The Leader

The Leader
Job:	President of Great Britain
Place of origin:	Inferno universe
First appearance:	Inferno
Appearances:	PROSE: I, Alastair
Main actor:	Jack Kine

Alternate counterparts of theThird Doctor

In the "Inferno universe", the Leader was the dictatorial President of the Republic of Great Britain. (TV: Inferno) Accounts of his origins were conflicted.

One account suggested that he was the version of the Doctor native to this reality; specifically, instead of rejecting all the faces suggested to him at the Doctor's trial following the War Chief incident, this reality's Second Doctor had accepted the "thin" face, thus becoming the Leader instead of another reality's more heroic Third Doctor. (PROSE: Timewyrn: Revelation, TV: The War Games)

However, another account suggested that, despite "rumours" about him having an augmented lifespan, the Leader was in actuality just a human tyrant with a strong propaganda machine; indeed, by the time of the Inferno Project, age was beginning to catch up with him beyond what he could disguise in his public appearances. (PROSE: I, Alastair)

Biography

Origins

According to one account, the Leader came into being because Inferno universe's version of the Second Doctor selected one of the bodies offered to him by the Time Lords after his trial, before being exiled to Earth. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Revelation) Indeed, one of the faces rejected by the Second Doctor in the conventional versiosn of event was a thin man (TV: The War Games) with a certain resemblance to the Leader. (TV: Inferno)

However, another account, while it did not reveal his civilian name, suggested the Leader was merely a human politician, despite propaganda-based rumours of him having a supernaturally-long lifespan. (PROSE: I, Alastair)

Rise to power

As recounted in the account which depicted him as human, the Leader first gained prominence in 1930s England when he became an ally of Oswald Mosley. The two were regulars at the Revolutionary Arms pub in Westminster, and a photo from the era showed the Doctor drawing a beer for one of his colleagues — in public, he projected a kind avuncular personality, covering a cold and ruthless core.

After Mosley was assassinated while giving a speech at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester in 1936, the Doctor became the new leader of the revolutionary movement helping to craft Mosley's legacy as a martyr of the British people, and subsequently claimed Mosley's title of "Leader" for himself. (PROSE: I, Alastair)

In 1943, the revolution finally arrived, the old democratic regime collapsed and numerous executions were carried out on the Leader's orders, ostensibly those who had conspired to assassinate Mosley, including, among others, the British Royal Family. (PROSE: I, Alastair, TV: Inferno)

Years in power

By 1968, the Leader had become irritable and paranoid, sacking members of his Cabinet for perceived slights and failings, demoting Arthur Fless, Director of Information, to a remote colonial posting in West Africa for failing to locate an illegal radio transmitter interrupting BBC broadcasts with anti-Party propaganda in the London area. His health had severely declined and he was visibly elderly as his age caught up with him; he spent two months at his seaside retreat in Bognor Regis to convalesce from a condition afflicting his hearts but suffered a stroke soon after, confining him to a wheelchair. The Cabinet had started jockeying for power on assumption the Leader would not survive much longer, but he still retained his intelligence and cunning. (PROSE: I, Alastair)

Death

The Leader was killed in 1968 when Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart opportunistically used his wheelchair as a battering ram during an alien attack on Downing Street. After his death, the Leader's popularity with the public remained high and years later portraits and posters of him remained omnipresent to cement the legitimacy of President Lethbridge-Stewart's regime. (PROSE: Night of the Intelligence, I, Alastair)

President Lethbridge-Stewart perished during a volcanic catastrophe in the 1970s, when a secret British science project conducted at Eastchester, which involved drilling beneath Earth's crust to gain access to pockets of a potential new energy source, went terribly wrong — not only releasing an unidentifiable green, viscous substance that transformed humans into savage werewolf-like creatures on contact, but also enough energy to devastate the planet beyond recovery. (PROSE: The Face of the Enemy)

Legacy

During a conversation with the Seventh Doctor, the Third Doctor recalled the face on the poster in the hut at the Inferno Project, and described its similarity to the one offered to him by the Time Lords, concluding the Leader was an alternative incarnation of his. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Revelation, TV: The War Games)

Behind the scenes

• A black-and-white photograph of the BBC special effects designer Jack Kine were used to depict the Leader on the UNITY IS STRENGTH poster in the Technical Store, the Doctor's hut on the regular Earth timeline; and the framed picture on the wall of Brigade Leader Lethbridge-Stewart's office in Inferno. However, the Leader never appears on-screen in person and there is no on-screen evidence to suggest that the Doctor and the Leader had any connection; this connection was made only in the novels.
• It remains unclear as to whether the Leader who perished in the devastation of Earth following the disastrous events at Eastchester in the 1970s was the alternate Doctor or Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart.
• Robert Mammone, interviewed in 2021, noted that the Leader's paranoia and tendency to play cabinet members off against each other are based on Joseph Stalin. He also admitted that when writing it, he'd forgotten about Paul Cornell's implication that the Inferno Earth ruler was a version of the Doctor; "in my head, the Leader was just another in a long line of very human tyrants".