Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart

Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart
Main aliases:	"The Brigadier"
Place of origin:	Earth
Appearances:	List of Appearances
Main actor:	[[actor::Nicholas Courtney|Nicholas Courtney]]

Brigadier Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart (commonly nicknamed The Brigadier) was one of the founders of UNIT and commander of its UK operations. From his second incarnation onwards, and notwithstanding some early tension between the two during the start of his third incarnation, the Doctor has long considered the Brigadier one of his most trusted Human allies and closest friends. His long association with The Doctor has caused some to include him in rosters of the Time Lord's companions.

• Position: Head of UNIT
• Years: 1969 - 1983
• Preceded by: UNIT formed
• Succeeded by: Charles Crichton

Profile

Nicknames

As note above, he was often referred to simply as the Brigadier and on rare occasions as "the Brig." During his second and third incarnations, the Doctor sometimes called him by his surname, while in his fourth, the Doctor at least once addressed him as Alistair.

Biography

Early life and military career

Lethbridge-Stewart was born in 1930 (NA: Blood Heat, No Future), and attended Holborough, where he first met Teddy Fitzoliver. (BBCR: The Paradise of Death)

The young Alistair suffered a lot of pressure to live up to the military traditions of the Lethbridge-Stewart family. (DWM: The Warkeeper's Crown)

He began his military career around 1953 and attended Sandhurst Military School with Major General Rutlidge. (DW: The Web of Fear, Mawdryn Undead) He joined the Scots' Guards and was stationed for a time at Aldgate. (DW: The Green Death)

Relationships

In Sierra Leone, Lethbridge-Stewart met Mariatu, the daughter of a chieftan, who bore a son by him, Mariama. (NA: Transit) He also had a romantic encounter with Doris on Brighton Beach. (DW: Planet of the Spiders) However, the Brigadier would marry another woman, Fiona. (MA: The Scales of Injustice) Fiona and Alistair had one child together, who they named Kate. (MA: The Scales of Injustice, Downtime)

Formation of UNIT

The then-Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart first met the Doctor during the attack by Robot Yeti on London with web guns, spurring on the evacuation of the city. British Army troops had gone down to the London Underground. Here, for the first time, Lethbridge-Stewart met the strange little man known as the Doctor. (DW: The Web of Fear) The event would later receive the simple name the London Incident (MA: Downtime)

Shortly after, Lethbridge-Stewart had a meeting with Air Vice-Marshall "Chunky" Gilmore and learned from him of the Shoreditch Incident, in which hostile aliens had visited Earth in 1963, which Gilmore himself had helped to fight off, with the help of the Doctor. He also learned that evidence of alien visits to Earth existed which went back millennia. (MA: Downtime)

The Colonel was inspired to petition the United Nations to form a special military intelligence group to investigate alien and other unusual phenomena which might threaten the security of Earth. UNIT was soon formed, and Lethbridge-Stewart found himself appointed head of the United Kingdom branch and elevated to the rank of Brigadier. (DW: The Invasion)

The UNIT years

Four years after the Yeti invasion, UNIT was investigating the mysterious activities of electronics industrialist Tobias Vaughn. Vaughn was allied with the Cybermen in the first of their many attempts to invade and conquer Earth. With the assistance of the Doctor, the Brigadier and his men were able to thwart this invasion attempt. (DW: The Invasion)

When the Doctor was forced to undergo another regeneration and was exiled to 20th century Earth by the Time Lords, the Brigadier took on the new Doctor as UK UNIT's scientific advisor. (DW: Spearhead from Space)

The new Doctor and the Brigadier lacked the easy rapport that they had enjoyed during the Doctor's previous incarnation. Their relationship was further strained after Lethbridge-Stewart set off explosive charges around a Silurian colony after promising the Doctor that he had no hostile intentions towards them. The Doctor considered this action murder, if not genocide. (DW: Doctor Who and the Silurians)

During a second encounter with the Silurians, the Brigadier's marriage to Fiona began to fail. (MA: The Scales of Injustice)

Fiona and the Brigadier would later divorce and Alistair would find himself estranged from his daughter, Kate.

This relationship lasted through the Doctor's next regeneration and even after the Time Lords' rescinding of the Doctor's exile. (DW: The Three Doctors) The Brigadier relied on the Doctor's scientific and technical expertise to defeat various alien and domestic threats. The Doctor's formal ties with UNIT gradually waned, all the more so in his fourth incarnation, though he did leave with the Brigadier a space-time telegraph which the Brigadier could contact him if needed. (DW: Revenge of the Cybermen) Despite this, he was openly resentful when the Brigadier proceeded to use said device to summon him back to Earth. (DW: Terror of the Zygons)

After UNIT

The 1970s and 1980s

Lethbridge-Stewart retired from UNIT and the military, taking a post as an A-level maths teacher at Brendon Public School.

In 1977, due to time travel, the Brigadier saw and touched his own future self from 1983. The time differential shorted out, causing an energy discharge - the Brigadier fell unconscious and Lethbridge-Stewart spent the next six years in a state of partial amnesia, having forgotten ever having met the Doctor.

In 1983 the Brigadier encountered the Doctor, whom he did not recognize, met his past self from 1977 and in so doing completed the original temporal paradox. (DW: Mawdryn Undead)

The Brigadier was attending an anniversary reunion of UNIT when, along with the second Doctor, he was captured and transported to the Death Zone on Gallifrey. (DW: The Five Doctors)

In 1989, Lethbridge-Stewart conducted an investigation of the dealings of SenéNet and was captured. He was later rescued by the Doctor, who uncovered and stopped yet another invasion attempt by the Nestene Consciousness. (PDA: Business Unusual)

The 1990s to early 21st century

By the 1990s, Lethbridge-Stewart married his second wife, Doris, with whom he had that memorable holiday years ago.

The Brigadier worked with UNIT again during yet another attempt by the Great Intelligence to conquer Earth, together with two of the Doctor's former companions, Victoria Waterfield and Sarah Jane Smith. He reunited with his estranged daughter, Kate and for the first time met his grandson, Gordon. (MA: Downtime)

The Brigadier would come out of retirement briefly to help UNIT and its new commander, Brigadier Winifred Bambera, deal with an invasion from a parallel universe by the sorceress Morgaine. Once again, he met up with the Doctor, now in his seventh incarnation and together defeated Morgaine. Lethbridge-Stewart distinguished himself during these events, singlehandedly taking on the Destroyer and dispatching him, armed only with a revolver loaded with silver bullets. (DW: Battlefield)

In 1997 the Brigadier collaborated with the Doctor's eighth incarnation and Bernice Summerfield during an interplanetary crisis between the United Kingdom and Mars. (NA: The Dying Days)

In 1999 he enlisted the help of an earlier Doctor and his companions Tegan and Turlough to stop an invasion of Earth by the Jex. (PDA: The King of Terror)

At the end of the Martian crisis, Lethbridge-Stewart was promoted to the rank of General, although he still preferred to be called "Brigadier." Later, he was also knighted. (NA: "The Dying Days")

A short story entitled "Personal Correspondence," set before the final scene of Aliens of London/World War Three and written by the co-author of Time's Champion, Chris McKeon, features Lethbridge-Stewart encountering the Ninth Doctor in March 2006, as the two friends - along with Sergeant Benton, Mike Yates and Bessie - pursue a surviving Slitheen from the wreckage of 10 Downing Street. The story's conclusion (which also features Doris in a cameo role) indicates that the Brigadier has some knowledge of the Time War, hinted at in the EDA The Gallifrey Chronicles.

Also in Time's Champion, the Brigadier attends Benton's seventieth birthday party (along with Mike Yates) in early January 2008.

21st century

While teaching at Sandhurst Military School, the Brigadier met the Doctor, now in his tenth incarnation. (DWM: The Warkeeper's Crown)

This event has no date given, but the mid-1990s would seem one possibility. The renewal of his youth had not yet occured.

The Brigadier appears to have renewed some ties to UNIT at the beginning of the new century. In The Sarah Jane Adventures, Sarah Jane Smith sends her love to him through an unnamed UNIT contact during a phone conversation. His whereabouts are also known to UNIT during the 2009 Sontaran attack. Colonel Mace mentioned that Lethbridge-Stewart was stranded in Peru; at some point prior to this event, he was knighted as Mace referred to him as "Sir Alistair". (DW: The Poison Sky)

Lethbridge-Stewart attended the wedding of Bernice Summerfield and Jason Kane in 2010, and during the course of these events his youth was restored. Lethbridge-Stewart thus managed to live on considerably past the normal span for Humans of his time, dying at last sometime in the 2050s. (NA: Happy Endings, PDA: The King of Terror)

During a boat outing with Doris, Lethbridge-Stewart's boat capsized and Doris was drowned, an event which haunted him for years. (EDA: The Shadows of Avalon)

The ultimate fate of Lethbridge-Stewart has yet to be chronicled, although the Doctor appeared to be aware of it at the time of his seventh incarnation, stating that the Brigadier is destined to die in bed, not in battle. (DW: Battlefield)

The First Doctor also stated that all of his incarnations would be present at the Brigadier's funeral.

Alternate Brigadiers

The Inferno Earth is known to have had its own version of the Brigadier, known as the Brigade Leader. Loyal to the fascist leader who governed his version of Britain, the Brigade Leader was the antithesis of the Brigadier. He was shot and killed by Section Leader Elizabeth Shaw while trying to force the Doctor at gunpoint to escape his doomed Earth (DW: Inferno).

In another, both the Brigadier and the Doctor died saving Humanity from a hostile Silurian faction during the Wenley Moor incident. Humans and Silurians made peace with each other anyway. (DWM: Final Genesis)

In another, though similar reality the Doctor died at Wenley Moor, and the Silurians took over Earth, leaving the Brigadier and the remnants of UNIT to fight for thirty years against the Silurians. The Doctor and his companions arrived in that universe and assisted in a reconciliation between the species. (NA: Blood Heat)

Another alternate version of Lethbridge-Stewart is known to exist in a timeline where the Doctor began his exile on Earth in 1997 rather than the earlier part of the 20th century. During this time, Lethbridge-Stewart lived out his retirement running a bar in Hong Kong (DWU: Sympathy for the Devil).

Quotes

• Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart - Quotes

Behind the scenes

• The on-screen reference to the Brigadier in The Poison Sky has led to speculation as to whether he might appear in a future episode. As the actor who played him is now quite elderly, should this occur it may render the "youth-renewed" Brigadier mentioned above as one of the "Alternative Brigadiers".
• In July 2008, media reports, later confirmed by the Outpost Gallifrey website, confirmed that Nicholas Courtney will reprise the role of a now-elderly Brigadier in episodes 11 and 12 of the second season of The Sarah Jane Adventures. As noted above, it remains to be seen as to whether this might render the regenerated Brigadier non-canonical or an alternate version.[1]

These episodes are presumably set in 2008/9, prior to Sir Alistair's suggested 'regeneration', so its canonicity is not yet challenged.

See also

• Lethbridge-Stewart family