Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart
- You may be looking for Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, the inhabitant of another universe.
Brigade Leader Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart was an alternate version of the Brigadier, where he worked as a high ranking member of the Republican Security Forces in a parallel universe. He was in charge of security at the Eastchester Scientific Labour Camp. (TV: Inferno) The exact circumstances of his lost eye were unclear to him. (PROSE: I, Alastair)
Biography
He was born in 1929 on an Earth that existed in between the parallel universe and the normal universe. Both of his parents were killed in bombing raids, sometime between 1940 and 1945, when an alien power attacked the Earth. He was saved from that world by Colonel Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart and Major James Lethbridge-Stewart. His travel across realities cost him his left eye, and he was brought to the attention of Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, the Director of External Security, who had lost his son, Alistair, some twenty-one years earlier.
He arrived on James's world in 1959, still only 15 years old, having travelled from his native universe in 1945. (PROSE: The Schizoid Earth)
Alastair aged faster than other individuals on the Inferno Earth. He was indoctrinated by his stepfather, the British Republic's External Security Director, into becoming "the perfect fascist". (PROSE: Ashes of the Inferno) This involved mental torture, drugs, and barrages of propaganda. Once converted, he joined the RSF. He wished to supplant his higher-ranking brother. (PROSE: I, Alastair)
Unlike his counterpart, the Brigade Leader was clean-shaven. He believed firmly in the British Republic, and its Leader. If anyone spoke out or mocked it, he would call it treason at once. He was more dour than his counterpart but underneath this veneer of control was a mess of insecurity: he was afraid people were laughing at him, resorted to yelling and violence to assert authority, and took glee in dominating people that tested him. (PROSE: I, Alastair,TV: Inferno)
He served with the expeditionary force in Aden as Column Leader, where he carried out brutal punishment raids to suppress the locals.
After Aden, he transferred to the Security Directorate of the RASF and found it - to his annoyance - used by Party figures against each other, reporting their rivals and children of rivals for 'crimes'. Upper classes refusing to acknowledge his authority left him furious. His superiors were impressed by his work and willingness to get his hands dirty, but Party politics prevented him being promoted; disgruntled about this, he plotted to steal his brother's job as Operation Mole-Bore.
Shortly after he ended up in a relationship with his world's Sally Wright, he was tasked to investigate a major terrorist attack and uncovered the Resistance's involvement with an extraterrestrial power. He prevented a Resistance attack on Battersea Power Station but, under orders from his father, allowed some damage to undermine the Director of Internal Affairs. Alastair discovered too late that Wright was a leader in the Resistance, but was able to work out their plan to bomb the New People's Parliament during his father's coronation as the new leader (having 'arranged' the death of the previous). He was able to stop that and, left shaken aftwards, killed Wright, and his father promoted him to Brigade Leader.(PROSE: I, Alastair)
Years later, he'd finally ended up in charge of the newly renamed Inferno Project. He captured and interrogated the Third Doctor, who had just arrived from his own universe. At first he seemingly had trouble believing the Doctor's story of having come from another dimension.
It eventually became clear that the Doctor had been telling the truth and the penetration of his Earth's crust would devastate the planet beyond recovery. During the eruptions, he began to lose his cool, and became panicky. He even got into a brawl with Greg Sutton. He threatened to shoot the Doctor unless the Time Lord rescued him, Section Leader Shaw and Petra Williams, but instead the Section Leader shot him dead to save the other Earth. (TV: Inferno)
A vision of Alastair was seen by James Gore in the days leading up to and following the Inferno Project. This prompted James to visit the shed where the Third Doctor had travelled across universes, where he witnessed the Brigade Leader's death and was himself killed. (PROSE: Ashes of the Inferno)
Behind the scenes
- Nicholas Courtney, of course, played the part without the Brigadier's trademark (false) moustache.
- Dialogue in Inferno only refers to the Brigade Leader by his title and last name, but not by his first name.
- In the novelisation, the Brigade Leader confirmed that he was called Brigade Leader Lethbridge-Stewart.
