Talk:Nicholas Courtney

Source needed for the stroke reference

You'd have thought that Nicholas Courtney suffering a stroke in 2009 would have been major news in the fan sites, etc. But the only source I can find for this is this wiki and Wikipedia, and sites referencing these sources. Yet Outpost Gallifrey's Doctor Who News Page and Doctor Who Magazine made no reference to this. Nor does The Writer's Tale. I'm not necessarily saying the information is bogus, but we really need to indicate a source here. Is there any interview, media, etc. to indicate that he did indeed suffer a stroke in 2009? 68.146.64.9 13:19, January 20, 2011 (UTC)

Removed dubious statements

Going along with the above user's statements, I've removed the whole paragraph from which that reference came and am placing it here for further examination:

As of 2009, having first appeared in 1965 (The Daleks Master Plan) and last appeared in 2008 (Enemy of the Bane), Nicholas Courtney has the second longest gap in between first and last appearances with a 43-year difference and was first until Zienia Merton who first appeared in 1964 (Marco Polo) and after a 45-year gap appeared in The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith. Coincidentally, Nicholas Courtney was also due to appear playing the Brigadier as part of Sarah Jane's wedding party, and was looking forward to a filmed reunion between Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and The Doctor, but suffered a stroke around that time which made filming his scenes impossible. He has since made a full recovery.

The problem, for me, isn't just the lack of citation on the health condition, but all this mess about the "gap". On several other pages where such gaps are concerned, we don't measure from Doctor Who to a spin-off. The gap of interest is the gap between Doctor Who appearances, not DWU appearances. Also the gap is usually measured as that between the last appearance in the classic series and the first appearance in the new series — not the gap between first appearance in the classic series and last appearance in the new series. Thus, the measurement would begin from Battlefield, not DMP. In any case, though, there is no "gap" for him, because he hasn't appeared in BBCW DW. What we would say, I think, is that he returned to playing the Brig for the first time since 1989. And if we were to count all DWU appearances, and not just DW ones, Peter Davison's gap (1984-2007) would be bigger than Courtney's (1989-2008). (The only way Courtney wins is if we count from Dimensions in Time, which this wiki views as non-canonical.) CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 13:34, January 20, 2011 (UTC)

• I was just about to remove it too - thanks for the fast action! I also removed it from the episode article, or to be more precise I reworded it as a rumor under the myths section, as this seems appropriate. If someone comes along and says "Well, it was reported in such-and-such a newspaper, then cool, we can put it back, but as it stands now, this sort of thing generates damaging rumors. I also stand corrected - it is not mentioned in his Wikipedia article, which is also a sign the info may not be accurate. 68.146.64.9 13:36, January 20, 2011 (UTC)