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| Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart | |
|---|---|
| Doctor Who character | |
 Lethbridge-Stewart inSpearhead from Space | |
| First appearance | The Web of Fear (1968) |
| Last appearance | "Survivors of the Flux" (2021) |
| Created by | Mervyn Haisman Henry Lincoln |
| Portrayed by |
|
| Shared universe appearances |
|
| Non-canonical appearances | Dimensions in Time (1993) |
| Duration | 1968–1975, 1983, 1989, 1993, 1995, 2008, 2014, 2021 |
| In-universe information | |
| Full name | Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart |
| Species | Human |
| Gender | Male |
| Affiliation | |
| Spouse | Fiona Lethbridge-Stewart (divorced) Doris Lethbridge-Stewart |
| Children | Kate Lethbridge-Stewart (daughter) |
| Relatives |
|
| Home | Earth |
| Nationality | British (English) |
| Home era | 20th and 21st centuries |
Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, generally referred to simply asthe Brigadier, is a fictional character in the Britishscience fiction television seriesDoctor Who, created by writersMervyn Haisman andHenry Lincoln and played byNicholas Courtney.[1] He is one of the founders ofUNIT (United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, later Unified Intelligence Taskforce), an international organisation that defends Earth fromalien threats, and serves as commander of the British contingent. Presented at first as reluctant to accept the continuing aid of the Doctor, over time the Brigadier became one of the Doctor's greatest friends and his principal ally in defending Earth.
As one of the series' most prominent recurring characters over its history, the Brigadier appeared in 23 stories during the original run ofDoctor Who, first appearing in the 1968 serialThe Web of Fear opposite theSecond Doctor (Patrick Troughton). The character made frequent appearances on the series following the introduction of theThird Doctor (Jon Pertwee) in 1970'sSpearhead from Space. His final appearance in the program was in 1989'sBattlefield opposite theSeventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy). Nearly 20 years later, Courtney reprised the role in the DVD Special Feature called "Liberty Hall" in 2009 written by Karen Davies and directed by Brendan Sheppard in which the Brigadier was interviewed by a Times journalist. Then he finally appeared in the spin-off programmeThe Sarah Jane Adventures in 2008,[2] his last appearance prior to Courtney's death in 2011. That year,Doctor Who later paid tribute to Courtney by announcing the Brigadier had died with a line of dialogue in "The Wedding of River Song". Later still, a Cyberman avatar of the Brigadier also appears, and achieves some closure with theTwelfth Doctor (Peter Capaldi), in "Death in Heaven" (2014).
The 2012 episode "The Power of Three" introduced the Brigadier's daughter, new UNIT chiefKate Stewart (Jemma Redgrave). The character was originally created in the unlicensed video spin-offDowntime in 1995, in which the Brigadier also appeared. Kate becomes a recurring character making appearances alongside every Doctor from theTenth to theFifteenth.
Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart's ancestry goes back to Scotland, according to dialogue inTerror of the Zygons (1975). He first encounters theSecond Doctor inThe Web of Fear (1968), when Lethbridge-Stewart is a lieutenant-colonel in theScots Guards commanding aBritish Army detachment sent to investigate the Yeti in theLondon Underground. By his next appearance inThe Invasion (1968), he had been promoted tobrigadier and was working with UNIT. When the Doctor wasforcibly regenerated and exiled to Earth, Lethbridge-Stewart gave him a position as UNIT's scientific advisor after he helped defeat theAuton invasion. Other military members of UNIT includedCaptain Mike Yates,Sergeant Benton and Royal Navy LieutenantHarry Sullivan.
Most of the stories about theThird Doctor were set on Earth and feature UNIT and the Brigadier heavily. While not as ubiquitous in following years, he appeared alongside every subsequent Doctor in the original television series run, excluding theSixth Doctor, with whom he appeared only in the 30th anniversary special,Dimensions in Time in 1993. Although Lethbridge-Stewart first met the Doctor in his second incarnation, he also met and worked with theFirst Doctor in the opening serial of the10th anniversary season,The Three Doctors and again in the 20th-anniversary special, "The Five Doctors". He eventually retired from the military to teachmathematics at an Englishpublic school in 1976, as seen inMawdryn Undead (1983). The Brigadier and the Sixth Doctor, as well as later incarnations of the Doctor, have been paired in numerous spin-off productions (seeOther appearances).
As one of the most popularrecurringsupporting characters in the television series, the Brigadier is often listed among the Doctor'scompanions.[3] He is listed as such by the BBC[4] and is included in a book byJohn Nathan-Turner's (a former producer ofDoctor Who) discussing all the Doctor's companions.
Lethbridge-Stewart's last appearance in aDoctor Who television episode was in 1989, in theSeventh Doctor serialBattlefield. Called out of retirement to deal with an other-dimensional invasion of armoured knights led byMorgaine, 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 demonicDestroyer of Worlds armed only with his servicerevolver and a load ofsilver-tipped bullets. (Battlefield was stated to be a few years intoAce's future but not a specific date. TheVirgin New Adventures books place it in 1997.)
Little was shown of Lethbridge-Stewart's life outside UNIT in the television series.Planet of the Spiders referred to a relationship with a woman called Doris. ByBattlefield, he was married to her (played byAngela Douglas). It was Courtney's own belief 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]
Although Lethbridge-Stewart never appeared in the revived series, the character is still alive during theTenth Doctor's tenure. In the spin-off programmeThe Sarah Jane Adventures storyRevenge of the Slitheen,Sarah Jane Smith says to "give [her] love to the Brig". In the Tenth Doctor episode "The Poison Sky", the Doctor mentions that he could use the help of "the Brigadier". He is then told that "Sir Alistair" is "stranded in Peru", indicating that the Brigadier has beenknighted by this time. The first film footage from the classic era to appear in the revived era was his photograph displayed in the slow pan acrossSarah Jane Smith's attic in the opening scene ofThe Sarah Jane Adventures' première,Invasion of the Bane.
In 2008, Courtney again reprised the role in aThe Sarah Jane Adventures story,Enemy of the Bane, and confirmed his knighthood repeatedly: Major Kilburne and Sarah Jane each address him as "Sir Alistair" and he later introduces himself fully as "Brigadier Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart" to Mrs. Wormwood. This episode refers back to the Peru mission as there is mention of him being de-briefed about it. Sarah Jane asks Lethbridge-Stewart to assist her in accessing UNIT's "Black Archive", a top secret alien artefact facility first alluded to by Douglas Cavendish to Sir Alistair's daughter inDæmos Rising. Sarah Jane prefers to avoid seeking official clearance, to avoid awkward questions aboutLuke, her artificially-grown son. In his old age, the Brigadier has developed a dislike for the new way UNIT works and often refers to events that happened in "his day". He walks with a walking stick now, but is seen driving aBentley T-series to UNIT's "Black Archive". His wife (presumably Doris) is mentioned in this episode. The Brigadier assists Sarah Jane and Rani in escaping UNIT and later confronts aBane disguised as a UNIT officer, shooting him dead with a gun hidden within his cane.
InThe Sarah Jane Adventures storyThe Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith,Clyde Langer tells Peter Dalton that the Brigadier cannot make it to the wedding because he is back in Peru. It had been intended by the production team that Lethbridge-Stewart would indeed appear in the story and meet theTenth Doctor, but Courtney was recovering from a stroke and unable to take part.[6] He is reported to be in Peru for a third time inDeath of the Doctor (2010). Clyde describes him as being Sarah Jane's oldest friend; Sarah Jane met both the Doctor and Sir Alistair in the first episode of the Third Doctor serial,The Time Warrior (1974).
In 2009, Courtney reprised the role for a final time in the short filmLiberty Hall, an extra forMawdryn Undead's DVD release. The film is a seven-minutemockumentary where a fictional journalist interviews the Brigadier about his life. The Brigadier discusses his marriages with Fiona and Doris, and mentions his daughter Kate and grandson Gordon (referencingDowntime). He states that his most recent encounter with the Doctor took place in 2000, when he was on unofficial UNIT business in Malebolgia in the United States (referencing theEighth Doctor audio dramaMinuet in Hell). He concludes, "So, now I've hung up my uniform for good... unless I hear that a blue police box has been found somewhere, and then, don't you worry, I'll be ready!"[7]
Sometime later, the Brigadier becomes ill and is moved into a nursing home.[8] In 2011's "The Wedding of River Song", theEleventh Doctor rings the nursing home to have the Brigadier made ready for a trip; a nurse regretfully informs him that the Brigadier died peacefully "a few months ago" and had spoken well of him often, insisting a glass always be kept ready for him in case he turned up. The Doctor is visibly shattered by the news, which forces him to realise that he can't avoid his predestined death.[9]
In the 2014 episode "Death in Heaven", Missy (the regenerated female Master) resurrects the Earth's dead as flight-capable Cybermen. The Brigadier's daughter Kate is apparently killed falling from a plane during a Cybermen attack. Overcoming his programming, the convertedDanny Pink commands the Cybermen to sacrifice themselves to thwart Missy's plan. The Doctor prepares to execute Missy, but is preempted by a lone surviving Cyberman, who seemingly vaporizes her with a forearm-mounted ray-gun. Finding that the Cyberman has rescued Kate, the Doctor realizes it is the converted Brigadier, saying "Of course! Earth's darkest hour, and mine. Where else would you be?" Overcome with emotion, the Doctor salutes him – something Kate said her father had always wanted – and the Brigadier fires his leg jets and flies away. What happens to him afterward is left unknown.
In the 2017 Christmas special "Twice Upon a Time", theFirst and Twelfth Doctors unwittingly intervene when Testimony, an organization in the far future that collect memories from those about to die, retrieve a seemingly-innocuous captain in the First World War from the moment before his death, the temporal anomaly of the two Doctors resisting their imminent regenerations disrupting Testimony's efforts to return the captain to his scheduled death. The Doctors are able to bend the rules and return the captain to a point a couple of hours after he was taken out of time, in time for his life to be saved by theChristmas truce. Before he returns to time, the captain reveals that his name is Archibald Hamish Lethbridge-Stewart, suggesting that he is a relative of the Brigadier. Although not confirmed on-screen, Gatiss later confirmed in an interview with Radio Times that the character is one of the Brigadier's grandfathers.[10]
The Brigadier and the Sixth Doctor were paired in the two-part charity specialDimensions in Time and theBig Finish audio play,The Spectre of Lanyon Moor. The Sixth Doctor also meets the Brigadier in the novelBusiness Unusual, also purporting to be the first meeting of the two characters, subsequently working together inThe Shadow in the Glass to track down the newly discoveredFourth Reich; in the short story "Brief Encounter: A Wee Deoch an..?", written by Sixth Doctor actorColin Baker and published inDoctor Who Magazine Winter Special, 1991, they cross paths but neither realises it. The Brigadier has also appeared with theEighth Doctor in the novelThe Eight Doctors by Terrance Dicks (set after the events of the TV Movie and during moments of The Doctors' past lives) in audio plays and the novelsThe Dying Days andThe Shadows of Avalon. TheTenth Doctor met the Brigadier in theDoctor Who Magazine comicThe Warkeeper's Crown.
The Brigadier and his family have made several appearances in thespin-off media. The spin-off UNIT videosDowntime andDæmos Rising feature Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, the Brigadier's daughter from his marriage to his first wife, Fiona (first named in theMissing AdventureThe Scales of Injustice byGary Russell). Also appearing was Kate's young son, Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart. Kate also played her UNIT role in the fiftieth anniversary episode, "The Day of the Doctor" (2013).
The novels also gave Lethbridge-Stewart another offspring. While on duty inSierra 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 inBen Aaronovitch's novelisation of his 1988 serialRemembrance 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 1992New Adventures novelTransit (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 namedKadiatu 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 novelThe Dying Days byLance Parkin, he talks about three ancestors who reached the rank ofgeneral. One, William Lethbridge-Stewart, was in the retinue ofJames VI of Scotland and I of England. The other two fought atNaseby andWaterloo.The Scales of Injustice names the latter as Major-General Fergus Lethbridge-Stewart. The Brigadier also says inThe Dying Days that his father died inWorld War II, fighting alongsideField-Marshal Montgomery inAfrica.
ThePast Doctor Adventures novelThe Wages of Sin byDavid A. McIntee established that the Brigadier had an ancestor named Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart who worked for the British Government in 1916.Deadly Reunion byTerrance Dicks andBarry Letts establishes that the Brigadier was aSecond 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 ofThe Dying Days where he dealt with an invasion ofIce Warriors fromMars in 1997. At the end of that novel he was promoted to General. Lethbridge-Stewart was subsequently rejuvenated with alien technology inHappy Endings byPaul 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 theBBC BooksEighth Doctor Adventures novelThe Shadows of Avalon, also by Cornell, where he still held the rank of General but preferred to be called "the Brigadier". According toThe King of Terror by Keith Topping, Lethbridge-Stewart eventually passes away in the early 2050s.
Courtney played the Brigadier in twoBBC Radio 4Doctor Who plays set during the Third Doctor's era,The Paradise of Death (1993) andThe Ghosts of N-Space (1996), alongside Pertwee andElisabeth Sladen asSarah Jane Smith. For Big Finish, he has played the part of Lethbridge-Stewart in several plays, withMinuet in Hell revealing that he played a role in the establishment of theScottish Parliament and also that he does covert work for the UN as a plausibly deniable agent. He also played an alternate universe version of the Brigadier in theDoctor Who Unbound playSympathy for the Devil, oppositeDavid Warner as the Doctor andDavid Tennant (later cast as theTenth Doctor) as Colonel Brimmecombe-Wood. At the conclusion ofSympathy, the alternate Brigadier- referred to as 'Alistair'- joins Warner's Doctor as his companion, but after an unspecified amount of time travelling together, they part ways in the later audioMasters of War, when the two arrive on Skaro and force the Daleks and the Thals to join forces to fight off an invasion by a race known as the Quatch, Alistair remaining once the Quatch are defeated to help the two sides maintain their new truce.
Courtney also voiced the Brigadier in the 2001webcastDeath Comes to Time.
In December 2004, Big Finish released the first of a series ofUNIT-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. If the events in this series are to be reconciled with the books, these plays would seem to take place between the events ofThe Dying Days andHappy Endings, as this version of Lethbridge-Stewart does not seem to be rejuvenated. Also, the public does not believe in existence of aliens, which would appear to place it before the events of "The Christmas Invasion".
In theDoctor Who Magazine comic strip storyWarkeeper's Crown (DWM #378–380), Lethbridge-Stewart made a reappearance alongside theTenth Doctor after being kidnapped by Warlords as a tactical commander. He was an old officer stationed at Sandhurst.
A series of novels featuring the young Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart has been published byCandy Jar Books since 2015. The novels are licensed by the literary estate of co-creator Mervyn Haisman and endorsed by Henry Lincoln.
In 2017,The Third Doctor Adventures- Volume Five featuresJon Culshaw acting as the Brigadier in a series of audios set during the Third Doctor's era.
InThe Legacy of Time, a special six-part audio to celebrate Big Finish's twentieth anniversary of producingDoctor Who-related audios, the storyThe Sacrifice of Jo Grant sees Jo Grant and Kate Stewart of the present day being sent back to the 1970s by a series of temporal rifts, where they meet the Third Doctor as he investigates the anomalies in his time. While Kate attempts to avoid introducing herself to limit the risk of a paradox, the Doctor realizes her identity and convinces her to call her father, introducing herself as the commander of UNIT in the future without identifying herself by name, with the Brigadier (voiced by Jon Culshaw once again) telling her that he is assured that the future of UNIT is in good hands.
The character also appears briefly in a cameo role at the end of writerPaul Cornell'snovelisation of the 1997ITV science-fiction serialThe 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 BrigadierAlysande Stuart. Her twin brotherAlistaire was WHO's "scientific advisor" (the role the Doctor had in UNIT). A character named "Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart" had earlier appeared in three panels ofUncanny X-Men #218, supervising the arrest of theJuggernaut inEdinburgh, where he also calls out to a "Sergeant-MajorBenton" at one point.
TheSherlock Holmes novelWaters of Death byKel Richards features a naval commander called Ralph Lethbridge-Stewart, alongside CaptainHarry Sullivan and Lieutenant PhilipBenton. It is set in the same fictional location as theDoctor Who storyTerror of the Zygons.
An unnamed army brigadier, who looks and acts very similar to Lethbridge-Stewart, appears in the comic stripCaballistics, Inc. He first appeared in the storyGoing Underground, where he is in charge of the army's response following a demon invasion of theLondon Underground; a member of his SAS team refers to "bloodyrobot yetis" having been down there once. He shows up again in the storyAshes, in charge of the military response to a devastating attack on Glasgow. This character is one of several references to both theDoctor Who universe and other sci-fi/horror properties inCaballistics.
Although unnamed, two characters strongly resembling Lethbridge-Stewart and Sergeant Benton (who was specifically named) appear in theJohn M. FordStar Trek novelHow Much for Just the Planet? at a rather treacherous golf course on the planet Direidi.
Similarly to Alysande Stuart, the comic bookJack Staff includes Commander Liz Stewart of S.M.I.L.E. (Secret Military Intelligence Lethal Executive).
The Brigadier briefly appears inKim Newman andEugene Byrne'sBack in the USSA, supporting Britain's involvement in an alternateVietnam War.
The Brigadier was referenced in name in theABC Family showThe Middleman. In the episode "The Clotharian Contamination Protocol", Wendy and The Middleman go to check out a returnedVoyager probe. However, a nearbyNASA listening station team also arrives. Using their random IDs, and due to the quick thinking of the Middleman, they are intimidated into leaving. As they go, the Middleman calls out the other team's lead, "Mr... Lethbridge-Stewart, if that is your real name!"
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