped at Dinko whenever the latter goes too far with his stupidity ("Escape From Detention X", "The Alien Who Sold the World", "Uranus Awaits"). Despite this, the two do care for each other and view each other as best friends.

Tommy and Gumpers are shown to have a strong bond and view each other as good friends. When Gumpers came to believe Tommy didn't want him living in the lighthouse anymore ("Unleashed Beast of Fury"), Tommy quickly reassured him that he loved him just the way he was. However, Tommy isn't as close to Gumpers as he is to Dinko, and even refuses Gumpers' efforts to become his new best friend in "The Beast That's Stuck in My Foot" on the basis that Dinko is already his best friend and because he is more clingy towards him than Dinko.

Tommy and Swanky share a mutual hatred. Swanky repeatedly schemes against Tommy (usually to get his bed for himself), insults him, bosses him around, and Tommy is shown on multiple occasions to hate Swanky because of his pompous nature. In "The Boy Who Became Something...", Tommy eventually kicked Swanky out of the lighthouse after the latter told him to "zip it". However, whenever Swanky leaves the lighthouse, the two are shown to miss each other's presence ("The Day of Judgement", "The Creature Who Left").

Tommy gets along great with Scruffy and loves to play with him, mainly because he's the only alien who doesn’t annoy him, get him in trouble or freeload off him.

Tommy tolerates Flip, but gets annoyed with him because he always runs around, yells a lot and likes to play tricks on everyone. When Flip is rendered frozen and unable to move in "The Day Flip Stood Still", Tommy is initially content with leaving him as such as it is more peaceful that way, but eventually grows to miss Flip's antics and tries to restore him to normal.

Tommy’s relationship with Gabby considerably evolved over the course of the show. In the first season, Tommy was afraid of Gabby always coming onto him and tried to stay away from her or ignore her attempts to flirt with him. By season two, they have become genuine friends: They are shown spending more time together and Tommy is more comfortable being around Gabby, with the latter’s stalker tendencies being phased out, essentially becoming Tommy’s only human friend.

Tommy’s arch-enemy is Melba Manners. They are shown to completely despise each other and frequently argue or insult each other, only interacting with each other on the basis that they're neighbors. Melba makes fun of Tommy, bullies him and dislikes him for not controlling his "things" (the aliens), and Tommy hates Melba because she is mean and bossy, resulting in him being too afraid to stand up to her. Some episodes revolve around the two trying to one-up each other at various tasks, with Melba coming out on top until Tommy enlists the aliens' help. However, the two have been shown on rare occasions to somewhat care for each other, with Tommy trying to save Melba from Emperor Breet in "Evil Emperor" and Melba going out into the rain to check if Tommy was okay during the blackout in "Darkness" (although neither them are grateful for it).

Tommy’s other enemy is Granville DeSpray. Tommy hates Granville because he always blames him for everything bad that happens to him. Granville thinks that Tommy is trying to steal Melba from him, even though Tommy has made it perfectly clear numerous times that he despises Melba beyond all reason and wants nothing to do with her, be it platonic or romantic. It is implied that Granville chooses to ignore Tommy’s insistence and just wants to use him as a scapegoat.

Appearance[]

Tommy is a 13-year-old Caucasian boy with fair skin, short brown hair and green eyes. He is very skinny and of below-average height for his age, as shown in "Attack of the 50ft Boy" where he is shorter than both Melba and Clinton, but in other episodes, they are the same height. He is old enough to have armpit hair ("Doctor of Doom") but is unable to grow facial hair ("I Was A Teenage Bearded Boy", "The Boy Who Cried "Waaah!""). As shown in "It Came from the Fan Club", Tommy's skull is cracked.

Tommy's most common outfit consists of a green sweater with orange stripes, gray cargo shorts and brown/beige shoes. As shown in "Day of the Naked Aliens", he wears purple boxer shorts with yellow flowers printed on them. In "Evil That Pinched My Feet", Tommy wore light green socks when Dinko borrowed his shoes; in all other appearances, Tommy doesn't wear socks at all.

Tommy's sleepwear, seen whenever he is in bed, consists of a white tank top and light blue sleep shorts with blue anchors printed on them.

Tommy's sports outfit (seen in "Remote Control of Doom") consists of a green tank top and orange shorts with a white horizontal stripe on each leg. He retains his brown shoes.

In "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Swanky", Tommy wears a butler's outfit. This outfit consists of a navy blue jacket, pants and bowtie, pale blue shirt and a blue cloth on his right arm. He retains his brown shoes.

In "The Boy Who Cried "Waaah!"", Tommy is shown as a baby. In this state, he only wears a diaper and is mostly bald aside from a small tuft of hair on the top of his head.

In the original pilot, "The Most Special Place", Tommy had orange spiky hair, freckles and wore a blue t-shirt with an alien symbol on it, black sneakers and tan pants. He was also a lot younger, probably still in his single digits.

Trivia[]

  • Tommy mentions numerous relatives over the course of the series. His mother semi-frequently talks to him through a speaker, "Crater of Doom" establishes that he has grandparents, aunts, uncles and "several hundred cousins [Tommy's] never met", and an offhand mention of his "parents" in "Terror in My Nose" implies he also has a father.
  • Tommy and Dinko are the only characters to appear in every episode.
  • Charlie Schlatter's voice for Tommy noticeably changed over the course of the show. Starting from the second season, Tommy's voice got higher-pitched, whinier, and developed a more child-like intonation.
  • In the original pilot, Tommy was a side character and the aliens were the main focus, with the former acting as simply their caretaker. In the show, he’s the star and the aliens play a bit of a secondary role. That being said, the tie-in video game reduces him back to a secondary role and gives the spotlight back to the aliens, since the plot revolves around them trying to rescue him.
  • In the original draft for the show, Tommy was going to be a grumpy slacker who reluctantly took the aliens in and was to have an arc about him trying to keep them a secret, for fear of attracting unwanted attention from the public and the Big Union of Galaxies. When Splash Entertainment took over the project and rewrote the series, these aspects were scrapped and he was retooled into an audience surrogate everyman, making his character feel a lot more inconsistent and underdeveloped.
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