Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart

Doctor Who character
Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart
Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart
Affiliated with	United Nations Intelligence Taskforce
Race	Human
Home planet	Earth
Home era	20th century
First appearance	The Web of Fear
Last appearance	Battlefield
Portrayed by	Nicholas Courtney

Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart is a fictional character in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, played by Nicholas Courtney. He worked for UNIT (United Nations Intelligence Taskforce), an international organisation that defends the Earth from alien threats. He was one of UNIT's founders and commander of the British contingent, and is generally referred to simply as the Brigadier or "the Brig".

Contents 1 Fictional character history 2 Other appearances 3 List of appearances 3.1 Television 3.2 Video 3.3 Audio dramas 3.4 Novels 3.5 Short stories 3.6 Comics 4 References outside of Doctor Who 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

Fictional character history

Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart first appeared in the Patrick Troughton Season 5 serial The Web of Fear (1968). He is a Scotsman, according to dialogue in Terror of the Zygons. Some accounts state that he was a Colonel in the Scots Guards (although in reality, the highest regimental rank would have been Lieutenant Colonel, and the regimental badge that most closely resembled Lethbridge-Stewart's cap badge in The Web of Fear is that of the Lowland Brigade). By his next appearance in the Season 6 serial The Invasion (1968), he had been promoted to Brigadier and was working with UNIT. When the Third Doctor was exiled to Earth, Lethbridge-Stewart gave him a position as UNIT's scientific advisor. Other military members of UNIT included Captain Mike Yates and Sergeant Benton. In his initial appearances, Lethbridge-Stewart was portrayed as a stereotypical by-the-book martinet. Very often, the Doctor felt frustrated at working with him because the Brigadier's typical response to any threat was to shoot at it; a well-known phrase of his was, "Five rounds, rapid." The Brigadier's decision to blow up the Silurians' base, despite the Doctor's continuing efforts to reconcile the reptiles with human beings, provides one of the best dramatic climaxes in the history of "Doctor Who." In turn, Lethbridge-Stewart was sceptical of the strange phenomena and super science the Doctor habitually encountered, and just as frustrated with the Doctor's eccentricities. However, over the years the two developed a close working and personal relationship as well as mutual respect for each other's abilities. The Brigadier always faced the unknown with unflappable British aplomb. He has shown himself to be a true warrior in combat, ruthless when he has to be, and heroic in the face of the often overwhelming odds that he and UNIT faced over the years. He eventually retired from the military to teach mathematics at a British public school in 1976, as seen in Mawdryn Undead (1983). Most of the stories of the Jon Pertwee era of Doctor Who were set on Earth and heavily feature UNIT and the Brigadier. While not as ubiquitous in the following years, he appeared alongside every subsequent Doctor in the original television series run except the Sixth Doctor. They finally met in the charity special Dimensions in Time and the Big Finish audio play, The Spectre of Lanyon Moor. (The Sixth Doctor also meets the Brigadier in the novel Business Unusual, also purporting to be the first meeting of the two characters.) The Brigadier has also appeared with the 1996 Doctor Who television movie's Eighth Doctor in the audio plays. However, he did not appear with the Ninth Doctor in the 2005 series, nor are there any known plans to have the Brigadier appear with the Tenth Doctor, with Courtney's advanced age making any such appearance doubtful. As one of the most popular recurring supporting characters in the television series, the Brigadier is often considered a companion of the Doctor^[1] and indeed is listed as one on the BBC website's list.^[2] However, he does not fulfil the traditional companion's role of regularly accompanying the Doctor on his travels, although, for example, he did unwillingly 'travel' with the Second Doctor to Gallifrey when they were both kidnapped in The Five Doctors.^[3] Furthermore, with the exception of The Five Doctors, at least one other character serves as a recognised companion to the Doctor on each of his encounters with the Brigadier. Lethbridge-Stewart's last television appearance was in 1989, in the Sylvester McCoy Season 26 serial Battlefield. Called out of retirement to deal with an other-dimensional invasion of armoured knights led by Morgaine, he found himself once again at the Doctor's side. Lethbridge-Stewart served as his world's champion as he faced down and killed the demonic Destroyer of Worlds armed only with his service revolver and a load of silver-tipped bullets. Little was shown of Lethbridge-Stewart's life outside UNIT in the television series, although Planet of the Spiders revealed he was in a relationship with a woman called Doris. In Battlefield he was shown to be retired and married to Doris (played by Angela Douglas). It was Courtney's own belief ^[4] that the Brigadier had been in a previous marriage to a woman named Fiona, and that he and Doris were having an affair; his first marriage ended due to his work ^[5]. Lethbridge-Stewart's ultimate fate has yet to be confirmed, however in Battlefield the Seventh Doctor said that he was "supposed" to die in bed. In a comic in Doctor Who Magazine, Lethbridge Stewart made a reappearance alongside the Tenth Doctor after being kidnapped by Warlords as a tactical commander. He was an old officer stationed at Sandhurst. In the spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures story Revenge of the Slitheen, Sarah Jane Smith says to "give [her] love to the Brig", implying he has lived well into 2009 in which the series is set.

Other appearances

The Brigadier and his family have made several appearances in the spin-off media. The spin-off UNIT videos Downtime and Dæmos Rising feature Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, the Brigadier's daughter from his marriage to his first wife, Fiona (first named in the Missing Adventure The Scales of Injustice by Gary Russell). Also appearing was Kate's young son, Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart. The novels also gave Lethbridge-Stewart another offspring. While on duty in Sierra Leone as a young lieutenant, Lethbridge-Stewart met and was intimate with a local girl named Mariatu, the daughter of a village chief, and unknown to Lethbridge-Stewart, she had a son. This was first hinted at in Ben Aaronovitch's novelisation of his 1988 serial Remembrance of the Daleks, which featured quotes from a fictional history of UNIT (The Zen Military) written by a Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart (Mariatu's granddaughter) in 2006. In the 1992 New Adventures novel Transit (also by Aaronovitch, and set in the 22nd Century), the Seventh Doctor meets the adopted daughter of General Yembe Lethbridge-Stewart, one of Mariatu's descendants. This daughter, also named Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart, went on to become a recurring character in the New Adventures. The novels have also fleshed out the Brigadier's ancestry, establishing that he comes from a long-standing military family. In the New Adventures novel The Dying Days by Lance Parkin, he talks about three ancestors who reached the rank of General. One, William Lethbridge-Stewart, was in the retinue of James VI of Scotland and I of England. The other two fought at Naseby and Waterloo. The Scales of Injustice names the latter as Major-General Fergus Lethbridge-Stewart. The Brigadier also says in The Dying Days that his father died in World War II, fighting alongside Field-Marshal Montgomery in Africa. The Past Doctor Adventures novel The Wages of Sin by David A. McIntee established that the Brigadier had an ancestor named Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart who worked for the British Government in 1916. Deadly Reunion by Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts establishes that the Brigadier was a Second Lieutenant serving in Army Intelligence in 1944, although this makes the Brigadier older than other stories would suggest. In the novels, Lethbridge-Stewart emerged from retirement again during the events of The Dying Days where he dealt with an invasion of Ice Warriors from Mars in 1997. At the end of that novel he was promoted to General. Lethbridge-Stewart was subsequently rejuvenated with alien technology in Happy Endings by Paul Cornell, taking place in 2010. The rejuvenated Lethbridge-Stewart, widowed as a result of an accident at sea but back with the military, next appeared in the BBC Books Eighth Doctor Adventures novel The Shadows of Avalon, also by Cornell, where he still held the rank of General but preferred to be called "the Brigadier". According to The King of Terror by Keith Topping, Lethbridge-Stewart eventually passes away in the early 2050s. Courtney played the Brigadier in two BBC Radio 4 Doctor Who plays set during the Third Doctor's era, The Paradise of Death (1993) and The Ghosts of N-Space (1996), alongside Pertwee and Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith. For Big Finish, he has played the part of Lethbridge-Stewart in several plays, with Minuet in Hell revealing that he played a role in the establishment of the Scottish Parliament. He also played an alternate universe version of the Brigadier in the Doctor Who Unbound play Sympathy for the Devil, opposite David Warner as the Doctor and David Tennant (later cast as the Tenth Doctor) as Colonel Brimmecombe-Wood. Courtney also voiced the Brigadier in the 2001 webcast Death Comes to Time. In December 2004, Big Finish released the first of a series of UNIT-based audio plays, where General Sir Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart acted as a consultant to a new generation of officers and by series' end became UNIT's new Scientific Advisor. As this version of Lethbridge-Stewart does not seem to be rejuvenated, these plays would seem to take place between the events of The Dying Days and Happy Endings. Also, the public does not believe in existence of aliens, which places it before the events of "The Christmas Invasion". It should be noted, however, that the continuities of the audio plays and other tie-in media may not match up, and their canonicity is debatable.

List of appearances

Television

Season 5

• The Web of Fear

Season 6

• The Invasion

Season 7

• Spearhead from Space
• Doctor Who and the Silurians
• The Ambassadors of Death
• Inferno

Season 8

• Terror of the Autons
• The Mind of Evil
• The Claws of Axos
• Colony in Space
• The Dæmons

Season 9

• Day of the Daleks
• The Time Monster

Season 10

• The Three Doctors
• The Green Death

Season 11

• The Time Warrior
• Invasion of the Dinosaurs
• Planet of the Spiders

Season 12

• Robot

Season 13

• Terror of the Zygons

Season 20

• Mawdryn Undead

20th anniversary special

• The Five Doctors

Season 26

• Battlefield

30th anniversary special

• Dimensions in Time

Video

• Wartime (but only as the Brig's voice on a radio telephone)
• Downtime (novelised by scriptwriter Marc Platt as part of the Virgin Missing Adventures line)

Audio dramas

BBC Radio

• The Paradise of Death (novelised by scriptwriter Barry Letts as part of the Target Books novelisation line)
• The Ghosts of N-Space (novelised by scriptwriter Barry Letts as part of the Virgin Missing Adventures line)

Big Finish Productions

• The Spectre of Lanyon Moor
• Minuet in Hell
• Zagreus (the TARDIS creates a holographic projection in the form of the Brigadier)
• Sympathy for the Devil (Doctor Who Unbound series, out of normal Doctor Who continuity)
• Engines Of Destruction (Doctor Who Unbound series, out of normal Doctor Who continuity)
• UNIT: The Coup
• UNIT: Time Heals
• UNIT: The Wasting
• The Blue Tooth (adventure related by the character Liz Shaw)
• Old Soldiers (adventure related by the character Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart)

BBCi webcast

• Death Comes to Time

Novels

The Companions of Doctor Who

• Harry Sullivan's War by Ian Marter

Virgin New Adventures

• Blood Heat by Jim Mortimore (parallel universe version of the Brigadier)
• No Future by Paul Cornell
• Happy Endings by Paul Cornell
• The Dying Days by Lance Parkin

Virgin Missing Adventures

• Dancing the Code by Paul Leonard
• The Eye of the Giant by Christopher Bulis
• The Scales of Injustice by Gary Russell

Uncategorized novel

• Who Killed Kennedy by David Bishop

Eighth Doctor Adventures

• The Eight Doctors by Terrance Dicks
• The Shadows of Avalon by Paul Cornell

Past Doctor Adventures

• The Devil Goblins from Neptune by Martin Day and Keith Topping
• Business Unusual by Gary Russell
• The Face of the Enemy by David A. McIntee
• Deep Blue by Mark Morris
• Last of the Gaderene by Mark Gatiss
• Verdigris by Paul Magrs
• The King of Terror by Keith Topping
• Rags by Mick Lewis
• The Shadow in the Glass by Justin Richards and Stephen Cole
• Deadly Reunion by Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts
• Island of Death by Barry Letts

Short stories

• "Brief Encounter: A Wee Deoch an..?" by Colin Baker (Doctor Who Magazine Winter Special 1991)
• "The Straw that Broke the Camel's Back" by Vanessa Bishop (Decalog)
• "Where the Heart Is" by Andy Lane (Decalog 2:Lost Property)
• "UNITed We Fall" by Keith R.A. DeCandido (Decalog 3: Consequences)
• "Freedom" by Steve Lyons (Short Trips)
• "Degrees of Truth" by David A. McIntee (Short Trips audio book, read by Nicholas Courtney)
• "Honest Living" by Jason Loborik (More Short Trips)
• "Still Lives" by Ian Potter (Short Trips: Zodiac)
• "The Switching" by Simon Guerrier (Short Trips: Zodiac)
• "Hidden Talent" by Andrew Spokes (Short Trips: Companions)
• "An Overture Too Early" by Simon Guerrier (Short Trips: The Muses)
• "UNIT Christmas Parties: First Christmas" by Nick Wallace (Short Trips: A Christmas Treasury)
• "UNIT Christmas Parties: Christmas Truce" by Terrance Dicks (Short Trips: A Christmas Treasury)
• "UNIT Christmas Parties: Ships That Pass" by Karen Dunn (Short Trips: A Christmas Treasury)
• "Faithful Friends" by Mark Wright & Cavan Scott (Short Trips: The Ghosts of Christmas)

Comics

• "The Arkwood Experiments" by John Canning (TV Comic 944-949)
• "The Multi-Mobile!" by John Canning (TV Comic 950-954)
• "Insect" by John Canning (TV Comic 955-959)
• "The Metal Eaters" by John Canning (TV Comic 960-964)
• "The Fishmen of Carpantha" by John Canning (TV Comic 965-969)
• "Doctor Who and the Rocks from Venus" by John Canning (TV Comic 970-976)
• "Assassin from Space" by Patrick Williams (TV Comic Holiday Special 1970)
• "Undercover" by Patrick Williams (TV Comic Holiday Special 1970)
• "Castaway" by John Canning (TV Comic Annual 1971)
• "Levitation" by John Canning (TV Comic Annual 1971)
• "Fogbound" by Frank Langford (Doctor Who Holiday Special 1973)
• "Secret of the Tower" by Alex Badia (Doctor Who Holiday Special 1973)
• "Doomcloud" ((Doctor Who Holiday Special 1974)
• "The Time Thief" by Steve Livesey (Doctor Who Annual 1974)
• "Menace of the Molags" by Steve Livesey (Doctor Who Annual 1974)
• "Dead on Arrival" by Edgar Hodges (Doctor Who Annual 1975)
• "The Man in the Ion Mask" by Dan Abnett and Brian Williamson (Doctor Who Magazine Winter Special 1991)
• "Change of Mind" by Kate Orman and Barrie Mitchell (Doctor Who Magazine 221–223)
• "Target Practice" by Gareth Roberts and Adrian Salmon (Doctor Who Magazine 234)
• "Final Genesis" by Warwick Gray and Colin Andrew (Doctor Who Magazine 203: cameo appearance in parallel universe)
• "Mark of Mandragora" by Dan Abnett (Doctor Who Magazine 167-172: has a small role as most of the UNIT leader's role is carried out by Muriel Frost)
• "The Warkeeper's Crown" by Alan Barnes (Doctor Who Magazine 378–380)

References outside of Doctor Who

The character also appears briefly in a cameo role at the end of writer Paul Cornell's novelisation of the 1997 ITV science-fiction serial The Uninvited. Although the character is not named in the book, the description is that of Lethbridge-Stewart and Cornell later admitted that this was indeed his intention. Marvel Comics' Excalibur featured an organisation called W.H.O. (the Weird Happenings Organisation) run by a Brigadier Alysande Stuart. Her twin brother Alistair was WHO's "scientific advisor" (the role the Doctor had in UNIT). The Brigadier himself had earlier appeared in two panels of Uncanny X-Men #218, leading a military action against the Juggernaut in Edinburgh (and referencing the presence of Sergeant Benton). The Sherlock Holmes novel Waters of Death by Kell Richards features a naval commander called Ralph Lethbridge-Stewart, alongside Captain Harry Sullivan and Lieutenant Philip Benton. It is set in the same fictional location as the Doctor Who story Terror of the Zygons. An unnamed army brigadier, who looks and acts very similar to Lethbridge-Stewart, appears in the comic strip Caballistics, Inc.. He first appeared in the story Going Underground, where he is in charge of the army's response following a demon invasion of the London Underground; a member of his SAS team refers to "bloody robot yetis" having been down there once. He shows up again in the story Ashes, in charge of the military response to a devastating attack on Glasgow. This character is one of several references to both the Doctor Who universe and other sci-fi/horror properties in Caballistics. Although unnamed, two characters strongly resembling Lethbridge-Stewart and Sergeant Benton (who was specifically named) appear in the John M. Ford Star Trek novel How Much for Just the Planet? at a rather treacherous golf course on the planet Direidi.

See also

• United Nations Intelligence Taskforce
• UNIT dating controversy
• List of Doctor Who supporting characters

References

External links

• Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart at TARDIS Index File
• Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart on the BBC's Doctor Who website
• The Dying Days E-Book on the BBC website