#oh brigadier

YOU HAD TO PICK A LONG ONE.  “The Brigadier” would have sufficed.

B: Do they have any allergies? Mostly to the Doctor spending UNIT money on his TARDIS and Master trying yet again to kill everyone under his command.

R: What are their hands like? Rough and calloused.  He’s a soldier, and has never known another life.  Sure he was an officer, but he wouldn’t tell his men to do anything he wouldn’t do, so his hands have seen a lot over the years.

I: On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do they love themselves? The Brigadier thinks this is an absolutely ridiculous question.  I’d say he does alright on the scale, if just because he’s one of the good guys and he knows that, but sometimes it might dip a little because the Brigadier has some really hard choices to make.

G: How do they flirt?  Not well, but kind of adorable.  Often has no idea how he got there, but is willing to go along.

A: What are/were this character’s best subjects in school?  Believe it or not, Doctor, the Brigadier was actually quite good at Maths.  

D: How they react to being flirted with? Depends who is doing the flirting.  Usually he’ll just raise an eyebrow.  A small smirk will tell you if it’s welcome.

E: How are they with children?  He does alright with them, though he’s a much more reserved parent.  He’s incredibly patient though, after years of having to deal with Three’s temper tantrums.  

L: What is their favourite board game? He’s quite good at Diplomacy, but really, he prefers card games.  

T: Where are they ticklish? On his feet.  Not that anyone knows this.

H: What is their deadly sin?  I’m not actually sure what this one actually means to be honest.  Like, I imagine he likes a good scotch every once and a while, and highly intelligent women can apparently slip into his bed without much trouble, but I try to come up with something deadly and it’s just like... I have no idea? For most characters?  Eh.

S: How stealthy are they? A lot stealthier than some people with really loud multicolored coats.  He’s actually a fair hand with disguises and spy work when he needs to, but he’s a bit out of practice.

HAHAHAHA.  Do you really even have to ask this?  I think it’s no secret that my favorite character in the whole of the series is Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart.  I don’t care if everyone else chooses the Brigadier, he’s the only one I can talk about right now.  Well, I can maybe talk about Bret Vyon  and Sarah Kingdom and how they’re long lost descendants of the Brigadier upholding their degrees in badassery high.  I can also talk about Kate Stewart stealing my heart in the audio just as she did in the new series, and how much she’d do her father proud.  

But really, the Brigadier has my heart.  

Let’s face it.  Stronger than any Type that takes none of the Doctor’s BS, I have a pretty severe loyalty kink.  It’s why James Rhodes will always be my favorite MCU character, why Guy Cecil steals my heart in Tales of the Abyss, and why Sailor V’s undying loyalty and duty to her princess always coming first is so important to me.  It’s also why I’m drawn so very strongly to the Brigadier. 

Things like the faith people had in Steve in the Winter Soldier bother me a lot, because it’s faith in something that honestly, is nothing more than a figure head.  The loyalty in the Brigadier is something completely different.  In Web of Fear, he gives the Doctor a chance because he really had no choice.  The Doctor was the one making the most sense and who seemed to know the most, so he followed his instinct and trusted the Doctor.

That trust was not unfounded.  The Doctor saves the day and gives the Brigadier an idea: UNIT.  

The next time they meet, the Brigadier is still more than willing to accept the Doctor’s help.  Then when he sees the Doctor needs his help, he gives it readily even with Three is the epitome of teenage rebellion/whiny years.  

From that point on he just trusts the Doctor.  He trusts the Doctor to save them, even when he knows he has to go behind the Doctor’s back to do something the Doctor won’t like.  Even when the Doctor himself thinks that the Brigadier has turned against him in Invasion of the Dinosaurs, the Brigadier is quietly arranging everything so that the Doctor can escape.  He doesn’t always agree with the Doctor, but his loyalty to the Doctor is honestly breath-taking at times.  

And they argue, and they don’t always agree, and they sometimes infuriate each other to no end, but the Brigadier and the Doctor have a special bond, no matter what regeneration it is.  He’s been more than any human the Doctor has met, and I tend to hate over-reaching statements like that, but it’s true.  As Moffat said, he’s the one man who’s ever been the Doctor’s boss, but he’s also been the Doctor’s friend.  And he’s been back more than any other character.  He’s not really a companion, because I feel he almost transcends that role in the Doctor’s life to become something more than that (which is not to say the companions are lesser, but they fill a different role in the Doctor’s life).   He knows the Doctor enough that he would commit genocide while trying to keep the Doctor from knowing, because while he knows the Doctor will come through, the Doctor won’t always be around.  But even that changes.  The first time I’ve ever cried for any Doctor Who serial/episode was Eleven rambling into that phone and then realizing he was too late.  Because the Brigadier always believed he’d show up again.  And just, break my heart and stomp on it into twenty million pieces, why don’t you?

(I am still in extreme denial btw, even with Cyber-Brig.  He didn’t die.  He was taken by an alien race because of his skills and strategies and the one everyone found was a changeling who was weak and died a few days later.  The Brigadier saved a alien planet then became a well respected councilor who the aliens extended his natural life because they refuse to lose him.  One day the Doctor runs into him and they travel time and space after a happy reunion.  There is no other alternative.)

I just love the Brigadier so much, with his quiet wit and dry humor, and smirk when he knows he’s got the Doctor to take the bait.  The way he leads, where he won’t make any of his men do something he himself refused to do (that scene in Last of the Gaderene did slay me, yes), the way he takes everything in his stride, the way he smiles as he says ‘Splendid chap, all of them,’ and really, how can you not love a man who walks into the TARDIS for the first time, raises an eyebrow, and asks if that’s what the Doctor has been doing with UNIT funds?  

And I love that he tries so hard.  Even in Sympathy for the Devil when he’s old and bitter because the Doctor never came back and he had to save the world by himself, he saved the world.  He might not have saved everyone, and he was crucified for that career wise, but he saved the world on his own, with only UNIT to back him up.  He’s more than willing to lay his life on the line, and he cares for the Doctor so much too.  His duty is to save the world, and the one time he had to be reminded of that, to let go of his personal feelings, was when the Master was going to sacrifice the Doctor.  Because Feels.

I just have so many feels about the Brigadier and how amazing him and his family are.  He’s honestly one of my favorite characters in anything.  If anyone wants some recs for all things that feature the Brig, feel free to ask and I will write another long ramble-y post.  This one’s just gotten a bit long as it is, though, so I should probably cut it short now.

I’m going to do both a book and an audio, because making me chose between one or the other is horrible.  XD

Favorite Audio: Actually, choosing just one audio is hard.  There are so many good ones.  You’ve got Doctor Who and the Pirates, Holy Terror, Arrangements For War, Kingmaker, The One Doctor, Sympathy for the Devil, and all the UNIT and everything...  Really, I can and have made lists of my favorites and must listens with Big Finish.  But if I must pick only one, I’m going to have to go with Spare Parts. 

What I love about Spare Parts is that it’s one of the very few stories that has managed to capture just how terrifying the Cybermen are.  There have been many stories about the Cybermen, but they’ve fallen in as a sort of ‘Monster of the week’ that is just another alien for the Doctor to beat rather than this brilliantly terrifying idea of human 2.0.  And Spare Parts goes right back to the start of the Cybermen, using the same sort of creepy, sing-song voices that they had in Tenth Planet, while connecting it to the true horror of a people who were only trying to save themselves.  It’s Five and Nyssa and it makes me cry when I listen to it, and it’s just so well written and well done.  I’ve listened to a great many of the Big Finish audios, and it’s still on the top of my lists.  I need to listen to it again.  XD

Books!  This decision is not as tough, considering I could never actually make it through a good portion of them.  I tried, I really did, but some of those were a bit much for me to take.  XD  First off, let me give a shout out to David A. McIntee and The Dark Path and The Face of the Enemy.  Love or hate how he handled the Master’s plotlines, he was amazing with character voices and it helped me a lot in ‘Mastering’ my Delgado Master voice.

But what I’m here to talk about is Deadly Reunion by Terrance Dicks and Larry Betts.  Let me start off by saying this book is very hard to get into, because the beginning is just hard to read.  I very nearly put it down a few times because it was just too muddled.  However, once it gets going, the problems at the start sort of even out and you get glorious things like Young Brig falling in love with Persephone (yes, the Goddess), young Brig taming Cerberus, young Brig being completely awkward with the whole romancing bit, young Brig in bondage, gratuitous Delgado Master who has no real point to being in the book other than to bat his eyelashes and ask the Doctor for a drink, the Master in way over his head with a Summoning Gone wrong, epic proposals to rule time and space, and so, so much delicious crack.  Like, this book has so much crack that it’s glorious.  Here’s an example:

Jo looked contrite. 'I suppose I thought you might disapprove. I thought you were anti-pop if anything.'

The Doctor looked offended. 'I'll have you know, Jo, that in my younger days, my much younger days, I played lead perigosto stick for the Gallifrey Academy Hot Five - until the Faculty closed down. The Master was on drums.'

So much beautiful crack.  XD  

Something I forgot to mention while I was online yesterday.  Well, that's a lie.  I was just too lazy.  But I can mention it now.  

I was re-watching Terror of the Zygons when I realized something important.  I've figured out where all of my sexuality went.  It's in the Brigadier wearing a kilt.  I'd apparently blocked it from my memory because it's too much awesome for me to totally take in.  

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