How did the Brigadier end up teaching maths?
Another free chapter from my forthcoming book answering curious questions raised by Doctor Who.
Today sees the release of Season 20 of Doctor Who on blu-ray. All these sets are magnificent but I love the 1980s seasons in particular, as they’re absolutely rammed with excerpts from contemporary programmes with a Who connection, whereas pre-1980 such items often don’t survive. My copy of the new set turned up on Saturday so I’ve already been able to enjoy such delights as Peter Davison’s November 1982 appearance on Saturday Superstore, where he sits in front of a sign made by viewers that appears to ask ‘Bucks Jizz’ to give them a wave:
To mark this, here’s another entry from the book I’m about to put out, called Do Time Lords Get Drunk?, collecting all my The Big Ask columns from Doctor Who Figure Collection magazine. This is basically all written, I just need to get it formatted (it’ll be ebook only). As well as collecting all the columns it’s got new ones on The Chase, The Two Doctors, the TV movie and Utopia. It’ll be out just as soon as I’m a bit less snowed under with work, but in the meantime enjoy these musings on Mawdryn Undead.
Why couldn’t the Black Guardian be seen to act?
And furthermore, who might see him and what would they do about it? The Black Guardian could have been referring to a power such as the Time Lords, but we think this was a bluff on his part. We hypothesise the Guardians have the power to push people towards good or evil, influence their actions, manipulate their perceptions, even enact grand plans by using multiple agents at once – but they can’t affect the material universe. Perhaps the Black Guardian’s attack on Turlough in Enlightenment was all in Turlough’s head – and his claim in Mawdryn Undead that he cannot be seen to act was a cover for the fact he couldn’t bash the Doctor over the head with a rock himself.
How did the Brigadier end up teaching maths?
This does seem a surprising career choice for the retired Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart. It also seems curious the Brigadier should end up in the same school as an exiled alien and a guidance relay for a transmat. “What worries me is the level of coincidence in all this,” the Doctor said, but he never got to the bottom of it. We detect the hand of the White Guardian covertly moving the Brigadier into position to assist the Doctor.
Is UNIT a secret organisation?
“UNIT is a secret organisation,” Lethbridge-Stewart said. “If you are aware of its existence, you would almost certainly have signed the Official Secrets Act.” This seems at odds with the sign
outside UNIT HQ in The Three Doctors giving the name of its commanding officer. It makes sense that, as mentioned in The Time Monster, people involved in their investigations would have to sign the Official Secrets Act, but UNIT never seemed to make efforts to conceal their actual existence – in Spearhead from Space Lethbridge-Stewart spoke to the press and the word “UNIT” was freely used. So this seems like part of his memory loss.
What actually is the Blinovitch Limitation Effect?
First mentioned by the Doctor in Day of the Daleks, the Blinovitch Limitation Effect was his explanation as to why you can’t revisit the same point in time in an attempt to change events – but he was interrupted before he could elaborate. In Mawdryn Undead the Doctor suggested it caused a shorting out of the time differential when someone met their past or future self. Yet it’s not clear why this happens when two versions of a person touch, as this isn’t against the physical laws of a universe where time travel is possible. Furthermore the Doctor has met themselves many times, suggesting Time Lords may be immune – but then Amy Pond met (and touched) herself in The Big Bang and nothing happened. Maybe it’s not a natural property of the universe, but a mechanism introduced by the Time Lords to stop others interfering with their own timelines? The Doctor did say the energy came “from the TARDIS, really” – so perhaps it no longer functioned after Gallifrey was destroyed.
What happened to the TARDIS tracker the Brigadier took from the capsule?
This question is not as straightforward as it seems. Tegan gave a TARDIS tracker to the Brigadier in 1977, which was among his possessions in 1983. The Doctor acquired it in 1983 and inserted it into the workings of the capsule. Then the 1977 Brigadier took it… but he must still have been in possession of the one Tegan gave him, so at that point he had two. The simplest answer is that when he was knocked unconscious by the shorting out of the time differential, he dropped the older of the two trackers and it was destroyed when the spaceship blew up – or maybe the Doctor, Nyssa or Tegan took it from him.
How can the Brigadier have retired from UNIT in 1976 when in Pyramids of Mars Sarah said –
Sorry, we’ve run out of space.
Do Time Lords Get Drunk? will be out soon, honest.
