In the 1980's, I used to watch Doctor Who regularly on one local (i.e. across the state line) PBS network, which ran the episodes one storyline per week, in more or less chronological sequence. NJN ran serials of the then-contemporary Doctors, Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy, but also worked back to include the past Doctors whose episodes survived, William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, and Jon Pertwee. For those unfamiliar with Doctor Who, the Doctor had various sidekicks, or "companions", throughout his time travels.
It was thus a shock to hear of the death this week of the actress who played perhaps the single most famous of the Doctor's companions, and the only companion to merit a spinoff TV series. From reading on that, I only then saw that I totally missed the news of the death of another Doctor Who stalwart back in February. The title of this SNLC gives away who those actors were. For those who don't know, they were....
(1) Elisabeth Sladen, who played the journalist Sarah Jane Smith and who died this past Tuesday, age 65.
(2) Nicholas Courtney, who played Brigadier Alastair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, or simply "The Brigadier" in later years (more at the wikipedia entry if you're interested). He died this past February 22, age 81.
You can read some obituaries for Courtney at:
(a) The Guardian
(b) The Guardian's TV and Radio blog post
(c) The Independent
(d) Telegraph
On Elisabeth Sladen, several tributes are available at:
(e) The Guardian (Dan Martin)
(f) The Guardian (Toby Hadoke)
(g) The Guardian's TV & Radio Blog entry
(h) Naomi Alderman's "In praise of..." essay from The Guardian
(i) Sarah Ditum at The Guardian's Comment is free blog
(j) The Independent
(k) Telegraph
Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart could easily be seen as the stereotypical "stiff upper lip" British soldier, who would also be easily inclined to give orders to shoot first and ask questions later, which Martin noted in his blog tribute to Courtney:
"The Brigadier occupies a unique position in Who lore. It is the Doctor's defining quality to abhor violence, refusing to use weapons even when absolutely necessary. Lethbridge-Stewart was a military stalwart, his instinct to shoot at the alien threat with a catchphrase of: 'Five rounds, rapid!' The two men's differing approaches tested as much as complemented each other.
Famously, in the Third Doctor Silurian story, the Brigadier orders the destruction of the underground Homo Repltilia settlement, to the Doctor's disgust. But he also served as a human, and humane, counterpoint to the Time Lord's alien eccentricities, and the pair developed a professional respect and personal affection."
In fact, Courtney used the line "Five rounds, rapid!" as the title for his first autobiography. Whatever one's attitude towards war and the military in general, with respect to the Brigadier, one was never in doubt about his bravery, integrity and loyalty to the Doctor and his subordinates. In any given military, one could do much, much worse than an army of Lethbridge-Stewarts.
Sarah Jane Smith's character in Doctor Who broke the mold for female companions, in terms of her feminist assertiveness, and not simply someone who would scream at signs of danger and wait for The Doctor to rescue her. This was due to Barry Letts, the producer of Doctor Who at the time, as recounted in the 2009 obit from The Guardian:
"...Letts...gave the Doctor a journalist companion, Sarah Jane Smith (Elizabeth Sladen), who, in a departure from the passive assistant role, could give as good as she got – creating a dynamic that has survived in the programme's latest incarnations."
By the way, you may like this quote from Letts from that obit, just as a sidebar:
'....he believed that if intelligent people are gathered together, "they will tend to be liberal/left of centre, because that is the most intelligent position to take".'
While that's just a little bit arrogant (if generally valid), that's unfortunately not always true. But 3CM digresses, as usual.
The heyday of Doctor Who in the USA was the 1980's, particularly the first half, AFAICR, with many of the actors coming over to the US to appear at sci-fi conventions and Doctor Who conventions, and also to do fund-drive promos for various PBS stations. One could imagine that dealing with the fans could get crazy at times (3CM says this, never having been to any of those conventions). Both Sladen and Courtney, however, acknowledged the passion of fans in keeping the shows going. From Clapperton's Guardian blog entry about Sladen:
"Sladen would often attend fan events both small and big, and would patiently sign autographs and pose for photographs, treating everyone with absolute courtesy."
From Michael McManus' Independent obit on Courtney:
"When the Doctor Who convention 'circuit' took off in the 1980s, he took to the road with verve. Where others shrank away from the fans or regarded them as a necessary nuisance at best, he positively embraced them. He understood their need to belong and operated always on the principle that anyone who treated him with respect deserved respect in return. In so doing, he won much more than the fans' respect. He unequivocally earned their love. It was impossible not to love him, as thousands of people will testify."
The BBC had a news tribute to Sladen here:
You can see a video from The Sarah Jane Adventures, where Sladen and Courtney worked on screen for the last time (BTW, you may note that the Brigadier had been knighted by then, making him Brigadier Sir Alastair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart):
So a small salute from DK to two British actors who gave much to TV and the world of science fiction. I wish that I could say that I met either or both of them at various Doctor Who conventions, but no such luck (please note the one throwaway sentence earlier in this diary). Now, of course, looking back....
With that, time to switch gears utterly for the usual SNLC protocol below, namely your loser stories for the week.....
(NOTE: Translator (a.k.a. Doc) has his own tribute to Elisabeth Sladen here, which I missed earlier.)