Professor Thaddeus J. Morton is a scientist who appears only in the opening sequence of Wild Wild West. He is portrayed by Michael Sims.
History[]
Background[]
In 1869, Morton was a scientist who was kidnapped from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by General "Bloodbath" McGrath six months prior. He is an expert in the field of Metallurgy and was discovered in the field of alfalfa.
He was one of the scientists who was ordered by Dr Arliss Loveless to create his mechanical giant spider The Tarantula so he could use it to take over the country. Morton was apparently horrified by the plan and began to mutiny against Loveless before he was placed in a death trap and fitted with a magnetic collar in the Louisiana wilderness.
Wild Wild West[]
In the opening sequence of the film, Morton is seen running in the woods from a lethal flying disk with blades around it having apparently escaped his wire perimeter that caused Loveless's machine to fire the disk in his direction. He screams and panics as he is running. In his panic he claims that Loveless is a mad man and that he must warn President Ulysses S. Grant about him and mentions the giant spider. He didn't get far enough to escape as the disk catches up with him and decapitates him.
McGrath suddenly walks over to his corpse and quips "And they say you scientists are supposed to be smart". He then laughs before pulling the disk out of the ground and walking away with it after which it cuts to the opening credits.
The disk that chased him was attracted to the metal collar he was wearing as the collar contained a powerful magnet.
Later on the Wanderer, Artemus Gordon and James West examine Morton's decapitated head as Gordon attached it to a projector. Gordon shows the magnetic collar which was found six feet away near Morton's corpse which Gordon is still trying to figure out. Gordon shows Morton's last consciousness through the projector and it shows McGrath holding the disk in his arms after it had killed Morton. The image was upside down so Gordon rotated Morton's head. During this scene, West repeatedly told Gordon "That is a man's head". After seeing McGrath in the image, West uses Morton's glasses to get focus on the image and reads an invitation in McGrath's pocket about Loveless's costume party at his mansion in New Orleans.