Baskerville was the richest man on Earth around 2010, having earned his money as an arms dealer. Having faked his death, he pretended to be a time traveller so that he could gain access to the ULTRA supercomputer (Claiming that he needed it to calculate a return journey to his time) while offering to sell his time machine. To reinforce his image as a time traveller, he "predicted" the outcome of a football game (by paying off the players to score precisely when and who he wanted) and the death of a young actress (with a secret fast-acting poison), and destroyed Athens by artificially creating a tidal wave. However, his fourth prophecy — the destruction of Tokyo with a malfunctioning nuclear warhead scheduled to be used for demolitions — was averted by the Eighth Doctor and Malady Chang.