Adrienne Kramer

Brigadier-General Adrienne Kramer was the leader of the United States division of UNIT in the 1990s and 2000s. She was a friend of the Eighth Doctor and Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart.

History
Kramer worked as Lieutenant for the United Nations during the 1960s. She greeted Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart and Sally Wright as they landed in New York for their vacation in 1969. After the death of her detective friend, Paul Dawson, she and Lethbridge-Stewart investigated his murder, to find that the Great Intelligence was behind it. She called in the US Army to help, and followed Lethbridge-Stewart's advice to use sea water against the Yeti invading Manhattan.

After the threat was defeated, she intended to open a dialogue with the Fifth Operational Corps and the UN. (PROSE: )

In January 1970, Lethbridge-Stewart had Sally ask for Kramer's help in giving the Corps clearance to visit Japan to find Owain Vine. After realising that Vine had been kidnapped and taken home, Lethbridge-Stewart no longer needed her help, but passed along his thanks for her efforts.

Some years later, Lethbridge-Stewart approved Kramer's transfer into UNIT, and promoted her to major. Shortly after this she spent some time in New York with Edward and Anne Travers. (PROSE: )

In 1981, Lethbridge-Stewart visited the United Nations Peacekeeping Offices in Geneva. Kramer was there to greet him when he arrived. She was dismissed as Lethbridge-Stewart didn't want to involve her in his mission. (PROSE: )

She met the Doctor in his seventh incarnation in an adventure involving saving Washington, D.C. from disappearing up a time rift. She regarded the Seventh Doctor with a degree of distaste due to his scheming nature.

In 1997, Kramer worked with the Eighth Doctor, Sam Jones, and Carolyn McConnell to eradicate a horde of vampires living in San Francisco. Struck by this incarnation's personality, and the sheer differences from his predecessor, Kramer developed a friendship with the Doctor during this adventure. (PROSE: )

In 2002, the Eighth Doctor phoned Kramer asking for help in dealing with the problem San Francisco was having with its ley lines. Kramer didn't think that UNIT would be able to help the Doctor and told him that he would have to fix the issue himself. (PROSE: )

Behind the scenes
The character of General Adrienne Kramer was created by Jonathan Blum and first appeared in his 1996 fan film Time Rift played by Marsha Twitty. When Blum progressed to writing official material for the series he began using Kramer again, first in his 1997 BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures novel Vampire Science and then again in 1999's Unnatural History, and treated the fan film's events as valid history for the character. Paul Leonard wanted to include Kramer in his 1998 novel Dreamstone Moon, but the editor "wanted to get away from Earth".

Due to Adrienne Kramer's position as the leader of the United States division of UNIT, Candy Jar Books sought to license the character from Blum for their UNIT-centric Lethbridge-Stewart series. She appeared in three novels including: 2016's Times Squared by Rick Cross, 2017's Night of the Intelligence by Andy Frankham-Allen and 2018's Scary Monsters by Simon A. Forward. The character wouldn't be seen again until 2023's United Nations when Blum returned to write for the character again for the first time in over two decades in order to pay respect to his friend Twitty who had passed away in 2019. Twitty's likeness was used on the cover of the book.

"Thirty years ago now, I made my student film Time Rift, and Marsha Twitty played Adrienne Kramer, commander of UNIT USA. And her part kept getting bigger, because her performance really jumped off the screen. Marsha became a lifelong friend, and Kate and I wrote General Kramer into our Eighth Doctor novels. Then the Lethbridge Stewart team asked if they could feature a younger Kramer in their series. But when Marsha passed away in 2019, I decided I wanted to write for her once more as a tribute. Somehow that snowballed into being the big founding-of-UNIT story! I talked with Marsha’s friends, her mother and her boyfriend, and really tried to dig into the truth of what it would be like for a young Black woman officer working at the UN in those days. She was a joy to write for – a take-charge woman who’s also really good at keeping things to herself, and having more up her sleeve than you think. And we see very different sides to her in these books. Even after all these years, she was still able to surprise me!"

- Jon Blum