Mike Yates

Captain Mike Yates is a fictional character played by Richard Franklin. He worked for UNIT (United Nations Intelligence Taskforce), an international organisation that defends the Earth from alien threats.

Yates first appeared in the Third Doctor serial Terror of the Autons, the latest in a line of Captains assisting Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. He proved more durable than his predecessors, appearing semi-regularly in the programme from 1971 to 1974 alongside the Brigadier and Sergeant Benton. Together with the Doctor and his companions, Yates fought off alien invasions, the machinations of the renegade Time Lord known as the Master, rogue computers and mutated maggots.

Yates was a fairly non-descript character, typical of the British Army officer class, and little is known of him outside of his time with UNIT. He was cool under fire, efficient, and both gave and carried out his orders with a minimum of fuss. He appeared to have a relatively good rapport with his men, although he did remind Benton on occasion that "rank hath its privileges". He was attracted to the Third Doctor's assistant Jo Grant and they may have dated for a time.

Yates's fall from grace started when he was brainwashed by the artificial intelligence BOSS in the 1973 serial The Green Death. The brush with ecological disaster apparently made Yates very concerned about the future of the planet, and he was easily recruited by Sir Charles Grover into a conspiracy to reverse time and return Earth to a "golden age" (Invasion of the Dinosaurs). The conspiracy was thwarted by the Doctor, and in return for his past service to UNIT, the Brigadier allowed Yates to take medical leave and then quietly resign.

Trying to recover, Yates attended a meditation centre but uncovered strange goings-on, which he reported to Sarah Jane Smith, since he felt that UNIT would find him untrustworthy. Sarah communicated this back to the Doctor, leading into the rest of the events of the Third Doctor's last serial, Planet of the Spiders. It is not known if Yates returned to UNIT after that, or if he went on to other things.

Planet of the Spiders was Yates's last appearance in the series. Richard Franklin returned as an illusory image of Yates in the 20th Anniversary special The Five Doctors and reprised the role of Yates in the 1993 charity special Dimensions in Time.

Other appearances
Mike Yates has appeared in the spin-off novels taking place during his time with UNIT. In the Virgin Missing Adventures novels The Eye of the Giant by Christopher Bulis and The Scales of Injustice by Gary Russell, Yates began as a sergeant in UNIT together with Benton and was promoted to Captain at the end of Scales, which took place between the television stories Inferno and Terror of the Autons. In the BBC Past Doctor Adventures novel The Devil Goblins From Neptune by Keith Topping and Martin Day it was established that the Mike's full name was Michael Alexander Raymond Yates.

A segment of fandom has suggested that Yates is homosexual (or at the very least bisexual), partly due to what some felt was his unconvincing relationship with Jo Grant and partly due to Richard Franklin's own sexual orientation. This is hinted at in the Virgin New Adventures, most notably in Happy Endings by Paul Cornell. In this book we were told that, in 2012, Yates is apparently living with a man named Tom, and he discusses Benton in Palare with Alexander Shuttleworth (a gay character from one of Cornell's earlier novels) and two Silurians based on Round the Horne ' s Julian and Sandy.

The Devil Goblins From Neptune, however, portrays Yates as straight, and very "laddish". The two portrayals are not necessarily inconsistent, as they show the character at very different points in his life.

Richard Franklin also wrote an unpublished novel featuring Mike Yates, The Killing Stone, set after the events of Spiders. It was released as an audio book, read by Franklin, by BBV in 2002.

More recently, a "guest book" entry on the tie-in website "Who is Doctor Who?" created by the BBC for the 2005 series saying how the Doctor changed his life (not necessarily for the better) is signed by a "Mr Yates", a possible reference to the character. The canonicity of the information from the spin-off media is uncertain.