Reginald Styles
Sir Reginald "Reggie" Styles was a British diplomat.
In his younger days, he served in the army. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks) He went on to spend twenty years in the Foreign Office and then work for the United Nations. (PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy) He believed that China would cause the end of the world. (AUDIO: The Last Post)
In the 1970s, during a global crisis sparked in the Middle East, (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks) Styles arranged the second World Peace Conference at his home of Auderly House. He was famously one of the few diplomats the Chinese trusted at the time. (TV: Day of the Daleks)
He was almost assassinated by time-travelling guerrillas from an alternate 22nd century in which the conference had been destroyed and global war had broken out as result, followed by Dalek occupation. The guerrillas believed that Styles planned to betray the conference members in an attempt to seize power for himself, but it was in fact their own attempts to prevent this that created their timeline. The Third Doctor saved Styles and the conference was successful.
Styles spent much of the crisis tetchy and at odds with both the Doctor and UNIT. Despite that, the Doctor recognized that Styles was basically a good man despite his pig-headed attitude, allowing him to determine that the rebels' view of history was wrong and they had unwittingly created their own history. (TV: Day of the Daleks)
Later, when government budget cuts threatened to close down UNIT's UK branch, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart tried to contact Styles for help. However, Styles was out of the country and could not be of assistance. (PROSE: Where the Heart Is)
Behind the scenes
- In REF: The Doctor's Lives and Times, the Brigadier writes to Styles apologising for blowing up his house. Later on, Styles is one of the political figures replaced by Dalek replicas in Resurrection of the Daleks. The duplicate Styles falls dead, as do the other duplicate politicians; with the cause unknown, this is dubbed "Euro Flu" in the press.
