Bye bye Brig

I'll be posting some photos from our holiday soon, but in the meantime, sad news comes along about one of Doctor Who's most well-loved actors, Nicholas Courtney.

It's hard to convey to non-fans just how important Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart was to the show's development in the 70s. When Jon Pertwee took the lead role in 1970 and black-and-white turned to colour, the Beeb started lavishing previously unheard-of budgets on Doctor Who. Even so, the only way to make things more realistic was to contrive to have the Doctor stranded on Earth - I think a bit of the TARDIS was missing - and fend off alien invasions, rather than visiting a new planet every few weeks. To make the change work, they introduced a wider range of regulars, including the Master and the Brigadier, who headed up the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce (UNIT).

As the following clip shows, the Brigadier always had a bit of a love-hate relationship with the Doctor; or perhaps more accurately, a classic straight man relationship with an oddball. He was a proper upper-crust officer type. He liked doing things by the book but grudgingly accepted that the Doctor tended to know best about everything; except when he didn't, when the Brig stepped into the fray with (a) a bit of heroism and (b) the usual selection of Earth weapons that didn't work very well against aliens.

Astonishingly, Courtney first played Lethbridge-Stewart in 1968 (he was a Colonel then) and didn't stop until 1989. He then returned in 2008 for one of the new Doctor Who spin-offs, The Sarah Jane Adventures, aged 79. The new Who is made by people who grew up loving the old show, and it's heartwarming to know that they were able to pay him this final tribute.

Farewell, Brigadier. Here are a couple of choice quotes to see you off:

"The Cabinet's accepted my report, and the whole affair is now completely closed. ... A fifty-foot monster can't swim up the Thames and attack a large building without some people noticing, but you know what politicians are like."
(from Terror of the Zygons)

Brigadier: Oh dear. Women, not really my field.
Doctor: Don't worry, Brigadier, people will be shooting at you soon.
(from Battlefield)

You know just once I'd like to meet an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets.
(from Robot)