MI7 during Episode 1:

KAREN (Chairman)
Little is known about Karen. She is described as a luscious Luxembourgian double agent. She is clearly of a higher rank than Siddor, and in Episode 8 she is seen to be Chairman of MI7. She is seen in bed with Bond, at her desk at MI7, and in a computer room at York University. At the end of two episodes she delivers the line "Hello. Hello? Are you there? Hello?". That's pretty much all we know.

SIDDOR
Seems to answer only to the mysterious Karen. See the separate entry for Siddor related info.

JAMES ORSON aka JIM 2 aka J2; (General)
Seems to have authority over all bar Karen, Siddor and Ant. Particularly, he is seen to have direct authority over Esteban prior to Siddor's death. He is married to his PA, Jemimah.
Jim2 was given the duty of offering Jim Barrett a computing job at MI7. He also showed Jim, Alex, Leon and Stew around their MI7 provided house 125. Later, he was killed by BabySham (Episode One) but was presumably reanimated via MI7 technology as he later turned up to torture J3PO in Leeds.
Jim2 came from Ipswich. He got blown up during the goose crisis, and later got crushed by the seating in the Barbican.

ANTHONY "ANT" WALDEN (General)
Ant is initially described by Jim2 as Chief of Housing, but probably has other responsibilities too.
We first meet Ant during an undercover assignment, infiltrating the corridor known as Mr Chops. He dies during the explosion and is reanimated, only to die again at the hands of BabySham. He is reanimated again, and after the death of Siddor, he is seemingly promoted to Siddor's old position and is instrumental in the goose crisis. The first time round he gets blown up, but the second time round he lives to reach Planet F34.
In Episode One, Ant is given the duty of persuading Midge to train as a Starship crewmember. It may well be that Ant therefore has direct authority over what is presumably MI7's starship fleet. The consequence of this would be that Ant has direct authority over the crew of the Starship Tonka, which includes Anna Barrett.

BABYSHAM
Answers directly to Siddor in Episode One. The suggestion from Chris's acronym-loaded spiel in that episode is that BabySham briefed Chris on his top-secret mission. Whether this meant that Chris was under the command of BabySham is unclear, but Chris was interviewed for the post by Esteban who seemed to be subservient towards him. Following the 15-1 debacle, BabySham seems to have left the service of Siddor (and consequently MI7) to work for Tosh. See BabySham's character entry for more details.

ESTEBAN SEVILLE aka E
Esteban is Spanish. He seems to be the science expert. He is the first to meet our heroes after they are reanimated, and he kits Chris out with his gadgets. In this latter scene we see evidence of minions below Esteban. Esteban is later killed by BabySham, only to be reanimated in time to help Jim2 torture J3PO in Leeds. After Siddor dies, Ant is promoted, and Esteban takes Ant's old rank of General. In the goose crisis he first gets blown up, and later is crushed by the seating in the Barbican.

JEMIMAH ORSON
Jim2's PA and wife. We don't see much of her, though she bares an amazing resemblance to Mary Magdalen.

ALAN QUINN
Alan's role in MI7 is unclear. In Episode 1 he is subservient to Siddor at least, but by Episode 8 he outranks the promoted Ant, and MI7 are willing to blow up the Earth for Alan. Very curious.
In Episode 1, Alan is killed by BabySham only to be reanimated. He is later brought into our heroes' circle by Chris (both of them apparently work for a bus company), and drives BabySham's lorry. In the face-off with Siddor, Alan is killed and winds up in Hell, where he doesn't have a great time owing to a latent streak of Christianity. Desperate to escape, he contacts his MI7 colleagues who orchestrate the goose plot in order to have an excuse to call up our heroes from Hell. As Alan gets increasingly desperate he kills Leon and the demon Jeremy, before getting exterminated by the rogue geese. Subsequently he doesn't flip quite so much, and after spending an indefinite period in a stargate with Babysham, he survives as far as the Planet F34, where the whole dilemma of what happens next is largely his making. A solution does appear to have been found in the end as Babysham and Alan both return to Hell. There, in a Hellish version of Sheffield, Alan sets himself up as a solicitor, and assists Babysham in his detective work.

CHRIS CARTWRIGHT
Chris was a computer science student before the explosion on Mr Chops. MI7 reanimated him and employed him as a secret agent (008). He was sent to Europe where he met an antimatter version of himself and got blown up in the process. It seems that he ended up in (TV) Heaven where he was involved in the war between God and Tosh, though it is unclear as to whose side he was fighting on. Whether he was dead or not is unclear because he later turned up on Earth as a bus driver before dying with the rest of our heroes in the showdown with Siddor, and ending up in Hell. After the fun of the Goose Crisis and all its many arms of time, he ended up dividing his Hellish day between bus-driving and working for MI7 as a programmer.
There are two prevalent suggestions regarding the curious state of Chris's mortality:
a) Chris died and ended up in heaven but was reanimated by MI7 and was therefore pulled out of heaven. The second time he died he ended up in Hell owing to Stew's machinations. But then why didn't MI7 just reanimate Alan to get him out of hell? This theory relies on the reanimation machine being terminally broken at this stage. Perhaps the reanimation machine required Siddor's bleak-side powers.
b) Chris died and was reanimated. He was then sent to TV Heaven by MI7 to fight for some reason or other. After serving his time he returned to Earth to become a bus driver. This theory seems to hold more water.
The whole question is confused by reanimation. When you die, it seems you go to either Heaven or Hell. But what happens when you are reanimated? Are you pulled back out of the afterlife (see "a"), does the new body have a new/different "soul" (for want of a better word) to the original (implying, say, that there are two Jim Barretts in Hell - this seems unlikely), or does the afterlife wait for a while on the offchance that the body will reanimate/regenerate? Notions of causality and predestination may be applied to the latter. How well do these concepts mix with the heavy time-travel of the last episode? Perhaps such complexed time-knots could only work themselves out through a predetermined plan. Or perhaps they are indicative of free will? Discuss.

These questions are raised by Chris alone, and are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to MI7. Why did MI7 reanimate Jim, Leon, Stew, Alex, Midge and Chris but not Economics or Tomy? Or did they? (How does the Caribbean episode fit in with everything else anyway?). In short, MI7 are an enigma.

Let's look at some MI7 related mysteries and their possible solutions:

1 - The reanimation of the students (and their interest in them in the first place).
Well, these aren't ordinary students. We have a robot, an alien clone, a time-lord, a demi-god and someone who has a long-term disagreement with the personification of Death, for a start, so you can see immediately why MI7 might be interested in them. This leaves Chris, Midge, Tomy and Economics. The latter is a porter who is just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Tomy is not really an active part of the group. Midge seems to fit the requirements for a job on a starship crew. Maybe such people are hard to come by. Same goes for Chris, who also seems to have cloned himself (which can only add in his favour). As MI7 puzzles go, this one is fairly easy to at least excuse if not fully understand.

2 - What do they do?
"MI7 are an intelligence organisation specialising in extra-dimensional surveillance." <Babysham 6>
They seem to monitor (and occasionally destroy) alien races <Karen's conversation with Siddor>.
Siddor is initially obsessed with the Crystal of Enderon, and is later driven by his estrangement to his children.
It seems MI7 had a role in building York University <Episode 8> though it's unclear as to whether it was built where it was because of the presence of alien-geese or the lack of them. If the latter, then why did they continue once Central Hall was discovered? Hmm...

3 - Just what was going on in Episode 8?

• Alan wanted to escape from Hell.
• MI7, masquerading as a goose-worshipping cult, persuade the geese to hold hostage to the Earth.
• If the Earth is destroyed then Heaven and Hell will go with it.
• So the hope is that "our heroes" (including Alan) will be released from Hell to put a stop to the geese.
• If the scheme should fail, Esteban still has an over-ride device to stop the Earth-bomb going off, and furthermore they are onboard a spaceship should the geese double-cross them.
• Alan joins his MI7 colleagues who then squish a lot of people in their space-ship. This is an attempt to open up the Stargate (an act which requires gallons of blood and mercury, apparently). Opening the Stargate would give MI7 access to a huge temporal node wherein all points in time coexist. So, if the geese double cross MI7 and destroy the Earth, MI7 can use the Stargate to travel back in time and try again.
• Following the crush, MI7 dock at the orbitting Central Hall. Here they torture a goose-expert in order to get her to remove the restraining rings that prevent the geese from leaving the Earth. Perhaps this is part of their deal with the geese. The geese may have insisted that they be allowed to leave the Earth in the event that things go wrong for them.
• MI7 then act in a very hostile manner to our heroes. They kill the three Jims (knowing that they can regenerate and that they are immortal). The claim is that this is a training exercise. As no-one has actually died, perhaps we can believe MI7 here. It may well have been decided that the event would double as a training exercise. But they're still being quite nasty to Davina and Jeremy. This is, of course, not the first time we've seen MI7 torture people.
• Things seem to be sorting themselves out when suddenly they turn viscous again, with MI7 holding our heroes at gun-point. Alan then kills Jeremy (who is an obstacle to Alan's freedom) and Leon (who isn't). Why does Alan kill Leon? Does he think Leon is an immortal? His later "Ah." suggests that he meant to kill Sally and Zed too, but perhaps the Ah was the realisation that he'd killed Leon.
• Alan explains that the next part of the plan is to blow up the Earth anyway to ensure that he can never go back to Heaven or Hell. Remember that MI7 have been collating data on alien life and other planets, so it is not inconceivable that they would be willing to blow up the Earth in the knowledge that there were plenty more fish in the sea so to speak. It does however suggest that Alan is really very important to them.
• Then the double-crossing geese unveil their dalek technology and exterminate Alan.
• The geese issue an ultimatum: release the restraining rings and live, or don't and don't...
• Davina refuses, and gets shot. The controls are locked and everyone's doomed. Détente. The geese can't leave because of their rings. And they're taking everyone else down with them. The chain reaction that will destroy the Earth is irreversible.
• In a last minute battle, the geese are defeated, but the computers are still locked on the ships, and the Earth is going to blow in ten seconds.
• Cue a mad dash for the Tardises, but it is too late. The Earth blows up before the Tardises dematerialise. Everyone gets blown across the universe. Some of the blown up people are still "alive" of course. Once you die, you become immortal (in an afterlife sort of way), and so can't die again. In a normal after-life context we might assume that no harm will come to you (unless you want it to), but up in the real world, getting blown to pieces is both possible and not a good thing.
• But through the process of regeneration, Jim Barrett is able to recongeal.
• He finds a Tardis and goes back in time to try and put things right.
• He stops MI7 before the crush, but Esteban is unable to stop the explosion (owing to the double-cross).
• Fortunately, our heroes escape Earth in the Barbican.
• But the seating (that was involved in the crush in the original chain of events) collapses and wipes out half the cast, and all those people in the crowd, thus opening up the Stargate.
• Somehow, Babysham and Alan get trapped in the Stargate and have to be rescued, though we don't see how.