Nicholas Courtney is 80 today. Co-creator, with the recently late, lamented, Barry Letts (the greatest of the Dr Who producers), of Brigadier Sir Alasdair Lethbridge-Stewart, one of the great embodiments of the post-war, one nation, consensus spirit. Straight as an arrow… and yet able to tolerate, support, and sometimes take leadership from that left-wing pacifistic crank who tried to immunize my generation against the ideology that, ultimately, killed the consensus the Brigadier stood for.
I presume someone will be celebrating with five rounds, rapid.
{ 31 comments }
ajay 12.16.09 at 6:43 pm
A fictional example of the inventor/soldier pair that goes back through Barnes Wallis and Guy Gibson to, well, Merlin and Arthur…
Phillip Hallam-Baker 12.16.09 at 6:45 pm
How long does the typical British Brigadier stay in that rank? Lethbridge-Stewart must have been there for what, eight years?
So he is higher than a colonel but not quite a general. That has got to hurt.
Dru 12.16.09 at 7:29 pm
You just reminded me of David Lodge’s little squib “Dam and Blast”, comparing The Dambusters to the Arthurian stories… as you will of course be aware, it was Merlins that powered the Lancasters and the crews were not averse to saying “Wizard!” …and so on…
Keith 12.16.09 at 8:19 pm
Phillip Hallam-Baker:
Well, he is a Sir Brigadier, so he’s at least been knighted.
One of the problems inherent in dealing with strange events is, there’s no criteria for determining promotion. Sure, he’s saved the world a dozen times over from invasion and destruction. But has her fulfilled all his service requirements to merit promotion? He was charged with overseeing the activities of an alien agent who eventually slipped out of his care and went on his merry way. Not exactly something to add to your service record.
Chuchundra 12.16.09 at 8:59 pm
You know, just once I’d like to meet an alien menace that wasn’t immune to bullets.
Nick Caldwell 12.16.09 at 9:03 pm
Barry Letts came on board a bit later — though, arguably, he’s responsible for the character we know today, not quite the steely ruthless one we see in the second Yeti story up until Pertwee’s debut in “Spearhead from Space”.
Harry 12.16.09 at 9:49 pm
I’m with Keith. He seems to have been the top office in UNIT throughout his tenure there, and, presumably, felt unwilling to move to a less important job. It is absolutely clear that most of his superiors know absolutely nothing of his real accomplishments (as they shouldn’t) so its hard to see what the promotion criteria would be. I took it that the K (“for services to the environment”, as I understand it) was a proxy for promotion.
Yes, the Brig precedes Letts, but his personality, and the whole left social-democratic feel of the Pertwee years, is down to Letts (whose collaboration with the much more skeptical Dicks produced the best years of the Doctor).
Nick Caldwell 12.16.09 at 10:51 pm
I think the last time the promotion controversy flared up in fandom, it was pointed out that even total seat-warmers who get that high a rank in the first place get a courtesy promotion to General on retirement. Maybe no-one ever really retires from UNIT. On the other hand, UNIT personnel are technically always seconded from their host nations.
ChrisB 12.17.09 at 2:02 am
I’ll just note a hommage from The Middleman, where The Middleman is shooing a passerby away from the site of some alien excursion – “Well, Mr. Lethbridge-Stewart – if that really is your name – STAND BEHIND THE YELLOW TAPE.”
Phillip Hallam-Baker 12.17.09 at 4:08 am
He was promoted to Brigadier in ’68 (the invasion) and is still at that rank in ’89 (Battlefield).
My understanding is that once someone makes it to Colonel the promotion to General is practically automatic. More generally, it is an up-or-out situation. If you don’t advance, you go.
Someone once told me that it is actually the rarest rank in the British Army (except for Field Marshall of course which is more of an honorific than a rank) as there are more slots for Colonel and Brigadiers can expect an automatic upgrade to general once a general slot opens up.
alex 12.17.09 at 8:34 am
Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t the original UNIT stories set in [what was then] the future? And if so doesn’t that complicate the chronology? Or has someone been smoking the retcon again?
dsquared 12.17.09 at 9:20 am
remember that we only happen to see his successes. It’s quite likely, since he runs a United Nations task force, that he screwed his promotion prospects totally with some horrible botched peace-keeping mission which the Doctor wasn’t involved in.
ajay 12.17.09 at 9:35 am
dsquared, I think I prefer keith’s suggestion that he just hasn’t ticked all the boxes yet, and he can’t go before a promotion board until he’s done his three-month compulsory Brigade Group Staff Officer’s Communications Course or whatever. JPA strikes again.
Richard J 12.17.09 at 10:40 am
(except for Field Marshall of course which is more of an honorific than a rank)
Do we actually have any field marshalls any more? The absence of pitched conflicts on the North German plain has kind of removed the essential thing for promotion.
Tim Worstall 12.17.09 at 10:41 am
“My understanding is that once someone makes it to Colonel the promotion to General is practically automatic. More generally, it is an up-or-out situation. If you don’t advance, you go.
Someone once told me that it is actually the rarest rank in the British Army (except for Field Marshall of course which is more of an honorific than a rank) as there are more slots for Colonel and Brigadiers can expect an automatic upgrade to general once a general slot opens up.”
Well, no, not quite. For a start, “General” is several ranks above Brigadier General ( Brigadier General, Major General, Lieutenant General, General, Field Marshal).
And it’s usually full Colonels who get bumped to B-G on retirement rather than B-Gs who get bumped to M-G.
On the other hand, yes, at that level (actually, anything above Major or over age 55) it is an up or out thing. You’re a B-G at age 57 (purely as an example), you do a 2.5 year or so posting and if they don’t put you up to M-G then you’re out.
If UNIT were not regarded as part of the British Army then all would make sense. He was a full Colonel, got bumped to B-G on retirement and then stayed at that rank as he was no longer part of the British Army.
Just for giggles, B-G was Enoch Powell’s rank at the end of WWII.
ajay 12.17.09 at 12:10 pm
Just for giggles, Tim, there is actually no such rank as Brigadier-General in the British Army.
Is getting everything wrong some sort of religious obligation for you? Like those legendary Persian carpet weavers who always include a single flaw in their work, because only Allah can create perfection? I mean, this isn’t even a difference of opinion, like your beliefs on, say, climate change. This is an easily checked (15 seconds) question of fact.
soullite 12.17.09 at 2:04 pm
This is probably horribly wrong, given the specific nature of the information and the source (wiki), but it states that the rank of Brigidier-General was a temporary rank given to a Colonel or Colonel Commandant for the length of a specific command.
Obviously, that in no way clearls up how he managed to be a Colonel for 30 years.
ajay 12.17.09 at 2:22 pm
soullite: No doubt that’s true, but the key word is “was” – as in, was before the 1920s, when they reorganised the British Army’s rank structure.
“Commodore” used to be the same, as all CS Forester fans know; a Commodore was still a Captain in rank, he was just a captain who’d been given command of what we’d now call a task force of several warships – but he wouldn’t suddenly become senior to any captains who he wasn’t senior to before, or outrank them (unless they were actually part of his task force) and when his appointment came to an end, he’d go back to being called a Captain again. But nowadays Commodore is an actual rank, one step above Captain.
Alex 12.17.09 at 2:43 pm
Like those legendary Persian carpet weavers who always include a single flaw in their work, because only Allah can create perfection?
WIN
kid bitzer 12.17.09 at 3:23 pm
i’ve always thought that further theological reflection by the legendary persian carpet weavers would have led them to the conclusion that if they were worried about hubris, the last thing that they should do is to intentionally include a flaw.
i mean–if you really believe that you can decide whether to create something perfect or not (“let’s see; i’d better muck up *this* thread, here, else it’ll be perfect”), and you believe that creating something perfect is the prerogative of allah, then you thereby believe that you can decide whether or not to enjoy a prerogative of allah.
what you are saying is, “divine perfection is within my power, but i shall voluntarily forgo it.” and *that* is supposed to express your submission to allah?
no, no–the most pious attitude is surely to do your damnedest to make it perfect, secure in the knowledge that an unbridgeable gulf separates your human activity from divine perfection.
on the other hand, i suppose it is just possible that this is an ex post rationalization for poor quality control? perhaps?
ajay 12.17.09 at 4:43 pm
20: I too have thought this. The story has a bit of a mythical sound to it, doesn’t it.
kid bitzer 12.17.09 at 4:59 pm
21: it’s a flaw in the story. but then i try to make sure that every story i tell has some flaw in it…
roac 12.17.09 at 5:11 pm
But nowadays Commodore is an actual rank, one step above Captain.
Is that so? In one of the Patrick O’Brian novels (The Fortune of War, I think) it is stated that the RN looked down on the US Navy of the time for making Commodore a substantive rank. Which it is not now, I see, and wasn’t back when I was in the US Army and had to learn this rank stuff. Although I believe there is recurrent agitation to revive the rank, in order to distinguish an O-7, now called Rear Admiral (lower half), from an O-8 — and this may actually have happened at some point and then been reversed.
ajay 12.17.09 at 5:15 pm
23: it is. Interesting that the reverse was true in 1810. Commodore sounds better than Rear Admiral (lower half) which actually sounds vaguely indecent…
ajay 12.17.09 at 5:21 pm
Hmm. On checking, it seems that O’Brien may have got that wrong; the USN during the Napoleonic Wars had commodore only as a post title, just like the RN did. The USN didn’t create commodore as a substantive rank until 1862, and then got rid of it in 1899, and then brought it back in 1943 and then then got rid of it again in 1947, and then brought it back in 1982 (as ‘commodore admiral’) and changed that to ‘commodore’ in 1983 and then got rid of it in 1986.
Due for a third revival any day now I would say.
Richard J 12.17.09 at 5:34 pm
Incidentally, I was wrong about Field Marshals – the Queen is one, along with the Dukes of Edinburgh and Kent, and the last non-royal appointed to the rank was this chap.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Inge,_Baron_Inge
dsquared 12.17.09 at 6:18 pm
#20, #21: it’s clearly marketing material from the medieval Persian equivalent of David Ogilvy. It’s a lot more impressive to say to the prospective buyer “ah yes, and of course here is the barely perceptible flaw, right here, and it’s the only flaw in this carpet, our weavers are of course capable of making a perfect carpet but that would be blasphemous so we introduce this tiny little flaw which is hardly a flaw at all, otherwise the carpet is literally a perfect carpet”. Than to say “it has roughly the usual number of fuckups and weaving mistakes which I can’t precisely identify but which will presumably be noticed to your irritation over time , who do you think I am, Allah?”
roac 12.17.09 at 6:23 pm
24: You will recall Mary Crawford shocking the daylights out of Edmund Bertram by saying “Of vices and rears, I saw enough.” It always amazes me that Austen would let on that she got the indecency.
25: Wow, even more of a history than I imagined. Some commenters on the other thread would no doubt say that is good for military leaders to fight with each other about this kind of stuff, as it distracts them from the invasion of third-world countries.
Anyone who cares about this stuff probably already knows that the officer commanding a WWII convoy, as distinguished from the escort, was a commodore. Usually an overaged captain or admiral, I believe.
kid bitzer 12.17.09 at 7:21 pm
“Certainly, my home at my uncle’s brought me acquainted with a circle of
admirals. Of _Rears_ and _Vices_ I saw enough. Now do not be
suspecting me of a pun, I entreat.”
Edmund again felt grave, and only replied, “It is a noble profession.””
mary is certainly punning at least on the word “vices”. whether she is punning on “rears” is less clear to me. the oed lists only one citation before the 1850s for “rear” in the sense of “the buttocks or backside”, and it is not clear to me that it does illustrate the sense. (curiously, it also involves naval ranks, in 1796). the slang usage may simply have been unknown to austen. or maybe not.
then there’s the a priori considerations. i can imagine austen’s crawford punning on “vices”–she is naughty, and indeed immoral. but i have a harder time thinking that austen’s crawford would make bum-jokes. she is far from coarse–her immorality is of the most refined kind.
i really don’t know what to think.
roac 12.17.09 at 9:03 pm
I think I think you’re right.
Tim Worstall 12.18.09 at 5:01 pm
“But nowadays Commodore is an actual rank, one step above Captain.”
About wrongness (Yes, you’re right, it’s Brigadier, not Brigadier General).
When my old man was a Commodore (Royal Navy) a couple of decades back it was for the duration of his posting. A “real rank” in one sense: change the uniform, higher pay, better pension etc.
However, if he’d stayed in after that posting (which he didn’t) he would either have been promoted to Rear Admiral or gone back to being a Captain.
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