Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart

General - formerly Brigadier - Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart (often called The Brigadier or The Brig) was one of the founders of UNIT and commander of its UK operations. From his second incarnation onwards, and notwithstanding some early tension between the two at the start of his third incarnation, the Doctor long considered the Brigadier one of his most trusted human allies and closest friends.

Early life and military career
Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart was born in 1930. (NA: Blood Heat, No Future) An only child, he was raised in Simla, India, until the age of eight, when he was sent to an English prep school. His mother died after he left for England. (PDA: Island of Death) He attended Holborough, where he first met Teddy Fitzoliver. (BBCR: The Paradise of Death)

The young Alistair suffered pressure to live up to the military traditions of the Lethbridge-Stewart family. (DWM: The Warkeeper's Crown)

He began his military career around 1953 and attended Sandhurst Military Academy with Major General Rutlidge. (DW: The Web of Fear, Mawdryn Undead) He had high ambitions even then. (MA: Who Killed Kennedy)

Shortly after the end of the Second World War, a twenty-one-year-old Alistair was assigned to a Royal Navy mission to update British maps of the Greek Islands and ended up in Albania on a mission against Stalinist rebels. This was his first encounter with the extra-normal,. He came into contact with the Immortals and went on a quest into the Greek Underworld; his mind was wiped of these memories. (PDA: Deadly Reunion)

He later joined the Scots Guards and was stationed for a time at Aldgate. (DW: The Green Death)

Relationships
Lethbridge-Stewart lost his virginity to a girl named Vera whilst drunk on the night of his passing out as a fully commissioned second lieutenant. (PDA: Deadly Reunion)

While in Greece, he fell in love with the Immortal Persephone. He entered the Underworld and fought against Hades for her. They spent two weeks together before she reluctantly wiped his memory. They would meet again in the 1970s, when his memory was restored. (PDA: Deadly Reunion)

In Sierra Leone, Lethbridge-Stewart met Mariatu, the daughter of a chieftain, who bore him a son, Mariama. (NA: Transit)

Some time in the 1960s, eleven years before the spider invasion, he had a romantic encounter with Doris on Brighton Beach (DW: Planet of the Spiders); they had a relationship of unknown length, which ended peacefully when Lethbridge-Stewart was dispatched overseas. (DWM: The Warkeeper's Crown)

Upon returning to Britain, the Brigadier met and married Fiona. (MA: The Scales of Injustice) Fiona and he had one child, conceived after the London Event, whom they named Kate. (MA: The Scales of Injustice, Downtime).

Formation of UNIT
Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart was the second commander of the British Army forces during the Great Intelligence's assault on London, replacing the deceased Colonel Pemberton. He was the sole survivor of a Robot Yeti assault at Holborn before heading down to the London Underground to take command. For the first time, Lethbridge-Stewart met a strange little man called the Doctor. Lethbridge-Stewart showed a quick, decisive manner, and a ready acceptance of events, even believing the story about the TARDIS from the start. (DW: The Web of Fear)

Soon after the London Event, Lethbridge-Stewart met with Air Vice-Marshall "Chunky" Gilmore and learned from him of the Shoreditch Incident. Hostile aliens had visited Earth in 1963, Gilmore himself helping to fight off with the help of the Seventh Doctor. He also learnt of evidence of alien visits to Earth that went back thousands of years. (MA: Downtime)

The Colonel went to the government and pitched the idea of a permanent military intelligence group with rapid-reaction capability to investigate alien and other unusual phenomena that threatened the nation. This was turned down. He risked his career, petitioning the United Nations to form such a group. (MA: Who Killed Kennedy) UNIT was organised, and Lethbridge-Stewart was promoted to Brigadier and appointed head of the United Kingdom branch. (DW: The Invasion) This made him unpopular with many senior British officers. (MA: Who Killed Kennedy)

The UNIT years
Four years after the Yeti invasion, UNIT investigated the mysterious activities of electronics industrialist Tobias Vaughn. Vaughn was allied with the Cybermen in one of the earliest of their many attempts to conquer Earth. With the help of the Second Doctor, the Brigadier and his men were able to thwart them. (DW: The Invasion)

When the Doctor was forced to regenerate into his third incarnation and exiled to 20th century Earth by the Time Lords, the Brigadier took on the new Doctor as UK UNIT's scientific advisor. (DW: Spearhead from Space)

The new Doctor and he lacked the easy rapport they had enjoyed during the Doctor's previous incarnation. Their relationship was further strained when Lethbridge-Stewart set off explosive charges around the Wenley Moor Silurian colony after promising the Doctor he had no hostile intentions towards them. The Doctor considered this murder, if not genocide. (DW: Doctor Who and the Silurians)

At the time of the second encounter with the Silurians, the Brigadier's marriage to Fiona began to fail. (MA: The Scales of Injustice)


 * Fiona and the Brigadier would later divorce and Alistair would find himself estranged from his daughter, Kate.

This relationship with the Doctor lasted through his next regeneration and even after the Time Lords' rescinded his exile. (DW: The Three Doctors) The Brigadier relied on the Doctor's scientific and technical expertise to defeat many alien and domestic threats. The Doctor's formal ties with UNIT gradually faded, all the more so in his fourth incarnation, though he left the Brigadier a space-time telegraph to contact him if needed. (DW: Revenge of the Cybermen) Even so, he was openly resentful when the Brigadier used it to summon him back to Earth. (DW: Terror of the Zygons)


 * Position: Head of the British division of UNIT
 * Years: Formation - 1967
 * Succeeded by: Charles Crichton

1970s and 1980s
Lethbridge-Stewart retired from UNIT and the army. He took a post as an A-level maths teacher at Brendon Public School. In 1977, the Brigadier saw and touched hands with his own future self from 1983. The time differential shorted out, causing an energy discharge. The Brigadier fell unconscious and spent the next six years in a state of partial amnesia, having forgotten ever having met the Doctor. In 1983 the Brigadier encountered the Fifth Doctor, whom he did not recognise and met his past self from 1977. This completed the temporal paradox. (DW: Mawdryn Undead)

The Brigadier was attending an anniversary reunion of UNIT when, with the second Doctor, he was captured and transported to the Death Zone on Gallifrey. (DW: The Five Doctors)

In 1984, the Brigadier sent Major Whitaker to Reykjavik to investigate an unnatural increase in volcanic and seismic activity. (DWM: The Fires Down Below)

In 1989, Lethbridge-Stewart conducted an investigation of the dealings of SenéNet and was captured. He was rescued by the Sixth Doctor, who uncovered and stopped yet another invasion attempt by the Nestene Consciousness. (PDA: Business Unusual)

1990s
By the 1990s, Lethbridge-Stewart had married his second wife, Doris, with whom he had a memorable holiday years ago. (DW: Battlefield) The Seventh Doctor changed time slightly so that he could attend the wedding, even though originally he had missed it because he had not known of it. (BE: A Romantic Evening)

The Brigadier worked with UNIT again during yet another attempt by the Great Intelligence to conquer Earth, together with two of the Doctor's former companions, Victoria Waterfield and Sarah Jane Smith. He reunited with his estranged daughter, Kate, and for the first time, met his grandson, Gordon. (MA: Downtime)

The Brigadier came out of retirement briefly to help UNIT and its new commander, Brigadier Winifred Bambera, deal with an invasion from a parallel universe by the sorceress Morgaine. Once again, he met the Doctor, now in his seventh incarnation. Together they defeated Morgaine. Lethbridge-Stewart distinguished himself during these events, single-handedly taking on the Destroyer and dispatching him, armed only with a revolver loaded with silver bullets. (DW: Battlefield)

In 1997, the Brigadier collaborated with the Doctor's eighth incarnation and Bernice Summerfield during an interplanetary crisis between the United Kingdom and Mars. At the end of this crisis, Lethbridge-Stewart was promoted to General, although he still preferred to be called "Brigadier." He was also knighted. (NA: The Dying Days) He would have a role in Scotland's devolution. (BFA: Minuet in Hell)

In 1999, he enlisted the help of the Fifth Doctor and his companions Tegan and Turlough to stop an invasion of Earth by the Jex. (PDA: The King of Terror)

At some point in the early years of his retirement, he rescued Susan Foreman from drowning in the lake on which his house with Doris was situated. At the time, the First Doctor and Susan were just beginning to experience humanity and had not yet settled in London in 1963. Nevertheless, due to the fact that he had already attended Lethbridge-Stewart's funeral along with many of his other incarnations, the pre-Totter's Lane version of the Doctor understood who the Brigadier was. (ST: The Gift)

2000s
In 2000, Lethbridge-Stewart served as an undercover operative for the United Nations, while officially using his experience in devolution to advise the newly-formed state of Malebolgia. In the USA, he secretly investigated the use of a medical device that was used to alter human minds. He encountered the Eighth Doctor again. (BFA: Minuet in Hell)

When his former colleague, Captain Palmer, showed him a tape of seemingly invisible imps around a deserted village, the Brigadier called the Doctor for assistance, subsequently working with the Sixth Doctor and journalist Claire Aldwych to uncover a conspiracy that stretched back to the Second World War and included the secret son of Adolf Hitler. Although Claire was killed during a trip to 1945, the Doctor and the Brigadier defeated the Fourth Reich (PDA: The Shadow in the Glass).

At a point probably in the 2000s, the Brigadier led a UNIT fleet from the dark side of the Moon against a Canisian fleet. (WC: Death Comes to Time)

While teaching at Sandhurst Military School, the Brigadier met the Doctor in yet another incarnation. (DWM: The Warkeeper's Crown)

Lethbridge-Stewart was knighted. He continued his association with UNIT and with Sarah Jane Smith. He formally announced the true purpose of UNIT at a press conference without first telling anyone he would do so.

He would end up assisting UNIT and its agent, Colonel Emily Chaudhry, against their attempted replacements, ICIS, first by undermining their reasons for replacing UNIT in front of the media (BFA: The Coup) and eventually with direct military action. (BFA: The Wasting)



During the Sontaran invasion of Earth in 2009, Colonel Mace mentioned that Sir Alistair had been stranded in Peru during a mission when the Tenth Doctor wished he was around. Colonel Mace took no offence to the Doctor wishing for him instead of Mace, saying that Lethbridge-Stewart was a good man. (DW: The Poison Sky) Shortly after returning to England, Sarah Jane Smith wanted his help to break into the Black Archive a UNIT base which housed artefacts of great danger and power. He did so but was interrupted in his brief with Cal Kilburne. He helped Sarah Jane and Rani Chandra to smuggle themselves into the Black Archives to get the Tunguska Scroll for the Bane called Mrs Wormwood, who claimed she wanted it for honourable purpose. As he escaped with Sarah Jane he was chased by UNIT officers. He helped knock out another Bane who was posing as a UNIT Major. (SJA: Enemy of the Bane) He would have attended Sarah Jane's wedding, but he was back in Peru at the time. (SJA: The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith) At some point during his prolonged regeneration, the Tenth Doctor visited the Brigadier, although whether in Peru or the UK is not certain. As of late 2010, Lethbridge-Stewart was still on assignment in Peru and could not attend the Eleventh Doctor's staged funeral. (SJA: Death of the Doctor)

2010s
In 2010, along with Doris, Mike Yates and Benton, he attended the wedding of the Doctor's former companion, Bernice Summerfield, to Jason Kane in Cheldon Bonniface. By this time he knew of his terminal illness. He had only weeks to live. As ever, danger and adventure followed in the Doctor's footsteps and he had his youth restored to him and the disease rid from his system. (NA: Happy Endings)

During a boat outing with Doris, Lethbridge-Stewart's boat capsized and Doris was drowned. This haunted him for years. In 2012, the Brigadier met the Doctor's eighth incarnation in Avalon where they got caught up in struggles between that realm's ruler, Queen Mab, and the Unseelie Court. (EDA: The Shadows of Avalon)

Death
With his life extended, Lethbridge-Stewart lived considerably past the normal span for humans of his era. He died some time in the 2050s. (PDA: The King of Terror) Towards the end of his life, Lethbridge-Stewart was living in a nursing home. He enjoyed telling stories about the Doctor, and still hoped to see him one last time, asking the nurses to pour an extra brandy in case he came to visit. Sadly, Sir Alistair passed away peacefully in his bed before he could see the Doctor again. A few months later, a nurse informed the Eleventh Doctor of his recent death. (DW: The Wedding of River Song) All incarnations of the Doctor attended his funeral. (ST: The Gift)

Alternate Brigadiers

 * The Earth of Inferno is known to have had its own version of the Brigadier, known as the Brigade Leader. Loyal to the fascist leader who governed his version of Britain, the Brigade Leader was the antithesis of the Brigadier. He was shot and killed by his lieutenant, Section Leader Elizabeth Shaw while trying to force the Doctor at gunpoint to help him escape his doomed Earth. (DW: Inferno)


 * In another timeline, the Brigadier and the Third Doctor died saving humanity from a hostile Silurian faction during the Wenley Moor incident. Humans and Silurians made peace and the fact it continued after their deaths was a tribute to their skill and force of character. (DWM: Final Genesis)


 * In another reality, the Doctor died at Wenley Moor and the Silurians took over Earth in a hostile manner, leaving the Brigadier and the remnants of UNIT to fight for thirty years against them. The Seventh Doctor and his companions arrived in that universe and assisted in a reconciliation between the species. (NA: Blood Heat)

Nicknames
He was often referred to simply as the Brigadier and on rare occasions as "the Brig." During his second and third incarnations, the Doctor sometimes called him by his surname, while in his third and fourth incarnations, the Doctor at least once addressed him as Alistair. In his fifth he adressed him by his full name. (DW: Mawdryn Undead)

Creation
Colonel Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart was originally to appear only in The Web of Fear as a supporting character. He was therefore the creation of writers Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln, to whom royalties had to be paid whenever the character was used. Like Nyssa and K9, he is a rare example of a series regular to whom the BBC does not hold sole copyright. Unlike Nyssa, however, the copyright situation is not so favourable to the writers. While Haisman and Lincoln do own the basic character, they own nothing of the copyright to UNIT, which is an almost indivisible part of his essential character. The writing duo's part ownership was acknowledged in SJA: Enemy of the Bane, the Series 2 season finale of The Sarah Jane Adventures.

Appearances
In televised episodes, the Brigadier appeared and interacted with all of the first seven Doctors — though his encounter with the Sixth Doctor was in what this wiki regards as the non-canonical Dimensions in Time.

Nevertheless his most continuous period of interaction with the Doctor was during the Time Lord's second, third and fourth incarnations. There were unsurprisingly numerous comic, audio and prose stories which centreed on the Brigadier's adventures with those three Doctors.

More unusual were the number of stories in other media which described interactions with other Doctors. A short story once posited he met the First Doctor before the Doctor and Susan settled on Totter's Lane. (ST: The Gift) The Sixth Doctor's first encounter with the Brig was described in BFA: The Spectre of Lanyon Moor, quite irrespective of Dimensions in Time. Likewise, BFA: Minuet in Hell and NA: The Dying Days cast him alongside the Eighth Doctor. Meanwhile, DWM: The Warkeeper's Crown had him as a temporary companion of the Tenth Doctor. The Tenth Doctor also visited the Brigadier off-screen during the closing scenes of DW: The End of Time (SJA: Death of the Doctor). He also appeared with Doctors not at all seen in television, as with David Warner's Doctor in BFDWU: Sympathy for the Devil and Masters of War. Finally, he made guest appearances in most of the Doctor-less U.N.I.T. audio series by Big Finish, and in the (mostly Doctor-less) Big Finish audio serial, ''The Three Companions'. ''

Nicholas Courtney's long tenure on Doctor Who led to some interesting trivia. Along with Carole Ann Ford, Jon Pertwee and Patrick Troughton, he was one of only four actors to work with both William Hartnell and Richard Hurndall's intepretations of the First Doctor. Apart from Peter Purves, he was the only other regular cast member on Doctor Who to have played two different roles in episodes featuring Hartnell.

The reference to the Brigadier's death in DW: The Wedding of River Song was a last-minute addition to the episode, in tribute to the recently-deceased Nicholas Courtney. The scene does not directly contradict any of the post-2010 continuity established in the novels.