Legend (home video)
Legend was a promotional short, billed as a trailer, for The Brigadier Adventures, exclusive to BBV Productions' P.R.O.B.E. Case Files - Volume 2 DVD release. Written by James Hornby, it was created in the style of a regular P.R.O.B.E. Case Files and loosely set up the premise of the series, although it actually contradicted the series' actual first story, Memories of Tomorrow.
Summary
While cleaning out the P.R.O.B.E. Archive with Agamya Akhtar, Giles stumbles upon a "whole host" of documents relating to Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart. Giles recalls how Liz worked with Lethbridge-Stewart in the old days before P.R.O.B.E. was created, and relates that he himself met the retired legend during a few of his "get-togethers" with Liz, with the old man regaling the younger Giles with tales of his own world-saving exploits. Giles ends by pledging to record spoken versions of the documents as part of his regular video diaries.
Cast
Characters
Mentioned only
Crew
Worldbuilding
- Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart worked with P.R.O.B.E.'s previous director during "the 1970s or 1980s".
- Images of a Robot Yeti, a Dominator and a Quark appear to illustrate the many threats from which the Brigadier apparently protected the Earth.
Story notes
- Despite having been evidently created as a trailer for The Brigadier Adventures, the short would only be released after the series had already wrapped. Though no public comment has been offered on the matter, this was likely because the setup given in the script of the short, with Giles finding the Brigadier's diaries in the P.R.O.B.E. Archive, subtly conflicts with the account given in the series' actual first release, Memories of Tomorrow [+]Loading...["Memories of Tomorrow (audio story)"]: in Memories of Tomorrow, Giles is recording audio versions of the Lethbridge-Stewart diaries for his own illicit reasons, fearing that the originals will be taken from him by Official Secrets Act-quoting busybodies sooner or later. In contrast, this short implied that Giles intended for his video recordings of himself reading the documents to become an officially-registered part of the P.R.O.B.E. Archive's stock, and indeed, A Message From Sir Andrew [+]Loading...["A Message From Sir Andrew (home video)"] had previously established that Giles shared his video diaries with his superiors.
Continuity
- Giles mentions that Liz worked with Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart "sometime during the 1970s or 1980s". This references Liz's televised tenure as the Third Doctor's companion during the "UNIT era", starting in TV: Spearhead from Space [+]Loading...["Spearhead from Space (TV story)"], which depicts Liz and the Brigadier's first meeting. Giles's off-handed uncertainty about the dating references the infamous UNIT dating controversy.
- Giles refers to the Brigadier as "Sir Alistair". He was mentioned to have been knighted in AUDIO: The Coup [+]Loading...["The Coup (audio story)"], a detail later acknowledged on television in TV: The Poison Sky [+]Loading...["The Poison Sky (TV story)"].
- The Brigadier's stories included confrontations with Robot Yetis and Dominators. The Robot Yetis debuted in TV: The Abominable Snowmen [+]Loading...["The Abominable Snowmen (TV story)"] and their return appearance in TV: The Web of Fear [+]Loading...["The Web of Fear (TV story)"] also marked the debut of Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, who met the Doctor for the first time in that story. The Dominators, meanwhile, debuted in TV: The Dominators [+]Loading...["The Dominators (TV story)"] but would go on to fight the Brigadier in the novel PROSE: Mutually Assured Destruction [+]Loading...["Mutually Assured Destruction (novel)"].
- Giles refers to the Brigadier's legacy living on through "his children and grandchildren". This is a veiled allusion to the Brig's daughter Kate Stewart, who debuted in HOMEVID: Downtime [+]Loading...["Downtime (home video)"] (alongside a child) before making the jump to the TV series in TV: The Power of Three [+]Loading...["The Power of Three (TV story)"], as well as to Lucy Wilson, the Brigadier's granddaughter and headliner of her own spin-off series, who was introduced in PROSE: Lucy Wilson [+]Loading...["Lucy Wilson (short story)"] alongside two other grandchildren.
External links
- Official Legend page at bbvproductions.co.uk
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
