Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart

INDIVIDUAL
Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart
Race	Human
Home Planet	Earth
Home Era	20th Century Humanian Era
Appearances	Full List of Appearances
Actor	Nicholas Courtney

Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart was one of the founders of UNIT (United Nations Intelligence Taskforce) and commander of its UK operations. His long association with the Doctor has caused some authorities to include him in rosters of the Time Lord's companions, although he only actually travelled with the Doctor on a very few occassions. He was often referred to simply as "the Brigadier," and on rare occassions as "the Brig." The Second and Third Doctors sometimes called him by his surname, while the Fourth Doctor at least once addressed him as "Alistair."

Biography

Early Life

Lethbridge-Stewart was born in 1930 ("Blood Heat," "No Future"), and attended Holborough, where he first met Teddy Fitzoliver ("The Paradise of Death"). He began his military career circa 1953 and attended Sandhurst with Billy Rutlidge ("Mawdryn Undead," "The Web of Fear"). He joined the Scots' Guards and was stationed for a time at Aldgate ("The Green Death").

UNIT

Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart first met the Doctor in the Time Lord's second incarnation during the Yeti attack on the London Underground. Soon after these events, Lethbridge-Stewart had a meeting with Air Vice-Marshall "Chunky" Gilmore and learned from him that a group of hostile aliens had also been in the Shoreditch area of London in 1963, and that evidence of alien visits to Earth existed which went back millenia ("Downtime"). The Colonel was inspired to petition the United Nations to form a special military intelligence group to investigate alien and other unusual phenomena which might threaten the security of Earth. The United Nations Intelligence Taskforce was soon formed, and Lethbridge-Stewart found himself appointed head of the United Kingdom branch and elevated to the rank of Brigadier.

Four years after the Yeti invasion, UNIT was investigating the mysterious activities of electronics industrialist Tobias Vaughn. Vaughn was allied with the Cybermen in the first of their many attempts to invade and conquer Earth. With the assistance of the Second Doctor, the Brigadier and his men were able to thwart this invasion attempt ("The Invasion").

When the Doctor was forced to undergo another regeneration and was exiled to 20th century Earth by the Time Lords, the Brigadier took on this third incarnation of the Doctor as his scientific advisor ("Spearhead from Space"). This relationship lasted through the Doctor's next regeneration, with the Brigadier relying on the Doctor's scientific and technical expertise to defeat various alien and even more domestic threats. The Doctor's formal ties with UNIT ended when he answered a telepathic summons back to Gallifrey, although since the end of his exile the Time Lord's visits to Earth had become more and more infrequent. Around the same time, Lethbridge-Stewart retired from UNIT and the military, taking a post as an A-level maths teacher at Brendon Public School.

Later Life

In 1983 the Fifth Doctor helped Lethbridge-Stewart recover from a form of selective amnesia which caused him to forget his relationship with the Doctor. This was later revealed to be a result of the shock of the Brigadier meeting his future self on Mawdryn's ship ("Mawdryn Undead"). Soon after the Brigadier gave a speech at an anniversary reunion of UNIT, during which he was captured with the Second Doctor and transported to the Death Zone on Gallifrey ("The Five Doctors"). In 1989, Lethbridge-Stewart conducted an investigation of the dealings of SenéNet and was captured. He was later rescued by the Sixth Doctor, who uncovered and stopped yet another invasion attempt by the Nestene Consciousness ("Business Unusual"). Sometime between these events and the 1990s, Lethbridge-Stewart married Doris, whom he had first met years ago and spent a memorable holiday with at Brighton ("Planet of the Spiders"). This was his second marriage, his first having ended in divorce.

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 ("Downtime"). Some years later, he came out of retirement briefly to help UNIT and its new commander, Brigadier Winnifred Bambara, deal with an invasion from a parallel universe by the sorceress Morgaine. Once again, he met up with the Doctor, now in his seventh incarnation, who helped to defeat Morgaine's machinatons. Lethbridge-Stewart distinguished himself during these events, singlehandedly taking on the Destroyer and dispatching same, armed only with a revolver loaded with silver bullets ("Battlefield").

In 1997 the Brigadier collaborated with the Eighth Doctor and Bernice Summerfield during an interplanetary crisis between Earth and Mars ("The Dying Days"), and in 1999 he enlisted the help of the Fifth Doctor and his companions Tegan and Turlough to prevent an invasion of Earth by the Jex ("The King of Terror"). At the end of the Martian crisis, Lethbridge-Stewart was promoted to the rank of General, although he was still and preferred to be called "Brigadier." Later, he was also knighted.

Lethbridge-Stewart attended the wedding of Bernice Summerfield and Jason Kane in 2010, and during the course of these events his youth was restored. Lethbridge-Stewart thus managed to live on considerably past the normal span for humans of his time, dying at last sometime in the 2050s ("Happy Endings," "The King of Terror"). During a boat outing with Doris, Lethbridge-Stewart's boat capsized and Doris was drowned, an event which haunted the widower for years.

There is to date no record of the Brigadier ever having met the Doctor's Ninth or Tenth incarnations.

The Lethbridge-Stewart Family

The family of Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart was an old one whose history dates back centuries. Part of the Scottish Clan Stewart, the family was related to the Stuart kings of Scotland, and when James VI arrived to claim the English throne as James I in 1603, the Brigadier's ancestor, William Lethbridge-Stewart, accompanied him ("Terror of the Zygons," "The Dying Days"). Another ancestor, Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart, worked for the British government during World War I ("The Wages of Sin").

The Brigadier himself had many descendants who would play significant roles in the history of Earth. As a young officer stationed in Sierra Leone, Lethbridge-Stewart fathered a son with Mariatu, daughter of Chief Yembe of the Royoke village. This son, Mariama, was the father of Kadiatu, author of The Zen Military, an expose of the activities of UNIT, published in 2006. Kadiatu's great-grandson, Yembe, led the UN forces during the Thousand Day War between Earth and Mars in the late 21st century and was the adoptive father of Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart, whose time travel activities at first proved quite problematic for the Doctor.

From his marriage to his first wife, Fiona, the Brigadier fathered a daughter named Kate, who spent many years estranged from her father. For this reason, it was not until the events surrounding the Great Intelligence's third attempt to conquer Earth in the 1990s that Lethbridge-Stewart learned that Kate had given him a grandson, Gordon ("Downtime").

Alternate Brigadiers

The Inferno Earth is known to have had its own version of the Brigadier, known as Brigade Leader Lethbridge-Stewart. Ruthless and fanatically devoted to the fascist republic which ruled Britain in this reality, the Brigade Leader was the antithesis of his counterpart on Earth. The Brigade Leader was shot and killed by Section Leader Elizabeth Shaw when he tried to force the Doctor at gunpoint to take them back to his reality ("Inferno").

Another alternate version of Lethbridge-Stewart is known to exist in a timeline where the Brigadier meets the Doctor not during his years with UNIT, but during his retirement in Hong Kong ("Sympathy for the Devil").

Quotes

"Chap with wings; five rounds, rapid." -- "The Daemons"

"The Doctor, wonderful chap, all of them." -- "The Five Doctors"